To the editor:

Thank you for the descriptive and informative article about this year’s early appearance of gray whales in Saratoga Passage. One item has a couple of things combined into one: “… the early arrivals may indicate that their food supply off Baja, Calif. may be dwindling due to warming water temperatures.”

There is little or no food for gray whales in Baja, Calif., they go there to have their calves in a protected place, not to eat.

The concern is with the food available to the grays in the Bering Sea, where many grays spend their summers. Bottom trawling, over-fishing the habitat and global warming may have combined to reduce productivity of shrimp and other invertebrates that the gray whales depend on. Or maybe the food in Saratoga Passage is especially abundant this year. It’s hard to say why whales do things.

Howard Garrett

Orca Network