This mammal is descended from filter-feeding whales that appeared at the beginning of the Oligocene, over 30 million years ago. The gray whale is distributed in an eastern North Pacific (North American), and an endangered western North Pacific (Asian), population. North Atlantic populations were extirpated (perhaps by whaling) on the European coast before AD 500, and on the American coast around the late 17th to early 18th centuries. Even so, on May 8, 2010, a sighting of a gray whale was confirmed off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea, leading some scientists to think they might be repopulating old breeding grounds that have not been visited for centuries.
Introduction
Gray whale
Gray whale | Introduction
Eastern North Pacific and western North Pacific Eastern North Pacific and western North Pacific North America and Asia. They keep on migrating but they are found also in Namibia
when will the new dunkirk film be released on dvd
user
18 December 2017
assistant
what is this film about?
user
Dunkirk evacuation of World War II
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can you mention a few members of the cast?
user
Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles
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where was it shot?
user
Dunkirk and Urk, Netherlands
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can you tell me anything about the latter place's past?
user
Until 1475 the High and Low Lordship of Urk and Emmeloord was in the hands of the Van Kuinre family
assistant
what does the economy of this place depend upon?
user
Fishery
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is there any waterbody nearby ?
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North Sea
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what kind of marine organisms are found in this sea?
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Cod, haddock, whiting, saithe, plaice, sole, mackerel, herring, pouting, sprat, and sandeel
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what kind of minerals are found in this sea?
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Sand, gravel and rolled pieces of amber
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does this place experiences any natural hazards?
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Storm surges and tsunamis
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are whales captured here?
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Whaling was an important economic activity from the 9th until the 13th century by by 1902 the whaling had ended
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any particular whale species that was hunted?
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Gray whale
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where are they found?
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This mammal is descended from filter-feeding whales that appeared at the beginning of the Oligocene, over 30 million years ago. The gray whale is distributed in an eastern North Pacific (North American), and an endangered western North Pacific (Asian), population. North Atlantic populations were extirpated (perhaps by whaling) on the European coast before AD 500, and on the American coast around the late 17th to early 18th centuries. Even so, on May 8, 2010, a sighting of a gray whale was confirmed off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea, leading some scientists to think they might be repopulating old breeding grounds that have not been visited for centuries.
Gray whale | Introduction
Recent increases in sightings are confirmed in Arctic areas of the historic range for Atlantic stocks, most notably on several locations in the Laptev Sea including the New Siberian Islands in the East Siberian Sea, and around the marine mammal sanctuary of the Franz Josef Land, indicating possible earlier pioneers of re-colonizations. These whales were darker in body color than those whales seen in Sea of Okhotsk. In May 2010, a gray whale was sighted off the Mediterranean shore of Israel. It has been speculated that this whale crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Northwest Passage, since an alternative route around Cape Horn would not be contiguous to the whale's established territory.
Gray whale | Integration and recolonization
The gray whale ("Eschrichtius robustus"), also known as the grey whale, gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, or California gray whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds yearly. It reaches a length of , a weight of up to and lives between 55 and 70 years, although one female was estimated to be 75–80 years of age. The common name of the whale comes from the gray patches and white mottling on its dark skin. Gray whales were once called devil fish because of their fighting behavior when hunted. The gray whale is the sole living species in the genus Eschrichtius, which in turn is the sole living genus in the family Eschrichtiidae.
Gray whale | Introduction
This species typically lives in the Southern Hemisphere between 30 and 45°, and is typically observed at depths of . Many strandings have occurred off New Zealand, but others have happened off Australia, South Africa, South America, and the Falkland Islands. This species has been sighted in groups off the coast of Madagascar and in the Antarctic area. Oddly, one specimen stranded off the Netherlands, in a different hemisphere and several thousand miles away from all other strandings. No population estimates exist, but they are believed to be rather common.
Gray's beaked whale | Population and distribution
The North Atlantic population may have been hunted to extinction in the 18th century. Circumstantial evidence indicates whaling could have contributed to this population's decline, as the increase in whaling activity in the 17th and 18th centuries coincided with the population's disappearance. A. B. Van Deinse points out the "scrag whale", described by P. Dudley in 1725, as one target of early New England whalers, was almost certainly the gray whale. In his 1835 history of Nantucket Island, Obed Macy wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony, a whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers.
Gray whale | North Atlantic
Gray whales have been granted protection from commercial hunting by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) since 1949, and are no longer hunted on a large scale. Limited hunting of gray whales has continued since that time, however, primarily in the Chukotka region of northeastern Russia, where large numbers of gray whales spend the summer months. This hunt has been allowed under an "aboriginal/subsistence whaling" exception to the commercial-hunting ban. Anti-whaling groups have protested the hunt, saying the meat from the whales is not for traditional native consumption, but is used instead to feed animals in government-run fur farms; they cite annual catch numbers that rose dramatically during the 1940s, at the time when state-run fur farms were being established in the region.
Gray whale | Conservation
Humans and killer whales (orcas) are the adult gray whale's only predators, although orcas are the more prominent predator. Aboriginal hunters, including those on Vancouver Island and the Makah in Washington, have hunted gray whales. Commercial whaling by Europeans of the species in the North Pacific began in the winter of 1845–46, when two United States ships, the "Hibernia" and the "United States", under Captains Smith and Stevens, caught 32 in Magdalena Bay. More ships followed in the two following winters, after which gray whaling in the bay was nearly abandoned because "of the inferior quality and low price of the dark-colored gray whale oil, the low quality and quantity of whalebone from the gray, and the dangers of lagoon whaling." Gray whaling in Magdalena Bay was revived in the winter of 1855–56 by several vessels, mainly from San Francisco, including the ship "Leonore", under Captain Charles Melville Scammon.
