40 Fun Facts About Gray Whales

Gray whales, which hug North America's Pacific coast, have one of the longest what of any mammal?

Migrations of up to 22,000 km a year carry gray whales from Arctic feeding grounds to warm calving lagoons and back. They travel night and day, covering about 120 km every 24 hours.

Each winter gray whales swim south from the Arctic to give birth in warm lagoons in which country?

Mexico's Pacific lagoons fill with nursing, calving and mating gray whales by late winter. The shallow water is thought to keep newborn calves safe from sharks.

Whalers gave gray whales which nickname because mothers fought so fiercely to protect their calves?

Devil fish was the whalers' name for gray whales, which reacted violently when harpooned. Today the same animals are known for their gentle curiosity toward boats.

Gray whales breathe through two blowholes, so in calm air their spout can form which shape?

A heart is the shape of the gray whale's distinctive blow on a windless day. Toothed whales such as dolphins could never make one, because they have a single blowhole.

In their winter lagoons, gray whales often swim up to small boats and let tourists do what?

Pet them: gray whales in the calving lagoons often come close enough to boats to be touched. That curiosity has made whale watching there especially popular.

Which predator hunts gray whale calves by ramming them from below to split them from their mothers?

Killer whales are the only predators of adult gray whales apart from humans. Typically three or four of them ram a calf from beneath while its mother fights to defend it.

Which 2012 Drew Barrymore film retells the 1988 rescue of three gray whales trapped in Arctic ice?

Big Miracle retells Operation Breakthrough, a rescue that drew a swarm of journalists to the ice. The film was originally known as Everybody Loves Whales.

Which country sent two icebreakers in 1988 to help free three gray whales trapped in Arctic ice?

Soviet Union icebreakers answered an American request and broke apart a ridge of ice 30 feet high. Two of the three whales were still alive when the path to open water was cut.

Gray whales rub against pebbly seabeds, apparently to scrape off which hard-shelled hitchhikers?

Barnacles of one species live almost only on gray whales, embedding deep in the skin of the head and back. An adult whale can carry several hundred pounds of passengers.

A gray whale calf, about 15 feet long at birth, usually enters the world in which way?

Tail first is how gray whale calves arrive, and most of them are born within the same six weeks around the middle of January.

Gray whales have only a low hump and a row of small bumps where most whales have which fin?

Dorsal fin is the one a gray whale lacks: a hump sits about two-thirds of the way down its body instead, followed by 6 to 12 small bumps running toward the tail.

Because of the way they feed, gray whales often leave long trails of what behind them?

Mud billows out behind a feeding gray whale because it sucks up sediment and strains out the small animals living in it. The whales also leave feeding pits in the sea floor.

Gray whale calves put on weight quickly thanks to a mother's milk that is 53 percent what?

Fat makes up over half of a gray whale mother's milk. She nurses her calf for about seven months before it is weaned.

Despite the name, the whale lice that cling to a gray whale's skin belong to which animal group?

Crustaceans, not insects, are what whale lice really are: relatives of the skeleton shrimp. Up to 7,500 of them can live on a single whale.

Gray whale baleen is made of which protein, the same material found in human fingernails?

Keratin forms the 130 to 180 coarse plates that hang from each side of a gray whale's upper jaw. The plates work like a sieve, trapping small animals while water drains away.

When gray whales roll to scoop food from the seabed, which way do most of them seem to turn?

Onto the right is the roll most gray whales seem to favor, much as most people favor one hand. Blue whales show the same preference when they feed.

Which tiny animals, sifted from the seabed, are a main food source for gray whales?

Amphipods are shrimp-like animals that live in the sediment, and gray whales gulp them along with sand and water. Some scientists think shrinking sea ice is pushing the whales onto less nutritious krill.

Which other whales have been seen defending gray whale calves from attacking predators?

Humpbacks have been observed coming to the defence of gray whale calves under attack. The stakes are high: by one rough estimate a third of each year's calves may be lost to predators.

Gray whales now live only in the North Pacific after dying out centuries ago in which ocean?

Atlantic gray whales vanished from Europe's coasts in the Middle Ages and from American shores by the early 1700s. Whaling is a suspected cause.

Whalers of the 1800s killed thousands of gray whales in their breeding lagoons for which product?

Oil was the prize: one captain's winter catch of 47 whales yielded 1,700 barrels. Hunting on that scale brought gray whales close to extinction before they were protected.

