By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: Whale CRC-2293 was once part of a celebrated revival, a member of a burgeoning population of gray whales ( Eschrichtius robustus ) in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The population, once depleted by commercial hunting to just a few thousand animals, had flourished following the 1980 moratorium on most whale hunts, to the point that it was deemed to no longer need protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. ...Since 2019, gray whales have been washing ashore in unusually high numbers as they migrate from Mexico, where they overwinter and give birth, some 8000 kilometers to their Arctic feeding grounds. The death toll slowed for several years. But in the past 2 years it has surged again toward record levels up and down the North American coast while overall populations have fallen to less than half their peak. Scientists are now predicting a sustained decline. The likely cause: ...“a fundamental regime shift in their feeding grounds in the Arc...