LAPUSH — The Quileute tribe welcomed the whales with song and dance.
The fifth annual Welcoming the Whales ceremony Friday began under rainy skies at the mouth of the Quillayute River in LaPush and ended at the tribe’s Ak-a-lat community center.
After blessing the grounds and reading a proclamation from the School Board, a song was sung to welcome the whales, Quileute Tribal School Principal Al Zantua told the Peninsula Daily News.
After several songs and dances, the students performed a ceremony of feeding the whales, he said.
Gray whales now are in migration.
They travel between 10,000 and 12,000 miles round trip every year between winter calving lagoons near Mexico and summer feeding grounds in Arctic seas.
They can be spotted off the coast near LaPush in April and May.
“They come here and feed,” Zantua said, “and then head north from here.”
He added that a teacher at the school recently saw a gray whale.
Orcas also are sometimes seen off the coast.
