Between 2005 and 2025, 216 whale strandings were reported across the San Francisco Bay Area. The records were public, but there was no single way to see the full history, compare patterns across years and species, or understand how strandings relate to environmental conditions and human activity.
I created Bay Whale Strandings to bring those records together and make the larger patterns visible.
I assembled and structured every reported stranding from NOAA's West Coast Region database so they could be explored by species, geography, time, and reported findings.
Around 70 percent of the strandings occurred during years classified as marine heatwave years. Only 41 percent have a confirmed human cause, and spring is the peak season.
The project also reveals how mortality patterns overlap with geography, monitoring, industrial activity, and changing whale behavior, while making the limitations of the record itself visible.
I created baywhales.org as an interactive map, timeline, and collection of nine data stories that move between individual strandings and broader ecological patterns.
The project was featured by Bay Nature and led to an invitation to present the work with Earth Species Project.
Bay Whale Strandings became the first in a growing body of independent projects I am developing around environmental data, research, and public understanding.