Gray whale | Eastern population
John Edward Gray placed it in its own genus in 1865, naming it in honour of physician and zoologist Daniel Frederik Eschricht. The common name of the whale comes from its coloration. The subfossil remains of now extinct gray whales from the Atlantic coasts of England and Sweden were used by Gray to make the first scientific description of a species then surviving only in Pacific waters. The living Pacific species was described by Cope as "Rhachianectes glaucus" in 1869. Skeletal comparisons showed the Pacific species to be identical to the Atlantic remains in the 1930s, and Gray's naming has been generally accepted since.
Gray whale | Taxonomy
The species was first described in 1876 by Julius von Haast, director of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. He named it after the British taxonomist John Edward Gray, a zoologist at the British Museum. His description was based on three skulls he had received in May 1875 from a William Hood, Esq., who had retrieved them from three specimens that were part of a group of 28 individuals that had stranded on Waitangi Beach, Chatham Island, in the summer of 1874-75.
Gray's beaked whale | Taxonomy
The species is now only known from the northern Pacific Ocean where gray whales are found. The gray whale was present in the northern Atlantic Ocean between the Late Pleistocene and recent times, and "C. rhachianecti" fossils have been found on a beach in the Netherlands, showing that the barnacle must also have been present. This barnacle has been found between January and March for several years in captive beluga whales in San Diego Bay, near a route used by migratory gray whales. The barnacles have evoked a skin reaction in the beluga whales resulting in the eviction of the barnacles, which suggests an immune response.
Cryptolepas rhachianecti | Distribution
Gray whales (Icelandic "sandlægja") were described in Iceland in the early 17th century. Formations of industrial whaling among the Mediterranean basin(s) have been considered to be feasible as well.
Gray whale | North Atlantic
By 1934, the western gray whale was near extinction. From 1891 to 1966, an estimated 1,800–2,000 gray whales were caught, with peak catches of between 100 and 200 annually occurring in the 1910s. As of 2001, the Californian gray whale population had grown to about 26,000. As of 2016, the population of western Pacific (seas near Korea, Japan, and Kamchatka) gray whales was an estimated 200.
Gray whale | Western population
This was the first of 11 winters from 1855 through 1865 known as the "bonanza period", during which gray whaling along the coast of Baja California reached its peak. Not only were the whales taken in Magdalena Bay, but also by ships anchored along the coast from San Diego south to Cabo San Lucas and from whaling stations from Crescent City in northern California south to San Ignacio Lagoon. During the same period, vessels targeting right and bowhead whales in the Gulf of Alaska, Sea of Okhotsk, and the Western Arctic would take the odd gray whale if neither of the more desirable two species were in sight.
Gray whale | Eastern population
Factors limiting or threatening current population levels include ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and changes in sea-ice coverage associated with climate change.
Gray whale | Prewhaling abundance
Predicted distribution models indicate that overall range in the last glacial period was broader or more southerly distributed, and inhabitations in waters where species presences lack in present situation, such as in southern hemisphere and south Asian waters and northern Indian Ocean were possible due to feasibility of the environment on those days. Range expansions due to recoveries and re-colonization in the future is likely to be happen and the predicted range covers wider than that of today. The gray whale undergoes the longest migration of any mammal.
Gray whale | Migration
It was first found in a minke whale carcass at a depth of in the Koster area in Sweden, and from sediment between beneath a fish farm in Hardangerfjord in Norway.
Ophryotrocha craigsmithi | Distribution
There has been gradual melting and recession of Arctic sea ice with extreme loss in 2007 rendering the Northwest Passage "fully navigable". The same whale was sighted again on May 30, 2010, off the coast of Barcelona, Spain. In May 2013, a gray whale was sighted off Walvis Bay, Namibia. Scientists from the Namibian Dolphin Project confirmed the whale's identity and thus provides the only sighting of this species in the Southern Hemisphere. Photographic identification suggests that this is a different individual than the one spotted in the Mediterranean in 2010. As of July 2013, the Namibian whale was still being seen regularly.
Gray whale | Integration and recolonization
In some years, the whales have also used an offshore feeding ground in depth southeast of Chayvo Bay, where benthic amphipods and cumaceans are the main prey species. Some gray whales have also been seen off western Kamchatka, but to date all whales photographed there are also known from the Piltun area.
Gray whale | Feeding
Although identity between the Atlantic and Pacific populations cannot be proven by anatomical data, its skeleton is distinctive and easy to distinguish from that of all other living whales. Many other names have been ascribed to the gray whale, including desert whale, devilfish, gray back, mussel digger and rip sack. The name "Eschrichtius gibbosus" is sometimes seen; this is dependent on the acceptance of a 1777 description by Erxleben.
Gray whale | Taxonomy
In May and June 2013, a gray whale was sighted off the coast of Namibia – the first confirmed in the Southern Hemisphere. The round-trip journey of one gray whale has set a new record for the longest mammal migration, covering a distance of more than 22,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean. Her migration has shown new insight into how endangered species are making drastic changes in their life style.
Gray whale | Introduction
The shallow lagoon waters in which gray whales reproduce are believed to protect the newborn from sharks and orcas. On 7 January 2014, a pair of newborn or aborted conjoined twin gray whale calves were found dead in the Laguna Ojo de Liebre (Scammon's Lagoon), off the west coast of Mexico. They were joined by their bellies.
