Olympic National Park said a decomposing gray whale washed ashore Friday morning north of Kalaloch Campground. That makes the 24th dead whale stranding in Oregon and Washington this year during the northbound migration.

A common thread runs through the necropsies on the spate of dead gray whales washing up on West Coast beaches this spring, according to Cascadia Research Collective senior research biologist John Calambokidis. He said the perished whales appeared skinny, malnourished or even emaciated. The big unknown is why these whales didn't fatten up enough on their feeding grounds last year to get through the migration.

Calambokidis said he is reasonably confident the starving whales can be attributed to an increasing gray whale population intersecting with a downturn in their prey.

"Does that have any relationship to oceanographic conditions, especially some of the dramatic climate change issues that are occuring in the Arctic?" the whale expert wondered during an interview in Olympia.

A NOAA spokesman said federal scientists in Alaska are going back over their research data from last year to see if they can spot anything relevant.