Update: Russian gray whale on the move

Meghan scans for gray whales off Narrow Cape during Kodiak's 2009 Whale Fest

It looks like Flex, the wayward Russian western gray whale, successfully crossed both the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska and was recently swimming off the coast of Vancouver Island. A local BC paper reports that although Flex is following a well established eastern gray whale migration route, he is keeping his distance from his eastern Pacific cousins.

Flex is now more or less following the migration route of Eastern Pacific gray whales, but he's aloof, staying farther offshore than they do. The reason for uncertainty about Flex's uniqueness is that researchers have never tracked a Western Pacific gray so extensively.

Flex's speed and determination indicates that he may join other grays at their Mexican breeding grounds. He'd better hurry though, by March most of the single whales will have begun their northward migration to Kodiak and beyond.