NEWPORT, Oregon — The quiet coastal town of Newport became the epicenter of a desperate scientific convergence last week, as hundreds of researchers, government biologists, and marine conservationists gathered for a two-day summit dedicated to the survival of a single species: the Eastern North Pacific gray whale. The urgency of the assembly was underscored by a harrowing statistic: the population has plummeted by approximately 50 percent over the last decade, a collapse that many experts describe as a direct casualty of a rapidly warming Arctic....