Gray whale

The gray whale is a baleen whale, which means it filters food from the water with plates in its mouth instead of teeth. It grows to roughly 15 metres long, and its dark skin is covered with gray patches and white mottling, which gave it its name.

It makes one of the longest yearly journeys of any mammal, swimming between cold feeding seas near the Arctic and warm breeding lagoons such as those in Mexico. Gray whales live in the North Pacific, in two groups: a healthy eastern one and a small, endangered western one. Scientists once knew gray whales in the Atlantic too, but those groups died out long ago, probably because of whaling.

How does it eat?

Gray whales feed mostly on the sea floor. They scoop up mud and sand, then squeeze the water out through their baleen plates and swallow the small crustaceans that are left behind.

They spend the summer feeding in rich northern waters and eat much less during the long trip south and the winter in the lagoons. Their baleen is short and coarse, which suits this bottom-feeding style.

From hunted whale to protected whale

Whalers once called gray whales devil fish, because mothers fought hard to protect their calves. Hunting nearly wiped them out, and the whales that lived in the Atlantic Ocean disappeared centuries ago.

Today the eastern Pacific group is protected and has recovered to more than 20,000 animals. The western Pacific group, which travels along the coast of northeast Asia, is much smaller and still in danger. A gray whale may live for 55 to 70 years.

On the globe

The globe shows the gray whale in the Pacific, the ocean where it makes its long migration. Look for its mottled gray body.