Gray whale | Reproduction
Grays were caught from June to October. They were seldom seen, chased, or caught off the Shantar Islands or in the bays to the south of them. As many as nine grays could be caught in a season. They sometimes caught humpbacks, killers, and belugas and also made desultory attempts to catch blue whales and "finbacks" (probably fin whales). Once they found a whale, they typically sailed up to it, fastened to it with hand-held harpoons, and killed it with hand-held lances; whales were rarely killed by harpoons alone. Boatsteerers were "broken" (demoted) for missing whales. Bomb lances were used as early as 1851, but they weren't widely utilized until the late 1850s.
Whaling in the Sea of Okhotsk | Catch
Because of their size and need to migrate, gray whales have rarely been held in captivity, and then only for brief periods of time. The first captive gray whale, who was captured in Scammon's Lagoon, Baja California in 1965, was named Gigi and died two months later from an infection. The second gray whale, who was captured in 1972 from the same lagoon, was named Gigi II and was released a year later after becoming too large for the facilities. The last gray whale, J.J., first beached herself in Marina del Rey, California where she was rushed to SeaWorld San Diego.
Gray whale | Captivity
A number of 18th century authors described the gray whale as "Balaena gibbosa", the "whale with six bosses", apparently based on a brief note by : The gray whale was first described as a distinct species by based on a subfossil found in the brackish Baltic Sea, apparently a specimen from the now extinct north Atlantic population. Lilljeborg, however, identified it as ""Balaenoptera robusta"", a species of rorqual. realized that the rib and scapula of the specimen was different from those of any known rorquals, and therefore erected a new genus for it, "Eschrichtius". Things got increasingly confused as 19th century scientists introduced new species at an alarming rate (e.g.
Eschrichtiidae | Taxonomic history
The hunt also took an average of one or two gray whales each year until 1996. The quota was reduced to zero in that year due to sustainability concerns. A future review may result in the gray whale hunt being resumed. Bowhead whales weigh approximately 5–10 times as much as minke whales. The Makah tribe in Washington state also reinstated whaling in 1999, despite protests from animal rights groups. They are currently seeking to resume whaling of the gray whale, a right recognized in the Treaty of Neah Bay, within limits (Article 4 of the Treaty).
Whaling | United States
Several whales seen off Sakhalin and on Kamchatka Peninsula are confirmed to migrate towards eastern side of Pacific and join the larger eastern population. In January 2011, a gray whale that had been tagged in the western population was tracked as far east as the eastern population range off the coast of British Columbia. Recent findings from either stranded or entangled specimens indicate that the original western population have become functionally extinct and possibly all the whales appeared on Japanese and Chinese coasts in modern times are vagrants or re-colonizers from the eastern population. In mid-1980, there were three gray whale sightings in the eastern Beaufort Sea, placing them further east than their known range at the time.
Gray whale | Integration and recolonization
This corresponds with the DNA analysis of last recorded stranding in China. Differences were also observed between Korean and Chinese specimens.
Gray whale | Pacific groups
The Japanese began to catch gray whales beginning in the 1570s. At Kawajiri, Nagato, 169 gray whales were caught between 1698 and 1889. At Tsuro, Shikoku, 201 were taken between 1849 and 1896. Several hundred more were probably caught by American and European whalemen in the Sea of Okhotsk from the 1840s to the early 20th century. Whalemen caught 44 with nets in Japan during the 1890s. The real damage was done between 1911 and 1933, when Japanese whalemen killed 1,449 after Japanese companies established several whaling stations on Korean Peninsula and on Chinese coast such as near the Daya bay and on Hainan Island.
Gray whale | Western population
The gray whale also lacks a dorsal fin, instead bearing 6 to 12 dorsal crenulations ("knuckles"), which are raised bumps on the midline of its rear quarter, leading to the flukes. This is known as the dorsal ridge. The tail itself is across and deeply notched at the center while its edges taper to a point.
Gray whale | Description
These whales have not been hunted deliberately and they have not been entangled in fishing gear. Gray's beaked whale is included in the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Conservation of the Manatee and Small Cetaceans of Western Africa and Macaronesia (Western African Aquatic Mammals MoU) and the Memorandum of Understanding for the Conservation of Cetaceans and Their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region (Pacific Cetaceans MoU)
Gray's beaked whale | Conservation
Although extremely rare, white whales have been sighted here.
Samarinvågen | Introduction
Adult males often carry linear scars that probably result from fighting, and both males and females may display circular scars from cookiecutter shark bites. "M. grayi" are long and weigh around . They are believed to be around long when born.
Gray's beaked whale | Description
The gray whale has a dark slate-gray color and is covered by characteristic gray-white patterns, scars left by parasites which drop off in its cold feeding grounds. Individual whales are typically identified using photographs of their dorsal surface and matching the scars and patches associated with parasites that have fallen off the whale or are still attached. They have two blowholes on top of their head, which can create a distinctive heart-shaped blow at the surface in calm wind conditions. Gray whales measure from in length for newborns to for adults (females tend to be slightly larger than adult males).
Gray whale | Description
Parabalaenoptera is a genus of prehistoric baleen whale found in Marin County, California. The type species is "P. baulinensis". It was estimated to be about the size of the modern gray whale, about long. It lived during the late Miocene.
Parabalaenoptera | Introduction
Eschrichtiidae or the gray whales is a family of baleen whale (suborder Mysticeti) with a single extant species, the gray whale ("Eschrichtius robustus"). The family, however, also includes three described fossil genera: "Archaeschrichtius" and "Eschrichtioides" from the Miocene and Pliocene of Italy respectively, and "Gricetoides" from the Pliocene of North Carolina. The names of the extant genus and the family honours Danish zoologist Daniel Eschricht.
