Vancouver Sun: Mystery of rare grey whale's 2,200-km journey
Maybe it's food, the prospect of sex or some deeply-rooted memory, but, whatever the motivation, an endangered whale is astounding researchers with a marathon swim which, so far, has taken him from Russia's Sakhalin Island to the waters off Alaska.
Flex, a 13-year-old western Pacific grey, is a member of the second most endangered species of large whales in the world. Only between 113 and 130 animals remain.
Flex left Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula Jan. 3 and sped across the Bering Sea, covering about 2,200 kilometres in just over a week and swimming at about eight kilometres an hour.
"He was moving very fast. That's day and night and day and night, so it was a pretty significant effort," said Bruce Mate, director of Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, who tagged the whale last fall.
Now, the biggest question is whether Flex will continue south, past the Aleutian Islands and onto the migration route for about 18,000 eastern Pacific grey whales, which swim each year between Alaska, past Vancouver Island to Mexico. That would be an "a-ha moment," said Mate, adding that Flex has already provided a "gee-whiz factor."
"If he gets into the eastern migratory corridor that would be exciting," he said.
"If it comes into that realm, some people will wonder, especially with his direct route across the Bering Sea, whether he learned that from his mom and if there might be more relation than thought between the eastern and western stocks."
The two populations are genetically distinct and whales usually inherit knowledge of the best feeding grounds from their mothers.
If Flex joins his eastern cousins with the aim of mating he would not necessarily have to travel all the way south, Mate said.
"We see mating during the northbound migration during March and April, so he could do that without going to Mexico," he said.
It is unlikely that the females would be concerned about a stranger in their midst as their relationships are promiscuous, Mate said.
Also, the two populations look similar, so an eastern whale could join the western migration without being noticed by researchers.
Western Pacific grey whales, which were previously thought to be extinct, spend their summers at the south end of the Sea of Okhotsk, where there is concern about oil and gas development. An oil company is planning a third drilling platform, which environmental groups fear will wipe out the whale population.
But nothing is known about their winter habits, so, last fall, Oregon researchers teamed up with their Russian counterparts to tag some of the animals.
Discovering more about their range is urgent for conservation as five females were killed in the past four years in shore-based nets off Japan, Mate said.
Tagging proved difficult because of typhoons and gales, and only Flex was successfully tagged, so it is possible he might not be alone, Mate said.
Previous guesses about winter breeding and calving grounds have centred around the South China Sea
"But this is the first information that has ever been gleaned about this population at this time of year," Mate said.
On Monday, Flex was about 100 km north of the Pribilof Islands, but bad weather is hampering location checks.
During tests, the average tag lasted 118 days and that limit has now been reached. However, the longest a tag has lasted is 385 days.
Mate hopes the tag will continue to transmit long enough to unlock Flex's winter secrets.
For the latest on Flex's journey, go to Oregon State's website, which is updated every Monday, at mmi.oregonstate.edu/Sakhalin2010.
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