There was a time when biologist Christine Gabriele wondered if she’d ever see one of her favorite creatures again.
A female humpback whale Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve biologists know as #219 surfaces in the waters near the park.
“I was ecstatic,” Gabriele said recently from her office in Gustavus, Alaska, just before she stepped into her boat for another whale survey in late August 2023. “She is special to me. She’s one of the first I learned to recognize when I started to work as a whale biologist in the early 1990s.” Even though 219 made it through the warm period — when waters of the northeastern Pacific Ocean were 4 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above normal from California to the Gulf of Alaska — she looked stressed.
Gabriele and her colleagues estimated that Glacier Bay humpbacks declined by more than half during the recent marine heat wave. More recently, in 2019 to 2023 the whale population in the area has stabilized at about 70% of its previous abundance.
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