Eschrichtiidae | Introduction
Researchers used a genetic approach to estimate pre-whaling abundance based on samples from 42 California gray whales, and reported DNA variability at 10 genetic loci consistent with a population size of 76,000–118,000 individuals, three to five times larger than the average census size as measured through 2007. NOAA has collected surveys of gray whale population since at least the 1960s. They state that "the most recent population estimate [from 2007] was approximately 19,000 whales, with a high probability (88%) that the population is at 'optimum sustainable population' size, as defined by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They speculate that the ocean ecosystem has likely changed since the prewhaling era, making a return to prewhaling numbers infeasible.
Gray whale | Prewhaling abundance
This species was described from a whalefall, a dead whale which was experimentally placed in Monterey Canyon, California at a depth of 1820 m (). It was also seen on video from an ROV at another whalefall in Santa Cruz Basin, at a depth of 1676 m.
Dendronotus patricki | Distribution
Global sea levels were about higher than modern levels when these whales lived. The fossils were discovered inland from the modern coastline. The invertebrate fossils recovered along with the main mass of bones showed that the whale died well off-shore in a shallow, open water environment approximately from the coastline (today Georgia's Fall Line). These invertebrate fossils also allowed accurate dating of the remains.
Georgiacetus | Paleoenvironment
Gray whales, as large as 36 tonnes, was the normal target. Hunting Gray whales in small boats was a very dangerous occupation, as many hunters were killed or injured. John Brown Whaling Company also operated at Portuguese Bend, starting in 1869. The last hunt was in 1885 due to the lack of the over hunted whales. Captain Joseph Clark is believed to have started the whaling industry in 1864. Gray whales were given protection from commercial hunting in 1949 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and are no longer hunted on a large scale. Los Angeles had real estate boom in 1887.
Old Whaling Station | Introduction
On September 8, 2007, five members of the Makah tribe shot a gray whale using high-powered rifles in spite of the decision. The whale died within 12 hours, sinking while heading out to sea.
Gray whale | Conservation
Fish and Wildlife Service, first in the San Francisco Bay area, and from 1952, on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus in La Jolla. In 1954, participating in Carl L. Hubbs's seven-year gray whale breeding survey, Gilmore (with Gifford C. Ewing) discovered the species's mainland calving sites in the Gulf of California. In 1969, Gilmore led a National Science Foundation research team to Antarctica; on the expedition, the team discovered the breeding grounds of the right whale off the coast of Argentina.
Raymond Gilmore | Biography
The whale watching industry provides ecotourists and marine mammal enthusiasts the opportunity to see groups of gray whales as they migrate. By late December to early January, eastern grays begin to arrive in the calving lagoons and bays on the west coast of Baja California Sur. The three most popular are San Ignacio, Magdalena Bay to the south, and, to the north, Laguna Ojo de Liebre (formerly known in English as Scammon's Lagoon after whaleman Charles Melville Scammon, who discovered the lagoons in the 1850s and hunted the grays).
Gray whale | Eastern Pacific population
Mostly, the animal feeds in the northern waters during the summer; and opportunistically feeds during its migration, depending primarily on its extensive fat reserves. Another reason for this opportunistic feeding may be the result of population increases, resulting in the whales taking advantage of whatever prey is available, due to increased competition. Feeding areas during migration seem to include the Gulf of California, Monterey Bay and Big California Sur. Calf gray whales drink of their mothers' 53% fat milk per day. The main feeding habitat of the western Pacific subpopulation is the shallow ( depth) shelf off northeastern Sakhalin Island, particularly off the southern portion of Piltun Lagoon, where the main prey species appear to be amphipods and isopods.
Gray whale | Feeding
However, due to a poor fossil record of "Livyatan", collecting bias is another possible explanation. The holotype of "L. melvillei" is from the Tortonian stage of the Upper Miocene 9.9–8.9 mya in the Pisco Formation of Peru, which is known for its well-preserved assemblage of marine vertebrates. Among the baleen whales found, the most common was an undescribed species of cetotheriid whale measuring around , and most of the other baleen whales found were roughly the same size. Toothed whale remains found consist of beaked whales (such as "Messapicetus gregarius"), ancient pontoporiids (such as "Brachydelphis mazeasi"), oceanic dolphins, and the raptorial sperm whale "Acrophyseter".
Livyatan | Palaeoecology
After 14 months, she was released because she also grew too large to be cared for in the existing facilities. At and when she was released, J.J. was the largest marine mammal ever to be kept in captivity.
Gray whale | Captivity
Several species of cetaceans are found near the Farallon Islands, most frequently gray whales, blue whales, and humpback whales. Blue whales and humpback whales are most frequently found near the islands in the summer and fall, when strong upwelling may support a rich pelagic food web. Orca whales are also found around the islands. Gray whales are reliably found near the Farallones during their spring migration north and the fall and winter migration south. Some gray whales may also be found during the summer, when a few whales skip the trip north to Alaska and spend the summer months off the coast of Canada and the continental United States.
Farallon Islands | Whales
Two Pacific Ocean populations are known to exist: one population that is very low, whose migratory route is presumed to be between the Sea of Okhotsk and southern Korea, and a larger one with a population of about 27,000 individuals in the eastern Pacific traveling between the waters off northernmost Alaska and Baja California Sur. Mothers make this journey accompanied by their calves, usually hugging the shore in shallow kelp beds, and fight viciously to protect their young if they are attacked, earning gray whales the moniker, devil fish. The western population has had a very slow growth rate despite heavy conservation action over the years, likely due to their very slow reproduction rate.
Gray whale | North Pacific
The fin whale is a large baleen whale that belongs to the Cetacean order, which includes all species of whale, dolphin, and porpoise. At least two recognized subspecies exist, in the North Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere. It is found in all the major oceans, from polar to tropical waters. It is absent only from waters close to the pack ice at the poles and relatively small areas of water away from the open ocean. The highest population density occurs in temperate and cool waters. Its food consists of small schooling fish, squid, and crustaceans including copepods and krill. Like all other large whales, the fin whale was heavily hunted during the 20th century.
