Science

Gray whales are dying off the Pacific Coast again, and scientists aren't sure why.

Published

3 weeks ago

April 8, 2025

Gray whales are dying off the Pacific Coast again, and scientists aren't sure why.

Gray whales are dying in large numbers, again.

At least 70 whales have perished since the start of the year in the shallow, protected lagoons of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula where the animals have congregated for eons to calf, nurse and breed, said Steven Swartz, a marine scientist who has studied gray whales since 1977. And only five mother-calf pairs were identified in Laguna San Ignacio, where most of the wintering whales tend to congregate, Swartz said.

That’s the lowest number of mother-calf pairs ever observed in the lagoon, according to annual reports from Gray Whale Research in Mexico, an international team of researchers — co-founded by Swartz — that has been observing gray whales in Laguna San Ignacio since the late 1970s.

The whales are now headed north. In just the last two weeks, three gray whales have died in San Francisco Bay, one of which was described by veterinarians and pathologists at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito as skinny and malnutritioned. Evaluations on the two other deaths are still being conducted.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who has led the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society’s gray whale census at Rancho Palos Verdes since 1979, said the number of whales she and her volunteers have observed migrating north this spring and swimming south this past winter is the lowest on record.

“We didn’t see a single southbound calf, which has never happened in 40 years,” she said.

Schulman-Janiger and other researchers aren’t sure why the whales are dying, although she and others believe it could be from lack of food based on the depleted conditions in which some of the whales have been found.

Eastern North Pacific gray whales cruise the Pacific coastline every year as they migrate 6,000 miles north from the Baja peninsula to their summer feeding grounds in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. There, the leviathans gorge themselves on small crustaceans and amphipods that live in the muddy sediment of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas, before they head back south to loll, cavort and mingle in balmy Mexican waters.

The animals migrate through a gantlet of perils as they navigate some of the world’s most heavily shipped regions, maneuver through discarded fishing lines and gear, dodge pods of killer whales waiting to tear apart defenseless calves, and swim through waters polluted with microplastics, toxic chemicals and poisonous algae.

Most of the time, the bulk of them make the journey just fine.

But in 2019, large numbers of the whales began to die.

Starting that spring, biologists at the Laguna San Ignacio research station recorded roughly 80 dead whales in Mexican waters, and just 41 mother-calf pairs in the lagoon. They also noticed — using photographs and drone imagery — that roughly a quarter of the animals were “skinny.”

“You can see it in photographs,” said Schulman-Janiger, who described skinny whales as looking like they had necks because a thick fat pad that typically covers the area behind the skull is gone. “And you can see their scapulae,” she said, referring to the animals’ shoulder blades.

“You shouldn’t see a whale’s shoulder blades,” she said.

Then, as the hungry whales migrated north in 2019, large numbers began stranding on the beaches of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. By the end of that year, researchers had documented 216 dead whales on the beaches and near shore waters of the North American Pacific coastline.

A federal investigation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into what is known as an unexplained mortality event was launched in 2019. The investigation allowed for scientists across multiple disciplines and institutions to gather and share knowledge to determine the cause of the die-off.

The cause of the deaths was never definitively established, and the investigation was closed in 2023 as the number of strandings fell into a range considered normal. Many researchers concluded a change in Arctic and sub-Arctic food availability (via massive changes in climate) was the driving factor. Their assessment was supported by the observations of malnutrition and skinniness in the whales and similar events and observations in other Arctic animals, including birds, seals, crabs and fish.

They also noticed that many of the whales had started feeding in areas — such as San Francisco Bay and the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors — where such behaviors had never before been seen.

In the last two weeks, several gray whales have been observed in San Francisco Bay, including a near record high of nine on a single day. Reports of feeding behaviors had also been made, including off the city of Pacifica.

Asked whether the researchers at NOAA are noting these concerning observations and anticipating the possibility of another die-off, Michael Milstein, an agency spokesman, said the number of strandings along the Pacific coast is still low — just seven in California and one in Washington. The annual average is about 35.

He said it was too early in the whales’ northward journey to know for sure.

John Calambokidis, senior research biologist and co-founder of the Cascadia Research Collective, a marine mammal research center based in Olympia, Wash., agreed with Milstein: “We are just entering our main period of strandings (April to June) so a little early to draw any conclusions.”

And despite Schulman-Janiger’s concerns, she too said it is early — and that La Niña ocean conditions may be partly to blame for the low number of animals observed thus far.

