by Laurie Childree

Created on: March 17, 2008

Currently on the endangered species list the Gray or Grey Whale (Eschrichtius robustus); also known as Baleen whales look like an ocean rock due to the barnacles and other organisms such as whale lice that cover their backs and snouts. Their skin is varying shades of gray and they have deep notches in their tails. At sizes of up to forty and fifty feet they weigh thirty to forty tons they travel in groups (pods) for distances up to 12,430 miles round trip. They have to surface in order to get air as they are not fish but warm blooded mammals that posses two blowholes. The largest of them have up to ten feet tails.

The long journey is from the Alaskan waters they make home in the summer to the Mexican coast in winter for warmer water. There winter home is where they breed. Gray Whales give birth to one live baby at a time that is a quarter to a third of the size of the mother whale in length. Baby Gray Whales will begin to get barnacles soon after they are born. The amount they get is directly related to how many their mother has. All of the youngest Gray Whales have dimply faces and those dimples are where they have facial hair should you get close enough to see it. The baby whales will nurse from their mothers.

Gray Whales will eat small fish at the surface during migration and when in calving areas other than that they will not eat very much. The blubber of the whale provides energy for the rest of the year and they can go up to five months without eating.

The Gray Whale searches for food by using the snout to get tiny creatures from the bottom of the sea. Then it filters the food with a comb like strainer of plates in its upper jaw that are known as a baleen. They take in mud and filter it through the baleen leaving their food attached to the inside of the mouth; they then use their tongues to get the food so that it can be swallowed.

It is thought that just one Gray Whale can turn over up to fifty acres of sediments during feeding. This prepares the mud for the year after when they feed again. Muddy runoff from clear cut timber lands is a threat to the Gray Whale as it suffocates the sediment from which they feed.

Sources:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/a nimals/mammals/gray-whale.html
http://www.sandiegozoo .org/animalbytes/t-whale.html
http://animals.about.co m/cs/mammals/p/graywhale.htm
http://animaldiversity.u mmz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/Eschricht ius_robustus.html
http://www.greywhale.com/interest.h tm

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