There is an island in the sea called Limuw.
Twice every year, in the water near the island, a very large animal goes by.
She is a whale. A gray whale. As long as a big school bus. Heavy as many elephants. She has a narrow head and a small eye that looks at you knowing things you do not know.
She does not live near Limuw. She only passes through.
· · ·
In the summer, the whale lives far away, up in the cold cold water near Alaska. There the sea is full of little shrimp-like things in the mud, and she eats and eats and eats, scooping the mud off the bottom with her long mouth and filtering out the little things to swallow.
She gets bigger and rounder all summer.
Then, in the fall, the water starts to get colder and darker. And the whale begins to swim.
South. Slowly. Past Canada. Past Oregon. Past the big coast of California. Day after day, for weeks and weeks.
And one day in December or January, as she swims, she passes Limuw. The long dark shape of the island is to her left. The big blue of the Pacific is to her right. She does not stop. She keeps going.
Past Limuw, heading south.
She keeps swimming all the way down to warm lagoons in Mexico. There the water is quiet and warm, and she has her baby, or just rests in the warm water if she does not have one that year.
Then, after a month or two, she turns around.
· · ·
She swims back the other way. North. Slowly. With her baby, if she had one, swimming beside her. Past the warm water. Past the big coast of California.
And one day in the spring — in February, or March, or April — as she swims, she passes Limuw again. This time the island is to her right. The big blue is to her left. She does not stop. She keeps going.
Past Limuw, heading north.
All the way back up to Alaska. Back to the cold cold water and the little shrimp-like things. And she eats and eats and gets bigger and rounder again. All summer.
And then, in the fall, she swims south again. Past Limuw again.
Twice every year.
Every year of her life.
· · ·
Here is the thing about the whale. She did not just start doing this. Gray whales have been swimming past Limuw for a very, very long time — longer than any person remembers. Longer than the first tomol that ever crossed the channel. Longer than the first village that was ever built on the shore.
Twice every year, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
The Chumash people of Limuw knew the whales. They watched them from the shore. They watched them from the tomols when the water was calm and a paddler could stop and see a great gray back rise up beside the canoe, and blow a spray of mist as tall as a tree, and sink back down into the deep.
The whales are still coming by. They have not stopped.
Twice every year. Past Limuw.
· · ·
Right now, even this minute, as you listen to this story, there is a gray whale somewhere in the sea. Maybe she is eating in the cold water up north. Maybe she is swimming south. Maybe she is at the quiet warm lagoon. Maybe she is going past Limuw at this very second, and the island is a long dark shape on her left or on her right, and she is just swimming.
She does not know about us. She has her own work to do.
But we know about her. And we can remember her, even when we cannot see her.
Twice every year, a whale goes past Limuw.
For the Teacher
About this story
The Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) makes one of the longest migrations of any mammal on Earth — about 10,000 to 12,000 miles round-trip every year. They feed in the Arctic waters off Alaska in the summer, where they filter tiny crustaceans (amphipods) from the muddy sea floor. In the fall, they begin swimming south. Mothers give birth and mate in the warm lagoons along the coast of Baja California, Mexico. Then, from February through May, they swim all the way back north, mothers and calves traveling together.
They pass through the Santa Barbara Channel — the twenty-mile stretch of water between the mainland and the Channel Islands, including Limuw — twice a year. The southbound migration is most visible in December and January. The northbound migration is most visible from February to May. Everything in this story is true.
Gray whales were hunted to near-extinction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their population has recovered impressively and they were removed from the U.S. Endangered Species List in 1994. However, recent years have shown population declines again, for reasons researchers are still working to understand. The story does not include this weight, because a four-year-old does not need to carry it. An older child who asks can be told that the whales struggle sometimes, and that people work to help them.
The words in this story
Limuw
LEE-moo
the Chumash name for Santa Cruz Island. Means in the sea.
Xaxas
KHAH-khahs
a Chumash village on the north shore of Limuw. (Only mentioned briefly, but worth a note.)
tomol
TOH-mol
a Chumash plank canoe, sewn and caulked with pine tar, used for crossing the channel between the mainland and the islands.
If a child asks
“Why does the whale swim so far?”
Because the food is in one place and the babies are safer in another place. In the summer the cold water near Alaska is full of little shrimp-like creatures in the mud, so the whale eats there. In the winter the water in Mexico is warm and calm, so it’s a safer place for the baby whales to be born. The whale swims between them because each place has something she needs at a different time of year.
“How does she know the way?”
Scientists think whales use the shape of the coastline, the feel of the water’s temperature, maybe even the Earth’s magnetic field. They learn the route from their mothers on their first trip, and then they know it for life. It’s one of the things we are still learning about them.
“Can we see a whale from the beach?”
Sometimes, yes! Especially in the spring, gray whales often swim quite close to the California coast on their way back north. Watch for the spout — a puff of mist that shoots up when the whale breathes. That is usually what you see first. A family trip to a Santa Barbara, Ventura, or Monterey coastline during migration season is a real possibility, and so are boat-based whale-watching tours that leave from Ventura Harbor.
A gentle rhythm
This story has a simple, repeating structure: the whale goes south past Limuw, she turns around, she goes north past Limuw, she turns around, she does it again. That rhythm is the point. Preschoolers love repetition because it makes the world feel reliable. The whale’s migration is one of the oldest reliable things on earth — twice a year, past Limuw, for thousands of years. That is the gift of this story.
A note on care
The last full paragraph — she does not know about us, she has her own work to do, but we know about her, and we can remember her, even when we cannot see her — is doing quiet teaching about what it means to care about a creature you cannot see. That is a gentle environmental ethic. Worth pausing on with the class if they seem to want it.