She said reports from Mexico indicate many gray whales migrated farther south than they typically do, and have been seen swimming around the Gulf of California — off the coasts of Loreto, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta.

Gray whales swim from Alaska to Baja California, where they mate and give birth.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

She said that is good news if the low counts are due to the whales just being late. But worrisome if already food-stressed whales are having to tack on an additional 800 miles to their journey.

“It’s a very weird year for gray whales, and a concerning year given their body condition, the strandings and the very low calf estimates,” she said.

Science

Molecular, Glow-in-the-Dark Cloud Discovered Close to Earth

Published

7 hours ago

April 29, 2025

Press Room

Molecular, Glow-in-the-Dark Cloud Discovered Close to Earth

Stars and planets are born inside swirling clouds of cosmic gas and dust that are brimming with hydrogen and other molecular ingredients. On Monday, astronomers revealed the discovery of the closest known cloud to Earth, a colossal, crescent-shaped blob of star-forming potential.

Named Eos, after the Greek goddess of the dawn, the cloud was found lurking some 300 light-years from our solar system and is as wide as 40 of Earth’s moon lined up across the sky. According to Blakesley Burkhart, an astrophysicist at Rutgers University, it is the first molecular cloud to be detected using the fluorescent nature of hydrogen.

“If you were to see this cloud on the sky, it’s enormous,” said Dr. Burkhart, who announced the discovery with colleagues in the journal Nature Astronomy. And “it is literally glowing in the dark,” she added.

Identifying and studying clouds like Eos, particularly based on their hydrogen content, could reshape astronomers’ understanding of how much material in our galaxy is available to produce planets and stars. It will also help them measure the creation and destruction rates of the fuel that can drive such formations.

“We are, for the first time, seeing this previously hidden reservoir of hydrogen that can form stars,” said Thavisha Dharmawardena, an astronomer at New York University who is an author of the study. After Eos, she said, astronomers are “hoping to find many more” such hydrogen-heavy clouds.

Molecular hydrogen, which consists of two hydrogen atoms bound together, is the most abundant material in the universe. Stellar nurseries are chock-full of it. But it is difficult to detect the molecule from the ground because it glows in far-ultraviolet wavelengths that are readily absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere.

Easier to spot is carbon monoxide, a molecule made up of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. Carbon monoxide radiates light in longer wavelengths that can be detected by radio observatories on Earth’s surface, a more conventional technique for identifying star-forming clouds.

Eos, as immense as it is, evaded detection for so long because it contains so little carbon monoxide.

Dr. Burkhart noticed the cloud while studying data that was about 20 years old from the Far-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, or FIMS, an instrument aboard a Korean space satellite. She spotted a structure in the molecular hydrogen data in a region of space where she believed no molecular clouds were present, and then teamed up with Dr. Dharmawardena to investigate further.

“At this point, I had known pretty much all the molecular clouds by name,” Dr. Dharmawardena said. “This structure, I didn’t know at all. I couldn’t place it.”

Dr. Dharmawardena cross-checked the find with three-dimensional maps of the interstellar dust between stars in our galaxy. Those maps were built with data from the recently retired Gaia space telescope. Eos “was very clearly outlined and visible,” she said. “It’s this gorgeous structure.”

John Black, an astronomer at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden who was not involved in the work, commended the technique used to reveal Eos.

“It’s really wonderful to be able to see the molecular hydrogen directly, to trace out the outlines of this cloud,” Dr. Black said. Compared with carbon monoxide, the hydrogen shows “a truer picture of the shape and size” of Eos, he added.

Using the molecular hydrogen content, the astronomers estimated the mass of Eos to be about 3,400 times that of our sun. That is much higher than the estimate computed from the amount of carbon monoxide present in the cloud — as little as 20 times the mass of our sun.

Similar measurements of carbon monoxide could very well be underestimating the mass of other molecular clouds, Dr. Burkhart said. That has important implications for star formation, she added, because bigger clouds form more massive stars.

A follow-up study of Eos, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that the cloud had not formed stars in the past. But the question remains whether it will begin to churn out stars in the future.

Dr. Burkhart is working with a team of astronomers to conceptualize a NASA spacecraft called Eos, which also inspired the name of the newly discovered cloud. The proposed space telescope would be able to map the molecular hydrogen content of clouds across the galaxy, including its namesake.

