There’s been no shortage of weird whale news in Northern California over the last several months. This past week or so the news has had a mostly lighthearted bent to it: Residents caught unusual sights of both humpback and killer whales frolicking in the San Francisco and Monterrey Bays, and managed to snap some pretty great photos in the process. 

More ominously though gray whales have been washing up dead along the West Coast in alarming numbers, and with all this unusual whale behavior, many are now wondering what exactly is going on down there underneath the waves.

On this edition of KCBS In Depth we speak with two researchers deeply involved in the effort to find some answers to that question. 

Host: KCBS Radio reporter Keith Menconi 

Guests: 

• Bill Keener, research associate at  the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito
• David Weller, research wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla