Whale watchers pack coastal bluffs to see animals migrate

They pass by quickly, and in great numbers, sometimes as many as 30 an hour. And from a high bluff, with a pair of binoculars, they're often visible from land.

The annual migration of the Pacific Northwest's largest mammal, the gray whale, is under way as the aquatic beasts make their way from feeding grounds in the Bering Sea along the coast to Mexico.

Along the Oregon coast, trained volunteers will host thousands of visitors at sites along Highway 101 today through Jan. 1.

But breeching, blowing whales can be seen in Washington, too, from high ground in Ilwaco, Long Beach, Westport or Pacific Beach.

While the main body of whales can be several miles off shore, many come in close to land, visible from elevated perches near the mouth of the Columbia River, such as the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at Cape Disappointment State Park or the nearby 65-foot North Head Lighthouse.

"Gray whales can travel right along the surf," Ken Balcom, executive director at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, said Tuesday.

Some killer whales, too, migrate through winter, but they typically travel much farther out.

The gray-whale migration typically lasts up to four weeks, from mid-December to mid-January, but travel through the Pacific Northwest typically peaks in early January.

This year, as many as 18,000 whales will glide by at roughly 6 mph, rarely stopping to eat on their 5,500-mile journey to breeding lagoons along the Baja California peninsula, where they will mate and begin rearing their young.

The whales feed on small crustaceans and tube worms and can grow up to 30 to 40 tons and 50 feet long.

In past years in Oregon, visitors from 50 states and 47 foreign countries have come to stand on bluffs 50 to 100 feet above the surf, searching for signs of the watery exhale of whale breath, when the cry goes up: "Thar she blows!"

Over the past 30 years, an average annual count of 13,205 humans has come to observe the passage of 1,452 visible whales. The watchers outnumber watched by a factor of nearly 10-to-1.

Scientists speculate about what the whales think of these human patterns — and some think the whales may be laughing. Whales, after all, have the biggest brains on Earth, marked by the convolutions associated with intelligence.

Seattle Times staff reporter Craig Welch contributed to this report.