Gray whale is a medium-sized whale that lives in the Pacific Ocean . It reaches up to 43 feet (13 meters) in length. The gray whale has a low hump at the beginning of the lower third of its back and a series of fleshy knobs between this hump and the tail. The skin is gray with whitish blotches. Barnacles and other invertebrates cling to the skin and can alter its appearance.
Gray whales are baleen whales. Instead of teeth, they have 130 to 180 coarse, thin plates, called baleen, on each side of the mouth. Gray whales feed mainly on tiny invertebrates that live in mud on the ocean floor. Using their tongue, the whales suck mud, sand, and water into their mouth. They then use the baleen to filter out the food as they force the water from their mouth.
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Gray whales have one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal . They spend summers in seas near Russia and Alaska , then migrate south to spend winters in and around lagoons along the coast of Baja California in Mexico. Because most of their migration occurs close to shore, whale watching has become a popular pastime along the Pacific coast. Gray whales were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. But whale hunting declined in the late 1930’s, and there are now about 20,000 to 22,000 gray whales.
