Anthropogenic and killer whale scar data for gray whales in northwest Washington

These data were used to evaluate anthropogenic and natural scar occurrences of Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales off northwest Washington, United States, from 2014–2020 (Fig. 1). The objectives of the study were to document the frequency of entanglement, vessel strike, and killer whale scars on PCFG gray whales, to evaluate differences in scarring by sex, and to compare those observations to previously documented scarring rates for gray whales in the Western North Pacific (WNP), near Sakhalin Island, Russia (Bradford et al., 2009; Weller et al., 2018). There were 139 individual PCFG gray whales photographed during small vessel surveys conducted throughout the study period. Photographs of each whale were analyzed to determine the source and certainty (i.e. “definitive” and “potential”) of observed scars in 23 pre-defined body regions of PCFG gray whales (Fig. 2). A manuscript of our results will be submitted for publication to the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management in February 2024.