A Heartbreaking Afternoon with an Abandoned Gray Whale Calf in San Diego

He's gonna come right up. I would do anything to help you if I could buddy. Just talking to a whale. He's right here. Alrighty there. A newborn gray whale coming over to our boat should be a joyous occasion, but what Erica and I experienced on January 12, 2025 was nothing short of heartbreaking. The day started with bright sunshine at the dock, but a thick fog layer over the coast, so Erica and I decided to take my dog for a little bay cruise while we waited for the fog to clear. Everyone was out soaking up that California sun. Not bad for January. A pod of playful dolphins escorted us around Mission Bay, much to Finn's delight. Now on the whale watching calendar, the first week of January is a very special week. This is when we usually encounter the first newborn gray whales of the season off the coast of San Diego. Every year, gray whales embark on what is often quoted as being the longest migration of any mammal on the planet. These whales spend the summer feeding in the Bering and Chukchi seas north of Alaska, and then in the late fall they begin to head south, migrating down practically the entire length of North America until they reach their breeding grounds in Mexico. With the fog finally clearing, it was time to head out to sea. Dolphins were our first sighting, both rezos and bottlenose. We continued onwards and then, emerging from the clouds, gray whales. With the fog moving back into the area, we decided to head towards Torrey Pines, arguably the most iconic stretch of San Diego coastline. It was here I noticed a sort of floppy disturbance on the surface, exactly the sort of thing you look for when trying to spot a newborn gray whale. My intuition proved correct. It was indeed a gray whale calf. I launched the drone and headed over to what I presumed was a mother calf pair, and that's when my heart sank. There was no mother anywhere in sight. Gray whale mothers never leave their newborns during the migration, so every minute that ticked by without her was all hope for this little whale extinguishing. Without its mom, it won't survive long. I know everyone's first instinct is to demand that we help this whale. Believe me, we did everything we could. I called every organization I could think of, but under U.S. law, a marine mammal cannot be brought into captivity unless it live strands on a beach, even in a rescue attempt. So with that in mind, there's also basically no facilities that could handle an animal the size of a gray whale, besides maybe SeaWorld. The whale came over to us multiple times, probably in a desperate attempt to nurse, and there was nothing we could do besides document the encounter. It's the first time I ever cried on the ocean. If you're wondering how filming something like this could be important, real-time documentation of marine mammals is extremely valuable to scientists and researchers for identifying trends in a given population. Gray whale mothers are some of the most devoted of all the baleen whales. She wouldn't just abandon her calf without a reason. Did she not survive childbirth? Was she struck by a ship? Entangled in fishing gear? We'll never know for sure, but we do know something went terribly wrong. Fast forward to June 18, 2025, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration released its semi-annual population estimates for gray whales. The news was bleak. In 2016, there was over 27,000 gray whales in the world. As of today, there is estimated to be less than 13,000 gray whales, and this past year was the lowest number of new calves documented in the breeding grounds since record keeping began. That means the gray whale population has declined by as much as 50% in the last decade. The primary cause of this die-off? Warming waters in the Arctic due to climate change. With less summer sea ice, the gray whale food source has less time to develop. When there's not enough food, not only do the whales starve, but they also have less successful pregnancies. It's a perfect storm for an abrupt population decline. Thanks to Herculean acts of conservation, gray whales are one of the few lucky species to have ever been taken off the endangered species list. Their population was once decimated to just a few hundred animals due to commercial hunting of whales, but once strong protections were put in place, the population rebounded immensely. The threat gray whales face today is more challenging than it was last century. All we had to do last time was stop hunting them, and the population boomed. Today, ocean temperatures are rising at an unprecedented pace, and nowhere is warming faster than the gray whale summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. With no sea ice, the future of the gray whale is uncertain.