More Whales Are Washing Up Dead on Bay Area Beaches. Why?

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kindergartner Caleb Whan is fascinated by whales. He wants to know all about what they eat and where they live. We've got answers for him and for another Bay Curious question asker, Ellea, who wonders why more whales have been washing up dead on Bay Area beaches in recent years. Additional Reading: More Whales Are Washing Up Dead on Bay Area Beaches. Why? The Biggest Whales Can Eat the Equivalent of 80,000 Big Macs in One Day Sign up for Bay Curious Trivia December 8, 2021! Reported by Amy Mayer. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Lina Blanco, Christopher Cox, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Jenny Pritchett.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:03.0	If you head to the beach anytime soon, be sure to keep one eye on the horizon.
0:08.0	With a little luck and a lot of patience, you might just catch a glimpse of a 30 ton gray whale.
0:19.4	That's one of the most common sounds a gray whale makes.
0:24.0	Researchers from the Laguna San Ignacio ecosystem science program
0:28.0	call it their kanga, because it sounds like a kanga drum.
0:32.0	They've been recording whale sounds since the 1980s and today
0:35.2	their research is a project of the Ocean Foundation.
0:41.2	Us humans are still learning what these whale sounds mean, but what we do know is gray whales make a lot of sound.
0:48.0	It's their primary sense, and some of those sounds might not be polite for a dinner party.
0:54.0	Every year the waters off the coast of the Bay Area get noisy with these whale sounds.
1:02.0	That's because some 27,000 gray whales passed by along their
1:06.1	migration route from Alaska to Baja California every year. For most of them, the Bay Area coastline is little more than a pit stop along the way,
1:15.0	maybe catch a big meal out at the Farallon Islands.
1:18.0	But a few whales spend a bit more time hanging around,
1:21.0	and that's caught the attention of several Bay Curious listeners.
1:24.6	Today we're answering questions about gray whales like why they sometimes come into the
1:29.5	San Francisco Bay what they do while they're here and sadly why we've seen an uptick in dead whales
1:36.1	washing up on shore. I'm Olivia Allen Price and this is Bay Curious.
1:50.0	Support for Bay Curious is brought to you by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, still family owned, operated, and argued over.
1:53.3	Explore their brews wherever fine beverages are sold
1:56.6	and taste how trailblazing runs in the family.
	...

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