New children’s book tells the true story of a few gray whales who make a detour into the Salish Sea for a risky but rewarding meal.
When I learned about the Sounders, a small group of gray whales who make an unusual detour into the Salish Sea off their long migration from Baja California to the Arctic, I knew I had to find a way to share this story with kids.
A line in my new picture book, “Twelve Daring Grays: A Whale Migration Adventure,” reads:
The detour is 170 miles,
Past forests of fir and kelp,
Past rocks as barnacled as their skin.
The Sounders gray whales are distinguishable by their markings, which include scars from barnacles and lice. Scientists have given them names like Shackleton, Earhart, Patch and Little Patch. And these individual whales stand out for another reason: they don’t follow the same path taken by nearly 13,000 other whales. In the book, I tell the tale of how their adventurous spirit and cleverness pay off in times of hunger.
These whales have learned how to navigate the tides to eat ghost shrimp off the mudflats around Whidbey Island and Everett. In just about nine feet of water, which is less than the span of their flukes, they scoop up mouthfuls of mud and sift out the shrimp with their baleen. Each whale can weigh more than 80,000 pounds — imagine it balancing a scale with six school buses — and eat 375 pounds of shrimp in a day. But they must retreat before the tide goes out or they will be stranded.
Their feasting leaves 6-foot-wide bite marks that are visible at low tide. One of my favorite illustrations in the book shows an adult and child discovering a mudflat peppered with these pits. Illustrator Elly MacKay sketched whales, waves and other elements; cut them out, installed them in layers in a little theater in her studio; and played with lighting to create luminous scenes that bring the Sounders, their feeding strategy and the Salish Sea ecosystem to life for kids.
The months when the Sounders are most seen in Puget Sound are March through May, and several of them have already arrived this year. There’s a small core group that has been coming for over 30 years, but more whales have gradually started to tag along as reduced sea ice makes their food scarcer in the Arctic and they need to build strength. About two dozen individuals have been seen here in Puget Sound at least once. So, at the end of the book, when the whales are back in Baja welcoming their new calves, I ask:
Will these little ones
someday
be among the few
who learn the detour
and dare to take it?
Having grown up on Bainbridge Island and now working at the Seattle Aquarium, I find Salish Sea animals fascinating and love to give them the spotlight in my books. And when individuals like the Sounders stand out from their larger population, I’m especially drawn to their story and eager to share it.
I hope the book will inspire people to learn more about these whales. For fun, take a quiz I created with my Seattle Aquarium colleagues to find out if you might join the Sounders on their special Salish Sea stopover.
— By Nora Nickum
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Eminent climate scientist named director of Whale Museum,” March 31, 2025
• “Commentary: What you can do to help Southern Resident killer whales,” May 23, 2024
• “Science denialism and the bright extinction of killer whales,” May 23, 2024
• “Whales, watching,” May 6, 2024