![]() They mate throughout the year, though most conceptions take place between late November and early December. Gray whales are polygynandrous (or promiscuous) courtship and mating behaviors are complex and often involve 3 or more individuals simultaneously. They are opportunistic feeders and their diet includes a wide range of crustaceans including ghost shrimp and amphipods, as well as herring eggs, polychaete worms, and various kinds of larvae. Gray whales are carnivores (molluscivores). They seem to favor feeding planktonically in their feeding grounds, but benthically along their migration route in shallower water. Gray whales feed benthically, by diving to the ocean floor and rolling on to their side, and suck up prey from the seafloor. When they feed planktonically, they roll onto their right side while their fluke remains above the surface, or they skim the surface with their mouth open. Gray whales can easily switch from feeding planktonically to benthically. They eat prey by turning on their side and scooping up sediments from the seafloor. ![]() Gray whales feed mainly during the long daylight hours of the summer months and often feed near the shore where the water is very shallow. They also “breach” (jumping up into the air then splashing down onto their back or side, known also as cresting or lunging), which is understood to be a form of communication, a form of play, and an attempt at removing skin parasites. They do this while looking out for predators or other whales. Gray whales exhibit the behavior of “spyhopping” - lifting their heads right out of the water, exposing their entire rostrum for some minutes. ![]() Gray whales live in small groups, though sometimes form large pods, but don’t stay in the same group for all of their life instead, the bonds they form are very loose and then they move on to another group. They undergo the longest migration of any mammal. The eastern Pacific whales migrate each year from Arctic feeding grounds to Mexican waters for breeding, whilst the western Pacific whales migrate along Russia’s east coast. Gray whales typically live in coastal waters of up to 100 meters deep. There are two separate geographic distributions in the North Pacific Ocean of Gray whales: the Eastern North Pacific stock, which inhabits North America’s west coast, and the “Korean” stock of the Western North Pacific, which occurs along the coasts of eastern Asia. Females are usually larger than males and otherwise look the same as males. When it surfaces, its 'blow' is distinctly bushy, and is short and ‘heart-shaped’ or forked, as it comes from a pair of blowholes. The baleen, which it uses to filter food, is creamy-white. It has two deep grooves on its throat, which enable its mouth to expand when it feeds. It has no dorsal fin, instead having a series of bumps on the last third of its back along a dorsal ridge. Gray whales are found in the eastern Pacific Ocean from Baja California to the Bering Sea and in the western Pacific Ocean from South Korea to the Okhotsk Sea.The Gray whale is a giant of the ocean, mottled light to dark gray in color and encrusted with barnacles and whale lice. They eat small crustaceans, such as mysids and amphipods, they are also known to eat red crabs, baitfish, crab larvae, herring eggs and cephalopods. Gray whales are usually bottom feeders along shallow continental shelf waters. There are two deep grooves in their throat, which allows the mouth to expand when feeding.Killer whales are their only non-human predator.They are the only whale to feed by straining sediments from the ocean floor.Some individuals may travel more than 12,000 miles a year. Each spring and fall, they pass between their Arctic summer feeding grounds and the warm waters near the equator where females give birth. The gray whale makes the longest known migration of any mammal.
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