The Olympic coast lies on the migration route of the eastern Pacific gray whale, which travels roughly ten thousand miles round trip between breeding lagoons in Baja California and Arctic feeding grounds. Spring is the best season to spot them from shore, identified by their low rolling backs and heart-shaped blows rather than dramatic breaching.
Watch the water itself out there, especially in spring, because this coast is a migration lane. Gray whales pass close along this shore on one of the longest journeys any animal makes, ten thousand miles up from the warm lagoons of Baja to the cold feeding grounds of the Arctic. You won't see a breach so much as a low gray back rolling under, then a misty heart-shaped puff of breath hanging a moment in the salt air. Tens of thousands of them slip by out there, mostly unseen, just beyond the breakers.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