Perhaps such a mission would find more hidden clouds or revise knowledge about the ability of known stellar mists to coalesce their material into stars and planets.

“We don’t really know how stars and planets form,” Dr. Burkhart said. “If we’re able to look at molecular hydrogen directly, we’re able to tell how the birthplaces of stars are forming — and also how they’re being destroyed.”

Science

Contributor: To dumbly go where no space budget has gone before

Published

9 hours ago

April 29, 2025

Press Room

Contributor: To dumbly go where no space budget has gone before

Reports that the White House may propose nearly a 50% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate are both mind-boggling and, if true, nothing short of disastrous. To make those cuts happen — a total of $3.6 billion — NASA would have to close the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and cancel the mission that will bring back samples of Mars, a mission to Venus and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is nearly ready to launch.

Every space telescope besides the Hubble and the James Webb would be shut down. According to the American Astronomical Society, some cuts would include projects that help us understand the sun’s effects on global communications, a potential national security threat.

Casey Dreier, the policy advocate for the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, says, “This is an extinction-level event for the Earth- and space-science communities, upending decades of work and tens of billions in taxpayers’ investment.”

In addition, NASA as a whole would see a 20% cut — just as we are moving forward with the Artemis program. Artemis is NASA’s step-by-step “Moon to Mars” human spaceflight campaign. Artemis II is set to launch sometime next year and will send four astronauts on a lunar fly-by, the first time humans have been in close proximity to another celestial body in more than 50 years. While it seems likely that Artemis will continue in some fashion, a 20% overall agency budget cut won’t leave any part of NASA unaffected.

The president promised a “golden age of America”; his nominee to head NASA promised a “golden age of science and discovery.” This would be a return to the dark ages.

Taking a blowtorch to space science would also have little effect on the federal budget while setting back American leadership in space — and the inspiration it provides across political divides — by generations.

The Astronomical Society warns that our cutbacks will outsource talent “to other countries that are increasing their investments in facilities and workforce development.” And, as Dreier points out, spacecraft would be “left to tumble aimlessly in space” and billions wasted that have already been spent. “Thousands of bright students across the country,” he wrote recently, “would be denied careers in science and engineering absent the fellowships and research funds to support them.”

Here’s the dollars-and-cents context. NASA’s budget since the 1970s “hovers” between 1% and 0.4% of the federal discretionary spending, according to the Planetary Society’s analysis, yet for every dollar spent, NASA generates $3 in the national economy. NASA’s giveback was worth nearly $76 billion in economic impact in 2023, supporting more than 300,000 jobs. In California alone, NASA and its associated partners in industry and academia provide more than 66,000 jobs, more than $18 billion in economic activity and $1 billion in state tax revenue. NASA’s bang-for-the-buck is astronomical, pun intended.

Cutting waste is one thing. Evisceration is another. When it comes to science — from public health to climate change — the current administration is doing the latter, not the former.

Meanwhile, China continues its space ambitions, with plans for a human lunar campaign and its own “sample return” mission to the Red Planet. For now, fortunately, the bipartisan support for NASA seems to be holding. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, led by the Planetary Science Caucus, have spoken out against this attack on NASA. And the Planetary Society has engaged thousands of passionate activists to fight this battle.

Humans yearn for connection to the universe — so we watch launches on social media, we follow the tracks of rovers on Mars and we marvel at creation in pictures transmitted from the James Webb Space Telescope. We borrow telescopes from the public library and look to the heavens.

Bending metal — the actual process of making rovers and spaceships and telescopes — drives economic activity. Fascinating results — the data from space science missions — fires the imagination.

We choose to go to space — sending humans and probes — and we pursue knowledge because curiosity is our evolutionary heritage. We explore other worlds to know them and, in doing so, we discover more about ourselves.

If you agree, let Congress know. That may be the only backstop against dumbly going where no budget has gone before.

Christopher Cokinos is a nature-and science writer whose most recent book is “Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow.”

