A grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) spyhopping off the coast of Baja, Mexico

I was fortunate enough to be backpacking on the coast recently and was able to observe the corpse of a juvenile grey whale stranded this summer in a state of advanced decomposition.

Grey whales grow up to 50ft long, so I estimate this one to be a juvenile.

As you can see, one of its vertebra is missing. I found it on the trail near where I had set up camp.

The orientation of this whale's head is upside down; note the large scoop shape of the lower jaw. Grey whales are benthic feeders, meaning they do barrel rolls along the ocean floor and scoop up sand which they filter through their baleen to sift out amphipods and other tiny crustaceans.

It's hard to tell based on the state of decomposition, but this whale as well as all the others who've washed up are malnourished. This is a symptom of a larger collapse of the Arctic Ocean food chain.

Ocean warming is causing sea ice to disappear earlier in the year, and the sea ice is home to algae that sink to the ocean floor and serve as the primary food source for the amphipods. The sea ice also slows the ocean currents, and without it the currents scrub away the silt from the ocean floor that the amphipods live in. The amphipod population is 9% of what it once was.

Behold! My barnacle army has risen!!

these beads were for a collaboration with a local trash weaver (she weaves with trash, mostly commercial fishing waste)

Today's animal of the day is the Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus)!

Photo credit: Mark Conlin

This large species of baleen whale can be found throughout the North Pacific Ocean in two distinct populations: the Northeastern population that lives off the coast of North America, and the endangered Northwestern population that lives off the coast of Asia. These two populations are not only separated from each other geographically, but also display distinct morphological and genetic differences that some marine biologists argue should classify them as distinct subspecies. However, they are currently both just considered unique populations. Their name comes from the light gray patches that appear scattered across their dark gray bodies. These are actually scars from various types of parasites, like whale lice, that latch onto their skin while they're in warmer waters and then fall off when they migrate to colder waters to feed. While not the largest whales, they are still pretty big and can grow around 50 ft long and weigh between 45 and 50 tons.

Photo credit: Marc Webber

Image credit: Macrophyseter

Like other whales in the order Mysticeti, gray whales have a special hair-like structure in their mouths, called baleen, instead of teeth. Most baleen whales will swim up to a swarm of small fish or crustaceans and gulp up large mouthfuls of water so they can use their baleen to filter out all the water while leaving behind all of the creatures they've caught. However, gray whales have a rather unorthodox feeding method. They'll swim down to the seafloor, roll onto their sides, and then scoop up large mouthfuls of sand or mud in order to feed on the various shrimps, amphipods, and other benthic invertebrates that like to bury themselves in the ocean sediment. They then shake their heads and use their baleen to filter out all of the sand out of their mouths, in addition to any seawater that they happen to swallow too. While this is their preferred feeding method, they are known for being opportunistic feeders, and when their normal food source is scarce, they'll filter-feed the same way that other baleen whales do.

Photo credit: Dr. Steven Swartz

Gray whales are highly migratory; in fact, they are known for making the longest migration of any mammal on Earth! Every summer, they migrate to warmer southern waters in order to have their babies, which haven't built up a layer of insulating blubber yet and cannot survive in colder waters. The eastern Pacific population will migrate from the Baja Peninsula in the summer all the way to the coast of Alaska in order to feed during the winter. The western population is known to spend their summers in the Sea of Okhotsk; however, their exact winter feeding grounds are currently unknown. There's also a small population of around 200 individuals that don't migrate and stay in the same general area all year round. This population is known as the Pacific Coast feeding group and ranges all the way from California to Canada. It's currently unknown why these whales don't prefer to migrate, but old whaling records suggest that there were other populations like them, though they seem to have been hunted to extinction.

