雅思阅读 081: Starving Whales — The Gray Whale Crisis

Adapted from "Gray whales are washing up dead on the West Coast. The reason is alarming" by Ainslie Cruickshank, Scientific American, 9 September 2026.

🎧 课文朗读音频（约 45 秒）

Reading Passage

The bodies kept appearing as if out of nowhere. In March, a whale corpse was found floating in San Francisco Bay. In April, another was beached in Oregon. That same month, a juvenile was found lifeless among tree branches in a Washington river, miles from the ocean.

As of mid-August, 187 gray whales have been found dead this year along the West Coast, from Mexico to Alaska. Many were emaciated, so thin that one scientist described them as "a bag of bones." The population has fallen by 35 percent since 2020 — from around 27,000 to roughly 13,000.

A Conservation Success Story Reversed

It was not always like this. Decimated by commercial whaling in the 19th century, the eastern North Pacific gray whale population recovered to roughly 20,000 by 1994, when it was removed from the US Endangered Species List. By 2016, numbers reached 27,000. It was widely celebrated as a conservation triumph.

Now the species is in free fall. Scientists have raced to understand why. They take measurements, inspect bodies for signs of starvation or trauma, dissect blubber and sample organs. The analyses consistently point to one cause: malnutrition.

Gray whales make one of the longest mammal migrations on Earth — roughly 16,000 kilometres round trip between breeding lagoons in Mexico and feeding grounds in the Arctic. They are bottom-feeders: they scoop up mouthfuls of sediment and filter out shrimplike creatures called amphipods through comb-like baleen plates.

That food web is built on Arctic sea ice. Algae grow beneath the ice; when they die, they sink and feed the amphipods; the amphipods feed the whales. But as Arctic temperatures rise, the sea ice melts earlier and faster, disrupting the entire chain. A study published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science found that whale health and Arctic crustacean populations rise and fall in near-perfect synchrony.

"The whales are basically running out of energy as they try to migrate and dying," says Steven Swartz of the Gray Whale Research programme in Mexico. He has seen more and more skinny whales returning to breeding lagoons and far fewer calves. In 2025, observers counted just 85 calves — compared with around 1,600 in 2014.

Adaptation or Collapse?

Not all the news is grim. Some whales are changing their behaviour. A group known as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group has abandoned the Arctic entirely, feeding instead between northern California and British Columbia. Others linger in Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay.

But these alternative feeding grounds have their own dangers. Heavy ship traffic in the Bay has killed many whales — at least 18 percent of whales entering San Francisco Bay between 2018 and 2025 died there, most from ship strikes. An early-warning system using AI and thermal cameras may help, but it is still being tested.

The fundamental problem, scientists say, is climate change. "The lever we have to pull is slowing or reversing it," says Joshua Stewart of Oregon State University. "It's something we know we need to do, but we haven't done it."

Questions 1–5

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

1. How many gray whales were found dead along the West Coast by mid-August 2026?

   • A. 35
   • B. 85
   • C. 187
   • D. 27,000

2. Gray whales were removed from the Endangered Species List in

   • A. 1994
   • B. 2016
   • C. 2020
   • D. 2025

3. What do gray whales primarily eat?

   • A. Fish near the ocean surface
   • B. Amphipods on the sea floor
   • C. Krill near Arctic ice
   • D. Jellyfish in coastal waters

4. The relationship between whale health and Arctic crustaceans is described as

   • A. random.
   • B. inversely proportional.
   • C. nearly synchronised.
   • D. unrelated.

5. How many gray whale calves were born in 2025?

   • A. 85
   • B. 400
   • C. 1,600
   • D. 13,000

Questions 6–10

Do the following statements agree with the information?

Write:

• TRUE
• FALSE
• NOT GIVEN

6. The gray whale population recovered after whaling ended.
7. Gray whales feed primarily on fish in open ocean waters.
8. Melting sea ice reduces the algae that feed amphipods.
9. All gray whales now migrate further north than before.
10. Ship strikes in San Francisco Bay have killed many whales.

Questions 11–13

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A–G.

11. Gray whales migrate between Mexico and
12. The Pacific Coast Feeding Group has stopped going to
13. The core threat to gray whales is identified as

A. the Arctic. B. climate change. C. the Galapagos Islands. D. the Antarctic. E. ship noise. F. the Bering Strait. G. overfishing.

Answers

1. C — "187 gray whales have been found dead."
2. A — "removed from the US Endangered Species List" in 1994.
3. B — "scoop up mouthfuls of sediment and filter out shrimplike amphipods."
4. C — "ebb and flow in near perfect synchrony."
5. A — "they estimate 85 calves were born in 2025."
6. TRUE — "bounced back from near extinction."
7. FALSE — They are bottom-feeders eating amphipods.
8. TRUE — The algae beneath the ice feed the amphipods.
9. FALSE — Some are moving away from the Arctic, not further north.
10. TRUE — "at least 18 percent of the whales… died there."
11. A
12. A
13. B

Key Vocabulary