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Ideas expressed in the piece

The author argues that the proposed 50% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate would terminate critical projects like the Mars sample return mission, the Venus-bound Da Vinci mission, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, while shuttering most space telescopes besides Hubble and James Webb. These cuts risk undermining U.S. leadership in space science and could outsource talent to countries increasing their investments in space exploration^[4].
Economic impacts are emphasized, with NASA’s budget generating $3 in economic activity for every $1 spent, supporting over 300,000 jobs nationwide and contributing $18 billion annually to California’s economy alone^[4]. The author warns that slashing science funding wastes tens of billions in prior taxpayer investments and leaves spacecraft “tumbling aimlessly,” squandering operational missions^[3].
Bipartisan congressional resistance is noted, with lawmakers and advocacy groups like the Planetary Society mobilizing against the cuts, highlighting the cultural and inspirational value of space exploration as a unifying force across political divides^[1]^[2].

Different views on the topic

The Trump administration’s draft budget frames the cuts as a reallocation of resources toward priorities like the Artemis program, aiming to streamline NASA’s focus on human spaceflight while reducing overall agency spending by 20%^[1]^[4]. Proponents argue this reflects a shift toward “efficient budgeting” and prioritizing crewed missions over robotic science^[1]^[2].
Supporters of the cuts suggest that terminating ongoing science projects could free funds for future initiatives, with unnamed officials citing the need to “right-size” NASA’s portfolio and avoid perceived redundancies in Earth and space science research^[2]^[4].
Some advocates claim the reductions align with broader fiscal austerity goals, emphasizing that NASA’s science budget has grown significantly in recent decades and requires “tough choices” to balance national priorities^[1]^[4].

Science

F.D.A. Scientists Are Reinstated at Agency Food Safety Labs

Published

1 day ago

April 28, 2025

Press Room

F.D.A. Scientists Are Reinstated at Agency Food Safety Labs

Federal health officials have reversed the decision to fire a few dozen scientists at the Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety labs, and say they are conducting a review to determine if other critical posts were cut.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the rehirings and said that several employees would also be restored to the offices that deal with Freedom of Information requests, an area that was nearly wiped out.

In the last few months, roughly 3,500 F.D.A. jobs, about 20 percent, were eliminated, representing one of the largest work force reductions among all government agencies targeted by the Trump administration.

The H.H.S. spokesman said those employees called back had been inadvertently fired because of inaccurate job classification codes.

The decision to rehire specialists on outbreaks of food-related illnesses and those who study the safety of products like infant formula follows contradictory assertions made by Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner, in media interviews this week.

“I can tell you there were no cuts to scientists or inspectors,” Dr. Makary said Wednesday on CNN.

In fact, scientists had been fired from several food and drug safety labs across the country, including in Puerto Rico, and from the veterinary division where bird flu safety work was underway. Scientists in the tobacco division who were dismissed in February — including some who studied the health effects of e-cigarettes — remain on paid leave and have not been tapped to return, according to employees who were put on leave.

How many fired employees will be permitted to return remained unclear.

About 40 employees at the Moffett Lab in Chicago and at a San Francisco-area lab are being offered their jobs back, the department spokesman said. Scientists in those labs studied a variety of aspects of food safety, from how chemicals and germs pass through food packaging to methods for keeping bacteria out of infant formula. Some scientists in Chicago reviewed the work and results of other labs to ensure that milk and seafood were safe.

Dr. Robert Califf, the F.D.A. commissioner under President Joseph R. Biden, said the terms “decapitated and eviscerated” seemed fitting to describe the steep loss of expertise at the agency. He said the F.D.A. was already falling behind on meetings meant to help companies develop safe products — and to design studies that give clear answers about their effectiveness.

“Most of it is really at this level of fundamental, day-to-day work that has a huge impact overall, but it’s not very controversial,” he said. “It’s just that it takes work, and they have to have people to do the work.”

Dr. Makary has also said the layoffs did not target product reviewers or inspectors. But their work has been hampered by voluntary departures, the elimination of support staff and the broader disruption at an agency where many are fleeing for the exits, according to former staff members.

Hundreds of drug and medical device reviewers, who make up about one-fourth of the agency work force, have recused themselves from key projects, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former agency commissioner, said on CNBC. Under F.D.A. ethics rules, staff members who are interviewing for jobs cannot do agency review work on products by companies where they are seeking employment — or for a competitor.

Dr. Gottlieb also said cuts to the office of generic drug policy wiped out employees with expertise in determining which brand-name drugs are eligible to be made as lower-cost generics, calling those job eliminations “profound.” Approving generic drugs can save consumers billions of dollars.

Support staff for inspectors investigating food and drug plants overseas were also cut, raising security concerns. Dozens of workers who lost their jobs attended to security monitoring to ensure that inspectors were safe, especially in hostile nations.