After spending two weeks swimming in and out of Santa Barbara Harbour, a 20 foot juvenile gray whale has continued on its journey north, back to the cold waters of Alaska, where it will fatten on a buffet of crustaceans and shrimps.

The whale was seen interacting with various vessels boats and although there were some concerns of possible harassment, the animal seems to be fine and was quite a sight for kayakers, boaters and others as it was going in and out of the harbour. Although gray whales feed during the summer months in the arctic seas, and mostly fast during their annual migration from the arctic seas to the warm lagoons in Baja California and back, they sometimes engage in "opportunity" feeding. This whale may have found food as a result of the recent completion of the annual dredging of the harbour.

About a third of the gray whale population along this coastline died off during a four-year period around 2000. Scientists think food-source depletion because of global warming in the Arctic might have had something to do with it and although this particular whale species are quite healthy now, anything can happen to lead to its decline. A gray whale can eat up to a ton of shrimplike amphipods per day and over the next several months this animal will consume about 70 tons of food and gain as much as 30 percent of its body weight.