Flex's Travel

　　- From Oregon State University web site -
　　　　　　-　Marine Mammal Institute -

Western Pacific Gray Whale, Sakhalin Island 2010
These maps depict the movement of a satellite-monitored 13-year old male western gray whale, which was tagged on 4 October off Sakhalin Island, Russia, migrating from the Sea of Okhotsk.

Abstract for week of 17-24 January.

Due to extreme weather, 10' waves (3 m) and 50 mph winds (80 km/h), the tag's signal rarely reached the satellite and was unable to provide positions in the SE Bering Sea.
Fortunately, on 18 January, "Flex" reappeared in the North Pacific.
Having crossed to the south-side of the Alaska Peninsula (perhaps via Unimak or False Pass), his tag began transmitting from south of the Shumagin Islands, after traveling five days and 530 miles (850 km) since the last Bering Sea location.
"Flex" is currently halfway (1281 km) across the Gulf of Alaska, possibly taking a shortcut to the West coast of North America.
Such deep water routes have never before been documented for gray whales. In the 112 days since application, the transmitter has sent 1,465 messages and the whale has traveled 6,642 km.
The OSU MMI speed filter results in fewer locations being shown on the map than are received from the satellites.
Thus, only the 234 locations that have passed the filter are shown, from the 373 locations calculated to date.

The feeding grounds in the Russian Far East include Sakhalin Island as well as Vesnik and Olga Bays on the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, but details of their migration route(s) and breeding ground(s) are not known.
The tagged whale, known as ‘Flex’, was tagged on 4 October off Sakhalin Island. He has been seen regularly in the Sakhalin area during summers since he was photographed as a calf in 1997. The team of scientists who applied the tag have been following his movements via satellite ever since.
A summary of those movements would include a bit more than two months of feeding activities in an area close to shore off Sakhalin near where he was tagged before moving across the Sea of Okhotsk to the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Within just a few weeks he rounded the southern tip of the peninsula and departed the east coast of Kamchatka to cross the Bering Sea.
In a week of directed travel over deep water, he averaged more than 7 Km/h and arrived at the Bering Sea shelf break (also known as the continental slope) in the central Bering Sea without encountering any significant concentration of ice.
This very broad shallow water shelf used to be a principle feeding area for EGWs, when their population was still in recovery.
His path altered course to a more southerly heading over the shelf, where bad weather reduced the number of locations that could be obtained from the tag. A week later, he was on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula near the Shumagin Islands.
We do not know if he went through Unimak Pass or False Pass, two very common routes for EGWs during their migration, or some other route.
His present position is farther offshore and in deeper water than is usually associated with EGWs, which tend to stay close to the coast during their migrations. If he heads south from this region, his most recent locations show him about half way across the Gulf of Alaska over deep water.
The vast majority of EGWs have already migrated south of this region, with their peak numbers in December and it is believed they typically use routes close to shore.

Flex's tag transmits only 4 hours/day to conserve battery power so it can operate for up to a year. During preliminary studies conducted by Oregon State University on the more common EGW in 2009/10, the same tags lasted an average of just over 100 days before they fell off, with the longest track being 385 days.
Flex has now exceeded that average and has traveled over 5,000 Km since he left Sakhalin Island.
No one knows how long the tag on Flex will stay attached, but if he continues to head south and gets closer to shore, relocation efforts will be made by cooperating whale scientists in British Columbia, Canada as well as Washington, Oregon and California in the United States. If he continues at this speed, he should be off Oregon before mid-February, coinciding with the last of the south-bound migrants and the start of north-bound whales.
If Flex were headed to Baja, Mexico, it would take at least 6 weeks from his present position and his arrival in early March would be after many single whales have already left that region and are heading north.

Use of these figures requires the inclusion of the following recognitions:

This research was conducted by A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEE RAS) and Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute; in collaboration with the University of Washington, Sakhalin Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, and Kronotsky State Nature Biosphere Reserve.
The research was contracted through the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with funding from Exxon Neftegas Ltd. and Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

Current (10 days) progress