A 40-foot gray whale, recently washed up on the east side of Vashon Island and likely dead from malnourishment, has provoked grief, fascination and reverence from researchers studying the huge cetacean.

The whale, an adult male, appeared on the island’s shores sometime before April 12, when its presence was relayed to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and local sea mammal researchers and veterinarians.

Measured at just under 40 feet long, the whale appeared thin and malnourished in an initial exam. A necropsy the evening of April 17 confirmed the whale was emaciated, and that lack of food is likely the primary cause of its death.

Now, thanks to its distance from human habitation, the whale’s carcass will be left on the property for natural decomposition — a process which will give islanders a rare and fascinating view into the rich, tiny ecosystem its body will create over the next few months.

Researchers, including from the Cascadia Research Collective and Marla Smith, a photographer who works with Orca Network, had followed the gray whale over the last three weeks as it was sighted in Olympia, Des Moines, Bremerton, and finally, Vashon.

Washington State has a system of “stranding” networks that mobilize when marine mammals like whales are stranded and in trouble — or dead.

Responding to situations such as the whale’s beaching requires coordination between researchers, veterinarians and volunteers — in this case, including World Vets, WDFW, Cascadia Research Collective, the Orca Network and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sound Action, a nearshore habitat watchdog group, was notified about the whale on April 12, its executive director Amy Carey said, and in turn immediately notified World Vets, who are the first contact for stranding on Vashon-Maury Island.

But Carey, along with Smith and wildlife first responder Kelly Keenan, went to the whale that day to capture pictures and collect as much information as possible, in case the tide brought the whale back out to sea before the researchers could arrive.

The whale had not been dead long, Carey said. It provoked reverent, plaintive feelings as their small team hurried to document the creature, water lapping at their knees.

“That is a pretty profound moment to have an entire whale body (in front of you,) she said. “To be able to touch it. They’re filter feeders, and the baleen in their mouth is just exquisite — it’s artwork really.”

As they left, Mt. Rainier / Tahoma soared through the sky behind them, the sun setting over the mountain and the whale, Smith said.

“It was shocking and sad, but also such a beautiful animal to see in real life,” Smith said. “It was a very peaceful and quiet place to be for its final resting place.”

Lessons in life and death

Jessie Huggins, a research biologist with Cascadia Research, specializes in marine animal necropsies, so the study of the gray whale was right in her area of expertise.

World Vets founder and main veterinarian Cathy King was in the Galapagos Islands, and Cascadia Research stepped in to lead the necropsy of the whale on April 17.

The necropsy — another word for autopsy — involves measuring the thickness, pliability and oiliness of the whale’s blubber, taking samples of internal organs and food contents from the stomach and intestines, and searching for signs of trauma, disease or entanglements, Huggins said. Researchers take many measurements and photos in the process.

The gray whale showed clear signs that malnutrition was a primary cause of death, Huggins said. It was physically emaciated, its oil stores depleted and muscles atrophied, and it had “not really anything of substance in the GI tract,” she said.

It showed no signs of being struck by a ship, or any recent or previous entanglements, Huggins said. Diseases are harder to detect — a whale’s blubber is “an excellent insulator” that speeds up decomposition, she said. Nonetheless, a pathologist’s report may provide answers on that front in several weeks.

”For now, it looks like a very malnourished whale,” she said.

There’s no denying it — autopsying such a massive and beautiful creature is sad, “every time,” Huggins said. But those studies help researchers better understand the animals and, in the long run, help their species survive.

“It’s absolutely fascinating,” said Carey, who witnessed the necropsy — by an all-woman team — from a distance. “Watching these teams work is pheromonal. It’s not easy … The physical amount of work on it is pretty astounding.”

Thankfully, Vashon’s gray whale is relatively out of the way of residents — so the smell of decomposition didn’t force it to be taken away, as is often the case when those animals beach.

The whale is now decomposing on property belonging to King County, which has authorized him to stay there.

The Vashon Nature Center has installed motion-sensing wildlife cameras to document the whale’s decomposition, offering a fascinating and rare glimpse into the scavenging of the creature by land and sea-dwellers.

The Nature Center will periodically check the images and videos on those cards and share them with the public, said Bianca Perla, founder and science director of the Vashon Nature Center.

“We’re interested in the ecological implications of having all that biomass from the ocean coming to our shores,” Perla said.

The deaths and natural decay process of gigantic organisms like whales are a biological wonder unto themselves.

A “whale fall,” which occurs when a whale’s carcass settles in the deepest parts of the ocean floor, can create complex, vibrant, decades-lasting ecosystems, in which octopuses, shrimp, crabs, clams, snails, sharks and other animals either scavenge the decomposing whale or hunt the animals which are scavenging.

While the whale on Vashon is decomposing on land, its remains will feed an ecological community here, too, Perla said, akin to how trees take on a new role in the forest when they die and fall over.

Animals like the whale can turn to bones and a little bit of tissue in as little as four months, Huggins said — the process is faster if the tide comes in to wash aquatic diners like fish over the whale.

The decomposing body will feed a new ecosystem of its own, furthering the cycle of nature — a fate that would have been avoided had the whale been buried, burned, or even blown up, as was the infamous fate of a decaying sperm whale in Florence, Oregon in 1970.

”I wish he hadn’t died and washed up on our shores, but I do think it’s also a really fascinating lesson in the cycle of life, and I hope to share that with people,” Perla said. “And I hope that people respect his place on the beach and let him decompose naturally.”

It is illegal to collect any parts or pieces (teeth, bones, etc.) from the whale carcass except under permit from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The WDFW says that humans should not approach or allow pets or children to interact with the whale carcass.

Facing mortality

Migrating gray whales in the east Pacific travel in the fall through spring to Mexico, where they birth and rear their calves. They return in the summer to feeding grounds in the sub-arctic and arctic Bering and Chukchi seas. The journey is 10,000 or more miles round-trip.

Gray whales, unlike orcas, frequently travel alone or in small, unstable groups.

A small group of whales called the Sounders have discovered a rich feeding area along the way in Puget Sound, centered around Whidbey and Camano islands, Huggins said. They visit every year in the later winter and early spring, and then continue migrating.

But every year, a handful more straggling whales make their way further into the Sound, often in poor condition like the gray whale on Vashon — wandering around unproductive feeding areas, Huggins said.

“[The] common outcome when grays are down this far in the Sound is that they do not survive,” Carey said.

The gray whale’s conservation status is listed as “least concern.” Their situation is not dire like the plight of the southern resident orcas — who stand on the razor’s edge of full extinction.

But the gray whale species is only just coming out of an “unusual mortality event” from 2019 to 2023, in which NOAA recorded 690 gray whale strandings across the west coast of North America.

The preliminary cause of the mass deaths was ecosystem changes in the whale’s northern feeding areas, according to NOAA, causing malnutrition, decreased birth rates and increased mortality. Stranding rates have now returned to normal levels, but the gray whale population will still need time to recover.

If you discover a stranded whale on Vashon-Maury Island, contact World Vets at 253-777-1775.