Photo credit: Merrill Gosho

Speaking of whaling, this species of whale has been hunted by humans for a very long time. Many indigenous tribes from around the Arctic would hunt these whales on canoes using hand-held harpoons. Because they were so large, only four or five whales needed to be killed for the whole year, and these tribes would make sure to use every part of the whale. They would obviously eat the meat, but the oil would be used to light lamps, and the bones would be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as crafting tools, making art, and even to make shelters. These whales would also be treated with great respect in death, since many of these cultures couldn't grow crops or raise livestock, so they relied heavily on the marine mammals they hunted to feed themselves and made sure to honor them. Many of these groups, such as the Makah Tribe in Washington State and the Chukotka people of Russia, still hunt gray whales to this day using traditional whaling methods, and if I'm being totally honest, I have no problem with this. These people are super respectful of these animals, only hunt them when they absolutely need to, and make sure to use every piece of the whales they kill. What I do have a problem with is the commercial whaling industry, which almost caused this species to go extinct!

Photo credit: Marc Webber

Like sperm and bowhead whales, gray whales were heavily targeted by commercial whalers, and unlike the indigenous whalers, these industrial whaling ships would kill these whales en masse. There was one report of two whaling ships, called the Hiberia and the United States, that together killed at least 32 gray whales in Magdalena Bay in just a single winter season! Luckily, they weren't targeted as much as sperm whales were due to the inferior quality of their oil, but they were still hunted to extinction in several regions, such as along the European coast and in the Atlantic coasts of both North America and Africa. During this time, gray whales would often be referred to as "devil fish" since they would try to fight back against the whalers. Honestly, good for them! Despite this, they are now considered pretty friendly and will often come up to whale watching boats out of curiosity. They've even been known to get close enough for people to touch them, which you should NOT do since it can transfer diseases between you and the whale. I've also seen videos of people picking barnacles and whale lice off of the whales' skin, which is painful for the whales and can lead to skin infections.

Photo credit: José Eugenio Gómez Rodríguez

I actually really love gray whales since they're such weirdos. They're the only living member of their genus, Eschrichtius, with the only other known member being the Akishima whale that went extinct sometime during the early Pleistocene, around 1.77 to 1.95 million years ago. They are also the only known species of baleen whale to display aggressive behavior against another species of baleen whale, with a pod of gray whales off the coast of California being observed fighting a North Pacific right whale. However, they've also been observed having positive interspecies social interactions with that same type of right whale, so maybe just that specific individual was getting on their nerves. These whales also have a knack for getting into some whacky, and sometimes sad, situations, so I'm going to share some of my personal favorites. Spoiler alert from the future after I did some more research: yeah most of the whales in these stories either end up dying tragic deaths or have unknown fates. Sorry in advance, and trigger warning for some dead baby whales.

Photo credit: NOAA

In 1988, an Inupiaq hunter named Roy Ahmaogak found three gray whales stranded in a tiny hole in the frozen Beaufort Sea of Alaska. The whales, which were nicknamed Putu, Siku, and Kanik, were too far away from the next closest breathing hole to swim away, so Roy and some of his fellow villagers tried using a chainsaw to try and cut a path through the ice for them and used water pumps to keep the hole from freezing over. While this wasn't very effective, word of the whales' perdicament spread, and eventually the Soviet Union would send (at the request of the United States Department of State) two large icebreakers to help cut a path to free the whales. Sadly, Kanik, who was the youngest whale at only 9 months, died before they could be freed. However, a large enough pathway was created for the other two whales to swim to the nearest natural break in the ice by themselves, and they would eventually swim off and never be seen again. It's unknown if Putu and Siku ever did make it to freedom, especially since they were in pretty rough condition due to stress, exhaustion, and being cut by all the jagged ice shards in the water. But I like to think they made it. This whole operation cost about a million dollars, and most whale scientists consider it a waste of time and money since this is a pretty common natural occurrence. But, I think it did a lot to increase the public's knowledge about whales and help them get interested in their conservation.