Fin whale | Introduction
Newborns are a darker gray to black in color. A mature gray whale can reach , with a typical range of , making them the ninth largest sized species of cetacean. Notable features that distinguish the gray whale from other mysticetes include its baleen that is variously described as cream, off-white, or blond in color and is unusually short. Small depressions on the upper jaw each contain a lone stiff hair, but are only visible on close inspection. Its head's ventral surface lacks the numerous prominent furrows of the related rorquals, instead bearing two to five shallow furrows on the throat's underside.
Gray whale | Description
Found on the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia to North Carolina, in streams and rivers, the Great Lakes, and in the Seneca and Cayuga Lakes.
Grayback (fish) | Geographic distribution
The submersible recovered a jawbone and phalanges. The whale was considered to be a gray whale based on the size of the bones and the skeleton, the lack of teeth and its location west of Santa Catalina. The first whale-fall ecosystem, which included a chemoautrophic assemblage living on the anaerobic breakdown of organic material in whale bones, was discovered by a team of scientists led by University of Hawaii oceanographer Craig Smith in 1987. The DSV Alvin observed the remains using scanning sonar at in the Catalina Basin and collected the first photographic images and samples of animals and microbes from this remarkable community.
Whale fall | Discovery
Vincent and the Grenadines each year. Several species that were commercially exploited have rebounded in numbers; for example, grey whales may be as numerous as they were prior to harvesting, but the North Atlantic population is functionally extinct. Conversely, the North Atlantic right whale was extirpated from much of its former range, which stretched across the North Atlantic, and only remains in small fragments along the coast of Canada, Greenland, and is considered functionally extinct along the European coastline. The IWC has designated two whale sanctuaries: the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The Southern Ocean whale sanctuary spans and envelopes Antarctica.
Whale | Conservation
Eschrichtius akishimaensis, described in 2017, is one of two species, with the modern day gray whale, of the genus "Eschrichtius", and is the first and only fossil species of the genus, dating to around 1.77–1.95 million years ago (mya) in the Early Pleistocene. The bones were first found in 1961 by a father and son, Masato and Yoshio Tajima, in a riverbed in Akishima, Tokyo, lending it a nickname the Akishima whale, and put into storage at the National Museum of Nature and Science until it was transferred to Gunma Museum of Natural History to be studied. The skeleton consists of a skull, neck vertebrae, thoracic vertebrae, lumbar vertebrae, tail vertebrae, chevrons, ribs, and arm bones, and has a total length of about .
Akishima whale | Introduction
It is drive hunted in some Japanese villages. The false killer whale has a tendency to mass strand given its highly social nature, with the largest stranding consisting of 805 beached at Mar del Plata, Argentina. Most of what is known of this species comes from examining stranded individuals.
False killer whale | Introduction
The coloration of females is not known, since the only specimen was moderately decomposed. Calves are light to dark gray dorsally and white ventrally. The lower jaw and throat regions are white.
Perrin's beaked whale | Morphology
Mounted blue whale skeletons can be found prominently in the cathedral-like entrance hall to the Natural History Museum (London, UK); the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz (California); the Melbourne Museum (Australia); Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (California); New Bedford Whaling Museum (Massachusetts); North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC); Iziko South African Museum (Cape Town, South Africa); Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa); Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada); Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada); Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St.
Blue whale | Museum specimens
The gray whale is traditionally placed as the only living species in its genus and family, "Eschrichtius" and Eschrichtiidae, but an extinct species was discovered and placed in the genus in 2017, the Akishima whale ("E. akishimaensis"). Some recent DNA analyses have suggested that certain rorquals of the family Balaenopteridae, such as the humpback whale, "Megaptera novaeangliae", and fin whale, "Balaenoptera physalus", are more closely related to the gray whale than they are to some other rorquals, such as the minke whales. But other recent studies place gray whales as being outside the rorqual clade, but as the closest relatives to the rorquals.
Gray whale | Taxonomy
Each October, as the northern ice pushes southward, small groups of eastern gray whales in the eastern Pacific start a two- to three-month, trip south. Beginning in the Bering and Chukchi seas and ending in the warm-water lagoons of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula and the southern Gulf of California, they travel along the west coast of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Traveling night and day, the gray whale averages approximately per day at an average speed of . This round trip of is believed to be the longest annual migration of any mammal. By mid-December to early January, the majority are usually found between Monterey and San Diego such as at Morro bay, often visible from shore.
Gray whale | Eastern Pacific population
Prior to the setting up of the IWC in 1946, unregulated whaling had depleted a number of whale populations to a significant extent, and several whales species were severely endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) notes that the Atlantic population of gray whales was made extinct around the turn of the eighteenth century. Examination of remains found in England and Sweden found evidence of a separate Atlantic population of gray whales existing up until 1675. Radiocarbon dating of subfossil remains has confirmed this, with whaling the possible cause. Whaling and other threats have led to at least five of the 13 great whales being listed as endangered.
Whale conservation | Conservation status
American whaleships hunted bowhead and gray whales in the bay from the 1860s to 1900. Some traded with the natives.
Gizhigin Bay | History
Lawrence), whale bones were found near a Basque galleon that sank in 1565. Researchers from Parks Canada and the Canadian Museum of Nature analysed the morphology and genetics the bones, but after comparing them with North Atlantic whale bone DNA, they concluded that the Basques primarily hunted bowhead whales, not right whales. To study the genetics of contemporary whales, Brown extracts North Atlantic right whale bone DNA by using a Crossbow and biopsy tip to collect whale skin samples. She, works with a team of geneticists at Trent University under the leadership of Bradley White to analyze and record these samples to create a right whale "family tree".
