Wildlife Spotlight: Gray Whale

Gray whales are gray all over except for white, yellow, and orange patches, evidence of the hundreds of pounds of barnacles and whale lice they carry. They are streamlined, with no fin but a low hump two-thirds of the way down their bodies and knobs running down their backs. Females are up to 50 feet and 38 tons, males are slightly smaller and calves are born at 12-15 feet and 1 ton. They have a narrow tapered head and paddle shaped broad flippers, with a fluke of 10-12 feet wide with pointed tips and notched deeply in the center.

Gray whales raise their flukes high before long deep dives, and can dive for up to 15 minutes, usually staying down for only 3-5 minutes. They scrape the bottom of the sea floor with the right side of their mouths, stirring up and trapping within their baleen mud, dirt, silt, water, and mostly importantly, amphipods. They use their tongue to push out the mud and water, leaving only the delectable tubeworms, crustaceans, shellfish, and crabs. As the only predominately bottom feeding whales, it is assumed that feeding strategies give gray whales their extra comfort in shallow waters in comparison with other whales. When a gray whale resurfaces, a low bushy and heart-shaped blow signals its location. The blow is up to 10 feet high and can be seen and heard from miles away.

They cover up to 100 miles a day on their migration, rarely stopping, with pregnant females the first ones to leave the Bering and Chukchi seas in October. Mature bulls and breeding females soon follow. In December, the calves are born. Gray whales have complex courtship and mating rituals, often involving mixed groups of 3 or more whales. They do not feed in Baja, or even on the migration; they must live off their thick blubber reserves from their summer feeding, except for new calves, which gain weight rapidly as they nurse fatty milk from their mothers.

Immature animals and juveniles leave last and arrive in Baja by February. Newly pregnant females begin to leave the breeding grounds to start their 12-13 month gestation, often accompanied by mature bulls. The juveniles and other immature animals leave next. In March, the last to leave are the mothers and their 3-4 month old calves, staying close to shore. Mothers and calves are the only gray whales that actually stop and rest for hours or even days on their way back to the arctic seas.

The only natural predator of the gray whale is the Orca whale, and some whales' flukes bear the marks of failed Orca attacks. Man has brought the gray whale close to extinction with the wholesale slaughter of whales for household goods, including lighting oil, lubricant, candle wax, gelatin, cosmetics and whale meat. This slaughter brought the Western Pacific Ocean population perilously close to extinction more than once. Known as “Devil Fish” by whalers because of its tendency to defend itself and its calves from slaughter by tipping over boats, the gray whale has recovered from its small population numbers.

The North Atlantic population was extinct by the 18th century, and in the second half of the 19th century whalers discovered the Western Pacific population’s breeding grounds in Baja and decimated the population. When the whalers finally departed, the few remaining whales remarkably rebounded only to have the whalers return to decimate the population yet again. In 1946, the International Whaling Commission gave full international protection to the gray whale, and protection was enlarged with the 1972 Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. The gray whale was recently removed from the Endangered Species List, as there are roughly 22,000 - 23,000 gray whales, fully recovered from their near extinct status.

Gray whales have a life expectancy of 50-60 years. Despite their reputation as “Devil Fish”, they have been known to nudge their calves up to boats to allow humans to stroke the calf. These whales are the most watched whales, as they come close to shore and follow thesame migration route year after year, conveniently offering the opportunity for unparalleled whale watching. The past weekend saw over 30 gray whales near Point Reyes National Seashore according to park officials and the peak of the migration in local waters comes January 21st.

Hear the sounds of gray whales at aguasonic.com.