The grey whale's scientific name is 'Eschrichtius robustus'. It comes from the 'Eschrichtiidae' family, and descends from a filter-feeding whale that actually lives at the dawn of the 'Oligocene' era, which existed a whopping 30 million years ago. The grey whale was once called the 'Devil Fish', this is because of their desire to fight anything that moves, when they are being targeted as a hunt.

The grey whale is often found in the Northern Pacific, and Western Pacific areas. These are both the American and Asian areas, making it a cross boarder species which is generally seen as being one of the most intriguing creatures of the ocean. The gray whale is around 16 metres long, and weighs around 36 tons. It is a long living creature, whose average life span reaches 60 years of age. This is an amazing fact, as it makes its average life-span almost as high as modern peoples.

The gray whale has incredible looks. They have a dark slate coloured skin, which is decorated by an amazing array of grey-white patterns, which are there because of underwater parasites, who cling onto the water mammal and leave these patterns as scarring, before dropping off in the areas where the cold becomes too much for the parasites to bear. The grey whale funnily enough does not actually have a dorsal fin, instead it has what is termed as being 'dorsal knuckles'.

The grey whale eats troves of 'benthic crustaceans'. It eats on its side, and scoops up the sediments from the bottom of the sea. It's whale bone acts like a kind of sieve that captures small sea creatures as the sand is scooped up. When the grey whale has limited food, it reserves on fat reserves in order to keep it nourished. Food shortages usually only spring up on migration trips, which spans across kilometres of ocean.

The Pacific ocean has two groups of grey whale inside its basin. The first group has around 300 grey whales in the Pacific's in-zone areas. This small group of whales have mysterious migration routes, however it is presumed they travel between the 'Sea of Okhotsk' and 'South Korea'. The second group of Pacific ocean inhabitants have a population of 20, 000 individuals. This group migrates from 'Alaska' and merge to 'Baja California'. The grey whale has been extinct in the North Atlantic area since the 18th century.

The grey whale has only two major predators - humans and the Orca.

In the 1570's era the Japanese began to hunt and catch the grey whales on a regular basis. At 'Kawajiri Nagto' alone a total of 169 grey whale were caught between the years 1698 and 1889. At 'Tsuro Shikoku' a total of 201 grey whales were caught between the years 1849 and 1896. The real damage to the grey whale population occurred between the years 1911 and 1933, when a total of 1449 grey whales were hunted and killed. The grey whale population declined very rapidly, and by 1934 it was close to total extinction.

Since 2004 the West Pacific population of the grey whale had only 101 individuals in total. The species may have been hunted into total extinction, however conservation campaigns have increased the grey whale populations. Despite this fact, the northwest Pacific grey whale populations have been declared as being 'critically endangered'.

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