Moira Brown | Natural Resources DNA Profiling and Forensic Centre
The species’ identity was confirmed by the discovery of two specimens from New Jersey, an immature male captured near Atlantic City in 1889 and an adult female found stranded at North Long Branch in 1905.
Gervais' beaked whale | History of discovery
In 2005, two conservation biologists proposed a plan to airlift 50 gray whales from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. They reasoned that, as Californian gray whales had replenished to a suitable population, surplus whales could be transported to repopulate the extinct British population. this plan has not been undertaken.
Gray whale | Rewilding proposal
Minke whales were individually identified using the shape of the dorsal fin and nicks along its edges, variations in lateral body pigmentation, and small oval scars in three separate study sites on the western coast of North America. These individuals showed strong small-scale site fidelity. A total of 55 whales were identified, 30 in the San Juan Islands of Washington state from 1980 to 1984, 17 in the Monterey Bay area of central California from 1984 to 1987, and eight in the Johnstone Strait area of British Columbia from 1981 to 1987 – although in the last region most were only photographed incidentally to the study of killer whales.
Common minke whale | Site fidelity
In 1993 , a damaged calvaria was found washed up on Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile, and was described as a new species, "Mesoplodon bahamondi" or Bahamonde's beaked whale. In December 2010, two specimens, a cow and calf, were found stranded on Opape Beach, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. They were originally identified as Gray's beaked whale, but later genetic analysis revealed that they represented the first complete specimens of the spade-toothed whale. Following this find, a report describing the spade-toothed whale and an analysis of their DNA later appeared in the 6 November 2012 issue of the journal "Current Biology".
Spade-toothed whale | Introduction
However, many new species of whale have been discovered in recent years, many of them just from carcasses.
Cryptid whale | Giglioli's Whale
The current dig at the Gray Fossil Site was determined to have been the location of a semi-circular sinkhole that once harbored a pond environment over a long period of time and is now yielding the remains of the ancient plants and animals that lived, watered, and died within the then watery sinkhole. Among the many vertebrate fossils found at the Gray Fossil Site are those of frogs, snakes, turtles and tapirs and recovered fossil records represent finds from approximately one percent of the total area of the Gray Fossil Site that has been explored --- and future fossil recovery from the entire site is projected to continue on for one hundred years.
Gray Fossil Site | Introduction
Gray's beaked whale is a fairly slender member of the genus. The melon on the whale bulges towards the blowhole and slopes down towards the beak. The beak itself is very long and pointed for a beaked whale, and has a relatively straight mouth line. In both sexes, 17–22 small teeth per row located towards the back of the mouth have been reported, but not confirmed. In males, two small, triangular teeth are present halfway down the mouth. The overall coloration is dark on top and light below, and both sexes have a white beak. Females are lighter on top and have additional white markings near the genitals.
Gray's beaked whale | Description
The Graysby is found in the western Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. It is found from Cape Fear, North Carolina and Bermuda south to the Caribbean coast of South America. Claims of this species being recorded from Brazil require confirmation.
Graysby | Distribution
The total population is unknown. Fossils identified as belonging to "K. breviceps" have been recovered from Miocene deposits in Italy, Japan, and southern Africa.
Pygmy sperm whale | Population and distribution
The last report of occurrence of the species in Chinese waters was of a stranded semi adult female in the Bohai Sea in 1996, and the only record in Chinese waters in the 21st century was of a fully-grown female being killed by entanglement in Pingtan, China in November, 2007. DNA studies indicated that this individual might have originated from the eastern population rather than the western.
Gray whale | Recent migration in Asian waters
They can determine when and where an individual whale has travelled throughout its lifetime, and monitor whale population demographics, reproductive efforts, mortality, behavior, migration patterns and occurrence rates of human-caused scarring. Results gathered from this research can then be used to discover species-wide problems and implement recovery strategies, such as the Bay of Fundy Traffic Separation Scheme, enforced in 2003.
Moira Brown | Photo Identification Catalogue
During the 1839-43 voyage of James Clark Ross, naturalists found bones and baleen plates resembling a smaller version of the right whale. In his "Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus and Terror" (1846), John Edward Gray described the new species, naming it "Balaena marginata". In 1864, Gray established a new genus ("Caperea") after receiving a skull and some bones of another specimen. Six years later, in 1870, he added the name "Neobalaena". He soon realized the three species were one and the same: "Caperea marginata" ("caperea" means "wrinkle" in Latin, "referring to the wrinkled appearance of the ear bone"; while "marginata" translates to "enclosed with a border", which "refers to the dark border around the baleen plates of some individuals").
Pygmy right whale | Taxonomy
Although the Soviet government denied these charges as recently as 1987, in recent years the Russian government has acknowledged the practice. The Russian IWC delegation has said that the hunt is justified under the aboriginal/subsistence exemption, since the fur farms provide a necessary economic base for the region's native population. Currently, the annual quota for the gray whale catch in the region is 140 per year. Pursuant to an agreement between the United States and Russia, the Makah tribe of Washington claimed four whales from the IWC quota established at the 1997 meeting. With the exception of a single gray whale killed in 1999, the Makah people have been prevented from hunting by a series of legal challenges, culminating in a United States federal appeals court decision in December 2002 that required the National Marine Fisheries Service to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement.
Gray whale | Conservation
This was a whale species that was previously only known from an incomplete specimen from the United States.
