Gray whales are dying in record numbers -  over 400 have washed up on West Coast shores since 2019. And yet, scientists aren’t quite sure why. With all the man-made problems affecting ocean ecosystems, it’s hard to point to just one cause. But scientists do know that these majestic mammals are not getting enough nutrition. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Susanne Rust, an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, about her work tracking the plight of the gray whale. We learn about some of the steps that marine biologists are taking, how the food supply of gray whales has greatly decreased, and what it’s like to try to investigate this crisis during a global pandemic.

Narrator  0:02  This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Susanne Rust  0:22  I mean, one of the amazing things about grey whales too is that they do this incredible migration up and down the coast. So there they are the sentinels.

Narrator  0:32  Gray whales are dying in record numbers. Over 400 have washed up on West Coast shores since 2019. And yet scientists aren't quite sure why. With all the man-made problems affecting ocean ecosystems, it's hard to point to just one cause. But scientists do know that these majestic mammals are not getting enough nutrition. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Susanne Rust, an environmental reporter for The Los Angeles Times about her work tracking the plight of the gray whale. We learn about some of the steps that marine biologists are taking, how the food supply of gray whales has greatly decreased, and what it's like to try to investigate this crisis during a global pandemic.

Alex Wise  1:49  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Susanne Rust. She's an environmental reporter for The Los Angeles Times. Susanne, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Hey, thank you for having me. So you have a new series of pieces for the Los Angeles Times that folks should check out is entitled something is killing gray whales. And then there's also accompanying media with that, like podcasts and more explained in the Los Angeles Times newsletter. Why don't you first explain what gray whales are and what the latest reduction in their numbers means in relative terms?

Susanne Rust  2:26  Yeah, so happy to - gray whales are these like amazing creatures that kind of are, I think a little underrated off the west coast. Like everybody knows the humpbacks sperm whales are pretty cool to see blue whales are amazing and enormous. And gray whales are sort of like the Jeep of the ocean. And for many reasons. They're just they're sort of unremarkable looking, but they're remarkable and what they can do. So every year these guys travel from the Arctic, where they feed they gorge themselves. During the summer and late summer, when these little things called shrimp and they're up in the Bering Sea and they're up in the sea. They eat, and then they travel about 5000-6000 miles south and they hang out in the lagoons of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. And they're the kind of rest it's a great place for females to bring young calves. They sometimes birth calves there they nurse calves, their workers don't go into these lagoons, so they're very safe in this area. And so they nurse they hang around, single whales come down and cavort mate. And then they all travel back north, beginning in early spring, to once again feed on the crop of amphipods that's growing up in the Bering and Chukchi Sea. And so they're really quite remarkable because they do this migration, like right 10-12,000 miles round trip every year. And they are going through everything right, they go again, from the Arctic down to Mexico, they go along the coastline. So they are really seeing everything that's happening off of our coast here.