Photo credit: Roy Nickerson

Gray whales are currently the only species of baleen whale to have been kept in captivity. There are currently three reported cases of captive gray whales, and all of them were calves. The first calf was captured in 1965 off the coast of California by Seaworld, who hired a Japanese whaler to help with her capture. Yes, they did harpoon this baby whale in order to steal her away from her mother. This individual was named Gigi, and she sadly only lived for a few months in captivity before dying. Her death was caused by a collapsed lung and pneumonia, which are believed to have resulted from her having been harpooned. The second attempt was another kidnapped whale calf, named Gigi II, just six years later, again by Seaworld. Allegedly, she was captured for scientific study, but this was a perfectly healthy whale calf that they kidnapped from her mother at just two months old. Speaking of her mother, she reportedly tried her best to fight back against the boat trying to steal her baby, before she was eventually driven off. Gigi II was eventually released on March 13th, 1972, after she became way too big to be kept in any of Sea World's tanks. Attempts were made to track Gigi II to see how she acclimated back into the wild, but they were unsuccessful, and we have no idea if she survived or not.

Photo credit: Seaworld

The third and final captive gray whale thankfully has a much happier story. This individual was named JJ and was found stranded just off the coast of Los Angeles when she was only a few days old. She was very dehydrated and was covered in whale lice, which made her very weak. An organization called the Marine Animal Rescue (MAR) searched for two days to find JJ's mother, but was unsuccessful, so they contacted Sea World and asked them if they could take her in since they were the only facility that would feasibly care for her. Initially, Seaworld refused, I guess because they only want gray whales if they get to rip them away from their mothers themselves. No, they were probably just scared to get more bad press if the calf died, since they didn't have the best track record with keeping this species. But this backfired since there was a ton of public backlash, and eventually they agreed to take her in as long as MAR was responsible for transporting her.

Photo credit: Seaworld

Once in Seaworld, JJ actually did fairly well. Because she was so young, they had to feed her a special blend of heavy cream, fish, and some vitamins as a replacement for her mother's milk until she was old enough to eat small fish. At first, they would hand-feed her these, but eventually they would leave them in little piles for her at the bottom of her tank to simulate how gray whales forage for food in the wild. JJ would spend about 15 months at Sea World before she was eventually released back into the wild in March of 1998. Researchers were able to track her for a few days using satellite tags they placed on her, but eventually these would accidentally fall off, and like Gigi II, she would never be seen again. However, it's much more likely that JJ survived, at least for a little while, after being released, since she was in much better health than Gigi II was.

Photo credit: Christine Balcom

I have a confession. The gray whale wasn't randomly selected like all the other random animals of the day. I actually specifically chose to do them today because of this next story. Spoiler alert, I just found out, it has a sad ending while I was writing this, and I'm actually crying. So, on April 1st, a young gray whale was seen swimming up the Willapa River in Washington State. This isn't a totally unheard-of occurrence, as there have been several whales that have swum up rivers for unknown reasons. The most famous of which was Humphrey the Humpback Whale, who swam up the Sacramento River in 1985. I'll cover that story in more detail when I cover humpbacks, but rest assured, he had a much happier ending than Willapa Willy.

Photo credit: Todd John

This young gray whale was sadly found just a few hours ago, at the time I'm writing this. The body was discovered 20 miles upriver by photographer Todd John, who was using a drone to search the river after a 24-hour boat search done by wildlife officials and members of the Chinook and Shoalwater Bay tribes was unsuccessful in locating the whale. It's believed that this individual was just one or two years old and might have initially swum up the Willapa because it was feeding near the rivermouth when the tides started to recede, causing it to become disoriented. The public is currently being asked to stay far away from the carcass while officials discuss what to do with it, since whale bodies tend to swell up with methane gas after they die and have been known to explode. This has really made me sad.

Photo credit: Conanp AFP Photo

Ok, I have one more kind of sad gray whale event that happened, and then I'll tell you guys a happy fact before I finally end this post. In 2014, a stillborn conjoined gray whale calf was found washed up off the coast of Mexico. This specimen was conjoined at the hip and had two fully formed heads and tails. It was the first ever known case of conjoined twins in baleen whales.

Photo credit: Ilyas Kalimullin

Amazingly Long Animal Migrations

Gray Whales