Maude Delap | Collecting and research
There is sometimes a dark blaze between the head and dorsal fin as well. One female in the Southern Hemisphere was bluish black with a white area between the dorsal fin and tail as well as a light gray jaw and throat, as well as black speckling. One individual from the Canary Islands had an area of white from snout to blowhole. Scars from fighting and cookiecutter sharks are present on males. This species reaches around with the females weighing and the males weighing . They are around long when born.
True's beaked whale | Physical description
Necropsies on the brains of gray whales revealed iron oxide particles, which may allow them to find magnetic north like a compass.
Baleen whale | Internal systems
Pentewan was likely once visited by gray whale ("Eschrichtius robustus") as 2 of the 7 European gray whale fossils were found here. The gray whale prefers shallow seas and the shallow seas over the continental shelf of the South Western Approaches is one of the widest in north-western Europe. The first gray whale to be seen in the Atlantic in centuries was sighted in 2010. The Northwest Passage was then ice-free and so apparently a gray whale from the Pacific Ocean made it to Europe. More whales are likely to follow. In 2005 it was proposed to reintroduce them to Pentewan, which would likely attract throngs of tourists to the beaches.
Pentewan | Natural History of Pentewan
Morawanocetus is a genus of extinct primitive baleen whale from the family Aetiocetidae that existed during the Chattian stage of the Oligocene epoch. Its fossils have been found in the North Pacific. "Morawanocetus" was named by Barnes "et al." in 1995, who described the species, "M. yabukii". Three new species, dating from 17 to 19 million years ago, were unearthed between 2000 and 2005 in a road-widening project in California. These three new specimens of "Morawanocetus", a genus thought to have gone extinct some five million years earlier, were discovered next to a fourth specimen, still under preparation, which clearly has archaeocete dentition.
Morawanocetus | Introduction
The last gray whale, J.J., beached itself in Marina del Rey, California, where it was rushed to SeaWorld San Diego and, after 14 months, was released because it got too big to take care of. Reaching and , J.J. was the largest creature to be kept in captivity. The Mito Aquarium in Numazu, Shizuoka, Japan, housed three minke whales in the nearby bay enclosed by nets. One survived for three months, another (a calf) survived for two weeks, and another was kept for over a month before breaking through the nets.
Baleen whale | In captivity
Gray was a keen amateur zoologist who made some important contributions to Arctic biology, giving an account of whale behaviour and history that were reported by the Zoological Society of London. He also made some anatomical diagrams. Gray estimated that Peterhead whalers had killed 4,195 whales between 1788 and 1879. Peterhead harbour now operates a large whitefish fishery fleet and is the largest whitefish port in Britain.
Peterhead Bay | Whaling and fishing
On , 1988, Inupiaq hunter Roy Ahmaogak discovered three gray whales trapped in pack ice in the Beaufort Sea near Point Barrow in the U.S. state of Alaska. The hunter used a chainsaw to attempt cutting a path in the ice leading to open water. Fellow villagers helped the hunter by using water pumps to keep ice from reforming overnight. Word spread through the Inupiat community about the whales, and biologists from North Slope Borough, Alaska, visited the site and realized the danger. A Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane heavylift helicopter was tasked to create holes in the ice using a 5-ton hammer.
Operation Breakthrough | Rescue effort
It is estimated M. carlshubbi are along the coast of Japan and Pacific coast of North America. The distribution along North America extends from San Diego to Prince Rupert. Southern limit is unknown but the northern limit is Vancouver Island. Distribution is probably not directly related to the character of the water mass but rather follows the distribution of the prey species it feeds on. M. carlshubbi follows prey items in intermediate and deep-water masses, rather than surface water masses.
Hubbs' beaked whale | Population and distribution
Whaling was an important economic activity from the 9th until the 13th century for Flemish whalers. The medieval Flemish, Basque and Norwegian whalers who were replaced in the 16th century by Dutch, English, Danes and Germans, took massive numbers of whales and dolphins and nearly depleted the right whales. This activity likely led to the extinction of the Atlantic population of the once common gray whale. By 1902 the whaling had ended. After being absent for 300 years a single gray whale returned, it probably was the first of many more to find its way through the now ice-free Northwest Passage.
North Sea | Whaling
"Eobalaenoptera" was first described in June 2004 by researchers at the Virginia Museum of Natural History from a partial skeleton found in 1990 in Caroline County, Virginia, the site of a prehistoric ocean, in the middle Miocene Calvert Formation. The 11 m (35 ft) skeleton proved to have similar morphological characteristics to a clade of whales consisting of two modern taxonomic families – Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), and Eschrichtiidae (a family with one surviving species, the gray whale). The age of the Calvert Formation (14 million years) makes "Eobalaenoptera" the oldest known member of Balaenopteroidea by three to five million years.
Eobalaenoptera | Discovery and significance
Since the discovery of the type specimen, it has been found off the eastern coast of the United States, Ireland, the Canary Islands, western Africa, and Ascension Island. In August 2001, a specimen was found off São Paulo, Brazil; the southernmost specimen found to date. The species is believed to be naturally rare, and no population estimates have been attempted. Although this species frequently strands, until 1998, no one had made a confirmed sighting of the species. Since then, only ten other sightings have occurred. There had been a possible stranding of this species in Israel.
Gervais' beaked whale | Population and distribution
In 2010, a gray whale was found in the Mediterranean Sea, even though the species had not been seen in the North Atlantic Ocean since the 18th century. The whale is thought to have migrated from the Pacific Ocean via the Arctic. Climate Change & European Marine Ecosystem Research (CLAMER) has also reported that the Neodenticula seminae alga has been found in the North Atlantic, where it had gone extinct nearly 800,000 years ago. The alga has drifted from the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic, following the reduction in polar ice. In the Siberian subarctic, species migration is contributing to another warming albedo-feedback, as needle-shedding larch trees are being replaced with dark-foliage evergreen conifers which can absorb some of the solar radiation that previously reflected off the snowpack beneath the forest canopy.
