FPLV - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual whale
Over the course of seven years, scientists have used drones to record gray whales off Oregon’s central coast.
The extensive video footage has offered new insight into the various techniques these marine mammals use to find food.
Apparently, gray whales employ different swimming strategies to forage for food, depending on their sizes and ages. For example, to help them stay underwater, larger whales are more likely to exhale “bubble blasts.”
“Before this study, we thought that any whale used any of those behaviors,” said Clara Bird, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. “No one really thought that there was a pattern in who used which behavior.”
According to Bird, the depth of the water also played a role in the techniques the whales used to eat their prey.
The information could be helpful for future conservation work because it reveals which habitats are most important to preserve.
Part of the gray whale population is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The entire species was once in danger of extinction due to commercial hunting.
Gray whales used to be common across the Northern Hemisphere, but now they are only regularly seen in the North Pacific.
According to a 2020 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it was estimated that just under 27,000 gray whales were in the area as of 2016. The whales eat amphipod crustaceans like tiny shrimp and worms.
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