MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Some 58 grey whales stranded and dead off Alaska, mostly malnourished

“They're moving north from their wintering grounds in Mexico and appear to be running out of steam,” Michael Milstein, from NOAA's Fisheries Service

Dozens of grey whales have been found dead along the U.S. West Coast in recent weeks and some scientists believe the cause lies far to the north, in the heated-up Arctic waters off Alaska. Fifty-eight grey whales have been found stranded and dead so far this year in sites stretching from California to Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The latest discovery announced on Wednesday by NOAA was a dead grey whale in Turnagain Arm, a narrow glacier-fed channel off Anchorage where grey whales rarely venture.

“They're moving north from their wintering grounds in Mexico and appear to be running out of steam,” Michael Milstein, a spokesman for NOAA's Fisheries Service, said on Thursday.

Dead whales examined so far have been malnourished, and the current hypothesis is the animals failed to eat enough last year in their summering grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska, Milstein said.

That is where they do most of their annual feeding and where they pack on the fat that carries sustains them until the next summer, he said.

“People think that clearly something happened up there that led the whales to not get as much food,” Milstein said. “Given that they put on the bulk of their weight in the summer season up there, the die is sort of cast there.”

Many of the dead whales have been found in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound off Seattle. The animals may be stopping there to look for food, or they could be “exhausted and they're there looking for a place to rest,” Milstein said.

The warming Arctic waters is not the only theory about the whale deaths.

The Eastern North Pacific grey whale population has grown so large, to about 27,000 animals, they may be competing for food, Milstein said. “As you have more whales in the population, more whales are going to die from time to time,” he added.

Plenty of evidence points to a food problem in the whales' summering grounds in the Arctic Circle.