A gray whale that turned up far outside the Pacific in 2010 is thought to have used which route?

Northwest Passage ice had melted enough by 2007 to make the Arctic shortcut fully navigable. A swim around the tip of South America was judged far less likely.

In 2010 a wandering gray whale amazed scientists by appearing off Israel in which body of water?

The Mediterranean visitor was seen again later the same month off Barcelona. Bones from Roman-era sites show that gray whales once swam there too.

Most gray whales spend the summer feeding in shallow northern seas off the coast of which US state?

Alaska borders the Bering and Chukchi seas, where most gray whales spend the summer eating. They head south each October as the northern ice pushes down.

The gray whale has been the official state marine mammal of which US state since 1975?

California picked an animal its residents can watch from the beach: from December to February the whales pass southward in small groups along the state's coast.

Organised whale watching began in 1950, when crowds watched gray whales swim past which US city?

San Diego's Cabrillo National Monument was declared a public whale lookout that year and drew 10,000 visitors in its first season.

Which Native people of Washington State point to an 1855 treaty to justify hunting gray whales?

Makah whalers took a gray whale in May 1999, their first since the 1920s. They had stopped hunting back then because commercial whaling had left too few whales.

One study found healthy gray whales stranding far more often at times with many of what?

Sunspots signal solar storms, which may scramble a magnetic sense the whales could be using to find their way. The idea is unproven: nobody has shown that whales steer by magnetism.

Which gray whales are usually the first to reach the sheltered winter lagoons each year?

Pregnant females arrive first, seeking protected water in which to give birth. In spring the order flips: mothers with newborns are the last to leave, waiting until their calves are ready.

Small dimples on a gray whale's upper jaw each hold a single one of which mammal feature?

A stiff hair sits in each dimple, though it takes a very close look to see one. Baleen whales such as the gray keep a few small hairs on their heads as adults.

Gray whales often rise straight up to hold their heads above the waves, a move known as what?

Spyhopping lets a whale look and listen above the surface. Gray whales are thought to do it near the surf line to hear the breaking waves that mark out their route.

The gray whale's genus, Eschrichtius, honours a 19th-century whale expert from which country?

Denmark's Daniel Frederik Eschricht was an authority on whales. By coincidence the zoologist who named the genus was John Edward Gray, though the whale's common name comes from its colour.

Which 1850s whaling captain later wrote a classic book describing the gray whales he had hunted?

Charles Scammon was the first to hunt the whales in two of their nursery lagoons, and one still carries his name. His 1874 book sold poorly but is now considered a classic.

Long placed alone in its own family, the gray whale is linked by DNA most closely to which whales?

Rorquals, the family of the blue and fin whales, are the gray whale's nearest kin. Some studies go further and place it inside that family rather than in one of its own.

The endangered western gray whales gather each summer to feed off which Russian island?

Sakhalin lies just north of Japan, and scientists identify the few hundred western whales from photographs taken there. Offshore energy projects near the island are among the threats they face.

In 2005 two biologists proposed airlifting 50 Pacific gray whales to waters off which country?

Britain once had gray whales of its own, and the idea was to restock those seas with surplus animals from the recovered Pacific herd. The plan has never been carried out.

Which rescued gray whale calf grew into the largest marine mammal ever kept in captivity?

J.J. beached herself in 1997 and spent 14 months in human care. She weighed 19,200 pounds and measured 31 feet when she was released, too large for the facilities to keep.

What do whale watchers call the 6 to 12 bumps that run along a gray whale's lower back?

Knuckles is the nickname for the raised bumps that run from a gray whale's hump toward its tail. The tail they lead to is 3 to 4 metres across and deeply notched in the middle.

Gray whales caught under Russia's native hunting exemption were fed to animals farmed for what?

Fur farms run by the state took the meat, a practice officials denied as late as 1987 and have since acknowledged. They argue the farms support the region's native people.

A gray whale made its kind's first recorded Southern Hemisphere visit in 2013, off which country?

Namibia's Walvis Bay was where the whale turned up, and it was still being seen there regularly two months later. Photographs suggest it was not the same wanderer seen far outside the Pacific in 2010.

One major gray whale nursery lagoon shares its shores with the world's biggest plant producing what?

Salt is made by evaporating seawater in huge ponds on the lagoon's eastern side, at the biggest saltworks in the world. Gray whales still arrive every winter to calve next door.