NOAA

The juvenile whale was seen swimming in a clockwise circle, making unusual noises and trailing two buoys. A team of wildlife experts had to move fast, but with plenty of patience, to save its life.

People around the Salish Sea are seeing weird things in the water: big, exotic fish like Bluefin Tuna on Orcas Island and in Tacoma, six-foot-long Sunfish. These are species that normally live in warmer waters south of here.

A final decision on the Makah whale hunt was expected from the head of NOAA Fisheries by the end of June. An administrative law judge recommended approval two years ago, but the agency has still not released its final environmental impact statement.

A U.S. appeals court has halted a lower court ruling that would have shut down southeast Alaska’s Chinook salmon troll fishery for the summer to protect endangered orca whales that eat the fish.

A ruling from a U.S. judge in Seattle could effectively shut down commercial king salmon trolling in Southeast Alaska after a conservation group challenged the harvest as a threat to protected fish and the endangered killer whales that eat them.

An intense solar storm has the northern lights gracing the skies farther south than usual. Forecasters say a blast of superhot material from the sun late last week hurled scorching gases known as plasma toward Earth at nearly 2 million mph.

Three dead whales have washed up on the Oregon coast over the past week. KGW, citing Seaside Aquarium, reports that a baby gray whale washed ashore Wednesday at Fort Stevens State Park, only 100 yards from where a dead sperm whale beached over the weekend. A gray whale also washed up last week on the central coast near Reedsport.

Federal biologists have found that a sperm whale beached on Oregon's coast was killed after being struck by a ship. A spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries agency said Monday that biologists came to that conclusion while examining a large gash in the whale's side.

50 years ago, President Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act into law. The act has been hugely successful in restoring the abundance of the marine species it protects. But Washington tribes say their treaty rights to fishing are now under threat because too many seals and sea lions are feasting on endangered salmon.

U.S. researchers say the number of gray whales off western North America has continued to fall over the last two years, a decline that resembles previous population swings over the past several decades.