A gray whale calf breaches from the water in Depoe Bay during the summer in 2022. The Whale Watch Week event during the spring is a chance to catch gray whales migrating north along the Oregon Coast to Alaska , some of whom recently birthed calves off the Baja peninsula in Mexico.
Oregon Parks and Recreation Department
Whale Watch Week officially kicked off on Tuesday, a chance to catch gray whales as they pass along the Oregon coast during a migration that stretches from the warm lagoons of Baja, Mexico to the icy waters of Alaska. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department hosts the whale watching event twice a year, including most recently last December, when it took place for the first time in person since the start of the pandemic. For the spring event, 17 viewing sites have been set up from Fort Stevens near Astoria to Harris Beach near the California border. At each of the sites the public can explore interactive exhibits, grab a pair of binoculars and get help from trained volunteers to spot the marine mammals traveling about a mile off the coast, some with recently birthed calves in tow. Peter McBride is a park ranger with the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department based at Beverly Beach, near Newport. He joins us to talk about Whale Watch Week and what visitors can expect to see during the event which ends this Sunday.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Whale Watch Week officially
kicked off on Tuesday. It goes through this Sunday at seventeen spots up and down the Oregon coast. It’s a chance to glimpse gray whales as they swim from Baja up to Alaska. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department normally hosts these whale watching events twice a year, including this past December. But that was the first in person event since before the start of the pandemic. Peter McBride is a Park Ranger based at Beverly Beach, which is about five miles north of Newport. He joined us to talk about Whale Watch Week, and what visitors can expect. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Peter McBride: Oh, thanks for having me.
Miller: What is Whale Watch Week?
McBride: Well, Whale Watch Week is a really exciting time. We have the spring migration happening, where whales are traveling up from Baja. And so it’s a really good time, especially with spring break happening right now, to be able to get to show people whales as they’re going through our waters, and hopefully impart some uh good whale knowledge.
Miller: How many gray whales are likely to pass Oregon over the course of this spring migration?
McBride: The spring migration is really getting started right now as far as what’s going by Oregon. It’s gonna continue all the way until early June. And so during that time, we could see upwards of 18,000 whales travel through our waters.
Miller: And it’s just by chance that Whale Watch Week corresponds to spring break, a time when families maybe are more likely to be able to spend two hours on the coast on a random Wednesday?
McBride: That’s a great question. The origins of the Whale Watch program spoken here, that really began over 40 years ago. It was a group of researchers from Oregon State University that noticed that during the holiday times right near the end of the year, and also along with spring break, we had the migrations going through. So we usually had quite a bit of whales traveling by when people would be having these times away from work. And so that’s where eventually the whale watch program started, and we’ve maintained that tradition of having it. Usually it’s the last week of each year, and then during spring break for the northern migration.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the overall life cycle of these gray whales, what the combined migrations are like?
McBride: They are on the road a lot. Starting with the northern feeding grounds, they’re traveling from Alaska, and they head down to Baja, Mexico. Down in Baja, that’s for reproduction and that’s where the calves are born, and then they return back up to the northern latitudes for feeding. They can live over 50 years, some even way beyond that. We have one whale that is one of our summertime Pacific coastal feeding group whales named Scarback, I believe the first time she was seen here was 1978. She’s been coming back for quite a few years.
During the summer and fall, it’s all about feeding. So they’re trying to eat as much as possible, and then once they head on that winter migration, a lot of times they can go quite a while without eating before they get back up to the northern feeding grounds again.
Miller: What do they eat?
McBride: It’s a variety of things. One of the big things that gray whales will be eating is, they will use their baleen and filter in the sand. And so they’re able to filter crustaceans called amphipods from there, as well as some other small invertebrates. Here in the central coast of Oregon, we have some feeding going on that’s in the water column. And one of the big things that they can feed on in Depoe Bay is mysid shrimp. That’s one of the invertebrates that we can get an abundance of.
Miller: How much might the adults eat in a single day?
McBride: During that time of year, the spring and fall, they can eat over 2,000lbs in a day.
Miller: This is only the second time I noted that there has been in person whale watching week events since 2019 because the pandemic erased the live ones two years in a row. So instead there were live YouTube streams. We actually have some audio from one of these, from May of 2020, we’re going to hear Park Ranger Luke Parsons. And this was near the beginning of the last regularly scheduled live stream of that season.
