Spotting a gray whale in San Francisco Bay can be thrilling, but researchers now know it can be bad news for the marine mammals.

Nearly 1 in 5 gray whales that enter the bay die there, researchers report April 13 in Frontiers in Marine Science. For a population that has lost hundreds of individuals in recent years, the toll is another reminder of trouble along the whales’ 16,000-kilometer migration route.

Most gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) migrate from the freezing Arctic waters, where they eat, all the way to Mexico, where they stop for some time to mate and give birth, before returning to the Arctic to eat again. The trip is usually nonstop. But in 2018, researchers noticed that some possibly hungry whales began making pit stops in San Francisco Bay to find food. The behavior coincided with the onset of a large die-off among whales, which experts attributed to decreased food availability in the Arctic. A similar trend happened in the late 1990s.

Josephine Slaathaug, a whale biologist at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif., and her colleagues used 100,000 photos of gray whales taken from 2018 to 2025 to identify 114 individuals that visited the bay during that period. In the same region, 70 gray whale carcasses were documented. The team matched 21 photo-identified whales, roughly 18 percent, to the carcasses and concluded they died after entering the bay.

And that’s probably an underestimate, the scientists say.

Many of the carcasses were too decomposed to be identified from photos. But most of the remaining 49 carcasses were found in or near the bay, suggesting they too died after entering, possibly because of being hit by boats. Examination of the carcasses showed that nine of 21 identified individuals and 30 of the 70 for which a cause of death could be determined were caused by vessel strikes.

“If you’re desperate, and you go into San Francisco Bay, it looks like you’ve got a really, really high chance of not making it back out,” says Joshua Stewart, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, who wasn’t involved in the study.

While the San Francisco Bay pit stops may be deadly, they may also signal a broader trend. Gray whales have been spotted possibly feeding in other unusual areas, such as off Florida, New England and Hawaii.

The whales’ exploration of new places in search of food could make the populations more resilient to warming seas, but only if we do our best to protect them in the bay and other areas where they go to find food, Slaathaug says. Even so, climate change is altering how whales have historically migrated, and feeding in different areas might not be so beneficial, Stewart say. “I kind of take the view that it’s more of a desperation option, and it’s really only necessary because they’re not getting what they need in the Arctic.”

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Efforts to get rid of the Presidio Board of Trustees, the federal trust that oversees San Francisco’s Presidio Park, date back to over a year ago when the president said the trust is unnecessary and should be eliminated in an executive order. That trust has officially been terminated.

“The Administration has informed our board members that their appointments to the Presidio Trust board have been terminated,” the Presidio Board of Trustees said in a statement. “We had been anticipating that we would ultimately receive new board members and are awaiting information on the new appointments.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the six board members received termination notices on Wednesday and have not been informed whether there will be new appointees. All six were appointed by former President Joe Biden.

“We have a long history of wonderful leaders serving the Presidio, and we look forward to welcoming and working with the new members,” the board continued in its statement. 

The Presidio Trust was formed in 1996 to oversee park upkeep and ensure visitors could continue to enjoy the park. The trust oversaw the park’s 1,500 acres of land. The Presidio received $200 million in funding in 2023 from the U.S. Department of the Interior to maintain aged utilities and infrastructure, according to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

The Presidio once served as a Spanish fort but was made a national park in 1994.

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Despite a downpour and lower attendance due to recent sexual assault allegations against the late labor leader Cesar Chavez, Aztec dancers from the ceremonial group Danza Xitlalli performed at San Francisco’s Farmworkers Day Festivities on Saturday. The annual celebration, previously known as the Cesar Chavez & Dolores Huerta Day Festival, was renamed and rebranded after the revelations about Chavez’s past misconduct.

Why it matters

The Farmworkers Day Festivities are an important annual event honoring the contributions of farmworkers and the labor movement in the Bay Area. The decision to remove Cesar Chavez’s name from the celebration reflects a broader reckoning with the late activist’s troubled legacy, as well as an effort to uplift the work of Dolores Huerta and other overlooked figures in the farmworker rights movement.

The details

Despite the rain and lower-than-usual attendance, the Aztec dancers of Danza Xitlalli were the stars of Saturday’s Farmworkers Day Festivities in San Francisco’s Mission District. Wearing vibrant costumes with 2-foot-tall feathered headdresses, the dancers twirled and shimmied through the streets to the beat of drums, undeterred by the cold downpour. The annual celebration, previously known as the Cesar Chavez & Dolores Huerta Day Festival, was rebranded this year after a New York Times investigation revealed allegations that Chavez had sexually assaulted young women, including his longtime colleague Dolores Huerta.

• The Farmworkers Day Festivities took place on Saturday, April 12, 2026.
• Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed April 10, 2026 as Dolores Huerta Day and renamed March 31 as Farmworkers Day, removing Cesar Chavez’s name.

What they’re saying

What’s next

The Farmworkers Day Festivities are expected to continue annually, with a focus on honoring the work of Dolores Huerta and other overlooked figures in the farmworker rights movement.