Two juvenile humpback whales died in Monterey Bay this week. One washed ashore in Pacific Grove. Another was found at Sunset State Beach near Watsonville. They are not isolated incidents.

Before these two whales were discovered, 60 others had already stranded along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington in 2026 alone. Fifty-two were gray whales. The total is now 62. Scientists are still investigating the cause but early findings point to two recurring patterns: poor nutritional condition across many of the animals and vessel strikes.

Response teams from UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State's Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, NOAA Fisheries, and other partners are working to understand what killed these whales. Necropsies have been completed. Samples have been collected. Results will take weeks.

But while scientists wait for lab results, whales keep dying. Sixty-two strandings in a single year on the West Coast is not a normal baseline. It is a crisis. And it demands a federal response that matches the scale of what is happening in our oceans.

Vessel speed restrictions in whale migration corridors save lives and can be implemented now. Emergency research funding to understand the nutritional collapse driving so many of these deaths is urgently needed. NOAA must treat this as the emergency it is.

Sign this petition to demand NOAA and federal agencies declare the West Coast whale stranding crisis an emergency and take immediate action to protect humpback and gray whales before more are lost.