Luke Parsons [from recording]: I do hope to be able to sneak in a few more live broadcasts here as the weeks and months go on, so be sure that you’re subscribed to the Oregon State Parks YouTube channel - oh, there’s a whale! This is a little tiny whale again, let me see if I can find it. This might be one of these little juveniles that we have been tracking the last few days. Where did you go? There it is, way on the horizon. Let me leave the camera right here and see if we can’t locate this whale again… This is just a small little whale, it looks like it’s all by itself. This is probably that same whale that showed up yesterday about this time. One little spout and then it was kind of gone for the rest of the day…
Miller: There’s something very soothing about that, sort of like a Bob Ross feel. What was the response to the pivot to video?
McBride: During that time we had a lot of park closures going on, and in the early on with the pandemic there was a lot of changes that were happening really fast. And so Luke was really fortunate in live streaming a lot of the whale watching that was going on at that time. The public response was people really enjoyed watching whales from home, or from wherever they were. Luke, he was a very good speaker and an excellent whale watcher.
Miller: But I imagine that no matter how much people enjoyed watching those videos, that being in person again is more exciting. What’s it been like to be able to actually have in person whale watching weeks again?
McBride: It’s really exciting. Just being able to have folks come and join us. We have all sorts of weather out here. Sometimes it will be like today where it’s overcast and the seas were not too bad, and so we were able to see some whales. Sometimes it’ll be sunny and bright and very calm seas, and we can see a lot of whales on those days. And then other times we have storm systems that will come through, and hopefully between times of fog and wind, we always hope for whales on those days as well.
But there’s just something that’s really exciting about experiencing it, and also to be able to show folks whales in person, to be able to share that moment with them.
Miller: There are 17 spots along the coast that will have volunteers, and this is for three hours each day through Sunday, from 10AM to 1PM. Do you have any favorite spots among those 17 that span pretty much the entire length of the Oregon Coast?
McBride: Oh, I don’t know if I can claim any one-
Miller: All of your children are beautiful.
McBride: They are all amazing spots. Each location has a very good vantage point for people to be able to see whales. And that’s really the important thing is that it needs to be a really open space so that you can get that viewing as they’re going by. There’s wonderful spots all along the coast. Up north we have Neahkahnie Mountain, Fort Stevens, they’re incredible up there. Here in the central coast we have the Depoe Bay Whale Center, Boiler Bay. To get a little elevation in the central coast we have Cape Foulweather, and that’s at about 500ft. And then going south, we have really nice spots. We have off of Harris Beach a wonderful whale watching spot down there.
Miller: What are the volunteers there to do?
McBride: They’re there to help people spot whales. We have around 170 volunteers in total that are a part of our program, and they all share the passion of showing people whales and giving whale watching information. And just to be able to share that experience with people.
Miller: How close to the coast do whales actually get in this spring migration?
McBride: Usually [during] the spring migration, the gray whales will be traveling a little bit closer than when they’re heading south. Typically we can see them about a mile, maybe a little bit more off than that offshore. That said, today the whales that we were spotting were probably about three miles offshore. So if you’re coming out, it definitely helps to have some binoculars.
Miller: What else should people think about bringing or packing or wearing?
McBride: I would definitely dress for several different kinds of weather. Sometimes it’ll be sunny and a really nice day out here. Other times we can have sideways rain and hail coming down. It really can change very quickly. I would definitely wear layers, and bring some sort of waterproof outer covering.
Miller: Do you have any favorite whale watching moments of your own?
McBride: I was very fortunate enough to spend a lot of time at the Whale Center when I first started with the parks, and it just blew me away how excited folks were when they come through the doors. I don’t know if everyone was expecting to be able to see a whale. Sometimes we have them around, sometimes they’re not here. But just that excitement, that energy that people get in, in viewing whales, it’s really contagious, and it’s a lot of fun.
Miller: Peter McBride, thanks very much for joining us today.
McBride: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Peter McBride is a park ranger based at Beverly Beach near Newport. He’s with the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. He joined us to talk about Whale Watch Week which officially kicked off on Tuesday. It goes through this Sunday at 17 spots up and down the Oregon coast.
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