Gray Whale
The Gray Whale is a baleen whale (a filter feeder) that has a layer of blubber up to 10 inches (25 cm) thick. It migrates from cold waters to the tropics each year in pods. Gray whales are very agile swimmers.
GRAY WHALE FACTS
Description
The Gray Whale is dark gray in color. Scattered patches of barnacles and orange whale lice grow on the skin. These parasites leave greyish white scar marks when they drop off.
Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) are cetaceans that belong to the Suborder Mysticeti, the Baleen whales.
Gray whales inhabit shallow coastal waters of the eastern and western North Pacific often sighted along the North American Pacific Coast between the arctic and the equatorial lagoons of Baja California, Mexico.
Gray whales are covered by characteristic gray-white patterns, scars left by parasites which drop off in the cold feeding grounds. It reaches a length of about 16 meters (52 ft.), a weight of 36 tons and an age of 50-60 years.
Gray Whale Range
Audio
Fast Facts
Type: Mammal Diet: Omnivore Size: 40 to 50 ft (12.2 to 15.3 m) Weight: 30 to 40 tons (27,200 to 36,300 kg) Group name: Pod Protection status: Recovered Size relative to a bus: ...
Gray whales migrate along the coast of North America from California to the Arctic or from coastal Korea to Siberia to spend the summer in arctic regions. For the winter, they return to warmer waters.
Gray Whale
Of the "devilfish", oil rigs and WWF
Scientific Name: Eschrichtius robustus ...
Gray whales have a long and narrow shape and are a medium gray colour marbled with lighter patches. At the water surface they appear to be a whitsh-blue colour. Each whale has its own unique skin pattern which allows for identification.
Gray whales are predominantly bottom feeders and forage along the ocean floor. Turning on its side, a gray whale gulps great mouthfuls of silt, strains out water and mud through its baleen, and swallows bottom-dwelling invertebrates.
The gray whale is the only species in the baleen whale family Eschrichtiidae. Seen from above, its body tapers at both ends, and is a dark slate color that can appear mottled gray.
Gray Whale
Order: Cetacea
Family: Eschrichtiidae
Eschrichtius robustus - upper insets show spray pattern, spy hopping, and whale louse and barnacle; lower inset, bottom feeding
Click to enlarge. (47 kb) ...
GRAY WHALE
The gray whale is a baleen whale that eats tiny organisms from the mud on the bottom on the ocean.
Great Apes
The Great Apes include Gorillas, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, and Bonobos.
Gray Whales - now extirpated in North Atlantic. Common off the coast of California
Neobalaenidae
Pygmy Right Whales are found in the southern hemisphere only.
The gray whale is distributed in an eastern North Pacific (American) population and a critically endangered western North Pacific (Asian) population.
Most baleen whales feed near the water's surface, but the gray whale is a bottom feeder. It skims the ocean floor and stirs up mud and silt, draws it in and then filters out its food.
One such success story features the California gray whale, twice hunted to the brink of extinction during peak whaling years. Legally protected since 1946, gray whales have made an astonishing comeback.
Food items include squid, fish, skates, rays, sharks, sea turtles, sea birds, seals, sea lions, walrus, dolphins, porpoises, and large whales such as fin whales, humpback whales, right whales, minke whales, and gray whales.
There are three families of baleen whales: the right whale family (Balaenidae), including the bowhead, or Greenland whale; the gray whale family (Eschrichtidae), with a single species (Eschrichtius robustus) found in the N Pacific Ocean; ...
When feeding, Gray whales may be underwater for up to 15 minutes. Gray whales like to breech during migration and breeding seasons. Breeching is when a whale leaps out of the water and reenters on its side, creating a large splash.
Gray whales are bottom feeders: they dive to the bottom, scoop up a mouth full of sand, animals and water and force out the sand and water through the baleen.
Gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus)
Leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)
Brazilian free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)
Spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus)
Gyr falcon (Falco rusticolus)
Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus) ...
Blue whale (Antarctic)
Gray whale Northwest Pacific population
Vaquita
Endangered ...
Protected species in international waters include the gray whales of the Western North Pacific population, the Gulf of California harbor porpoise, the Southern right whale, the Mediterranean monk seal, and the Ringed Seal.
Longest Migration
Arctic terns migrate to and from the Antarctic-about 22,000 miles round trip-each year. Among mammals, gray whales and northern elephant seals are the migration champions, traveling up to 13,000 miles round trip each year.
Encounter the affectionate curiosity of majestic gray whales in the beautiful lagoons of Mexico s Baja California.
Enter a golden blizzard as tens of millions of monarch butterflies fill the sky in the hidden highlands of Mexico.
Not all Mysticeti feed on plankton: the larger whales tend to eat small shoaling fish, such as herrings and sardines, called micronecton. One species of Mysticeti, the Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus), is a benthic feeder, ...
Some cetacean species are mutualists with animals that feed on these ectoparasites; for example, topsmelt (Atherinops affinis) consume whale lice that live on the skin of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus).
 See also: Whale, Dolphin, Porpoise, Blue Whale, Sperm Whale
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