Climate change and ecosystems | Species migration
Killer whales are found in all oceans and most seas. Due to their enormous range, numbers, and density, relative distribution is difficult to estimate, but they clearly prefer higher latitudes and coastal areas over pelagic environments. Areas which serve as major study sites for the species include the coasts of Iceland, Norway, the Valdes Peninsula of Argentina, the Crozet Islands, New Zealand and parts of the west coast of North America, from California to Alaska. Systematic surveys indicate the highest densities of killer whales (>0.40 individuals per 100 km) in the northeast Atlantic around the Norwegian coast, in the north Pacific along the Aleutian Islands, the Gulf of Alaska and in the Southern Ocean off much of the coast of Antarctica.
Killer whale | Range and habitat
Gyrinomimus grahami is a flabby whalefish of the genus "Gyrinomimus", found in all the southern oceans.
Gyrinomimus grahami | Introduction
The gray fox is a species of fox found in North, Central, and northern South America. Grey fox or gray fox may also refer to:
Grey fox (disambiguation) | Introduction
Gray's beaked whale ("Mesoplodon grayi"), sometimes known as Haast's beaked whale, the scamperdown whale, or the southern beaked whale, is one of the better-known members of the genus "Mesoplodon". This species is fairly gregarious and strands relatively frequently for a beaked whale. In the Māori language, this species is called "hakurā" or "iheihe".
Gray's beaked whale | Introduction
According to Howe, the Charlotte whale and the Mount Holly mammoth that had been found the previous year on the same railroad dig, were crucial evidence and motivation to research glaciation in New England. The whale skeleton was found in the sediments of the Champlain Sea, a prehistoric sea that existed from approximately 12,500 to 10,000 years earlier in the modern-day Champlain Valley that had been formed by the melting glaciers at the close of the last glacial period. At that time, the area in which the sea was located had been depressed below the sea level by the enormous weight of the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
Charlotte whale | Scientific significance and research
The skills learned from processing drift whales, such as flensing (stripping the blubber), may have led to seeking out live ones. For example, the Makah of Washington State have been hunting grey whales for at least 1500 years, but were harvesting stranded whales for many centuries before that. On the other side of North America, drift whale scavenging on the Outer Banks of North Carolina led to organised hunts, documented at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. When the early settlers arrived in New England, they saw from the deck of the "Mayflower" a huge number of whales, far more than they were accustomed to see in European waters, according to American historian W.
Drift whale | From scavenging to hunting
Fossils of Eschrichtiidae have been found in all major oceanic basins in the Northern Hemisphere, and the family is believed date back to the Late Miocene. Today, gray whales are only present in the northern Pacific, but a population was also present in the northern Atlantic before being driven to extinction by European whalers three centuries ago. Fossil eschrichtiids from before the Holocene are rare compared to other fossil mysticetes. The only Pleistocene fossil from the Pacific referred to "E. eschrichtius" is a partial skeleton and an associated skull from California, estimated to be about 200 thousand years old. However, a late Pliocene fossil from Hokkaido, Japan, referred to "Eschrichtius" sp.
Eschrichtiidae | Evolution
Chrysocetus (from Greek "chrysous", "golden", and "ketos", "whale", in reference to the gold-colored bones of the type specimen) is a genus of extinct early whale known from Late Eocene-aged fossils of the eastern United States and western Africa.
Chrysocetus | Introduction
Before 1840, the range of the North Pacific right whale was extensive and had probably remained the same for at least hundreds of years. It could be found from the Sea of Okhotsk in the west to the coast of Canada. Our knowledge of the historic distribution of this whale comes almost entirely from the logbooks of the pelagic whalers (and the records of the shore-based whaling in Japan.) The first such effort were a series of charts known subsequently as the Maury "Whale Charts". In the late 1830s, the U.S. Navy sought wind and current information for areas of the oceans outside the trade routes regularly traveled by merchant ships.
North Pacific right whale | Historic distribution
They are considered "common" (0.20–0.40 individuals per 100 km) in the eastern Pacific along the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, in the North Atlantic Ocean around Iceland and the Faroe Islands. High densities have also been reported but not quantified in the western North Pacific around the Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk, Kuril Islands, Kamchatka and the Commander Islands and in the Southern Hemisphere off southern Brazil and the tip of southern Africa. They are reported as seasonally common in the Canadian Arctic, including Baffin Bay between Greenland and Nunavut, as well as Tasmania and Macquarie Island.
Killer whale | Range and habitat
In February 1867, a fisherman found an estimated male rorqual floating in the Río de la Plata near Belgrano, about ten miles from Buenos Aires, Argentina. After bringing it ashore he brought it to the attention of the German Argentine zoologist Hermann Burmeister, who described it as a new species, "Balaenoptera bonaerensis", the same year. The skeleton of another specimen, a individual taken off Otago Head, South Island, New Zealand, in October 1873, was sent by Professor Frederick Hutton, keeper of the Otago Museum in Dunedin, to the British Museum in London, where it was examined by the British zoologist John Edward Gray, who described it as a new species of "pike whale" (minke whale, "B.
Antarctic minke whale | History
Whale is an outdoor wooden sculpture of a gray whale, located in Cannon Beach, Oregon, United States.
Whale (sculpture) | Introduction
Mixocetus is a genus of extinct baleen whale belonging to the family Tranatocetidae. It is known only from the late Miocene (Tortonian) of Los Angeles County, California.
Mixocetus | Introduction