Editing Gray whale (section)

===North Pacific===
[[File:Eschrichtius robustus1.jpg|thumb|[[Charles Melville Scammon]]'s 1874 illustration of a gray whale]]

====Eastern population====
Humans and [[orca]]s are the adult gray whale's only predators, although orcas are the more prominent predator.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=279|title=Gray Whales, Eschrichtius robustus|website=MarineBio.org|access-date=2018-12-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215222445/http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=279|archive-date=2018-12-15|url-status=dead}}</ref> Aboriginal hunters, including those on [[Vancouver Island]] and the [[Makah people|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."<ref name=Henderson1972>{{cite book
  | last = Henderson
  | first = David A.
  | title = Men & Whales at Scammon's Lagoon
  | publisher = Dawson's Book Shop
  | year = 1972
  | location = Los Angeles
}}{{clarify|reason="Dawson's Book Shop" is not a publisher but is a book seller; state the publisher;|date=March 2022}}</ref>

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]]. 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, California|Crescent City]] in northern California south to San Ignacio Lagoon. During the same period, vessels targeting [[North Pacific right whale|right]] and [[bowhead whale]]s 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.<ref name=Henderson1972/>

In December 1857, Charles Scammon, in the brig ''Boston'', along with his schooner-tender ''Marin'', entered Laguna Ojo de Liebre (Jack-Rabbit Spring Lagoon) or later known as Scammon's Lagoon (by 1860) and found one of the gray's last refuges. He caught 20 whales.<ref name=Henderson1972/> He returned the following winter (1858–59) with the bark ''Ocean Bird'' and schooner tenders ''A.M. Simpson'' and ''Kate''. In three months, he caught 47 cows, yielding {{convert|1700|oilbbl}} of oil.<ref name=Henderson1970>{{cite book
  | last = Scammon
  | first = Charles Melville |author2=David A. Henderson
  | title = Journal aboard the bark Ocean Bird on a whaling voyage to Scammon's Lagoon, winter of 1858–59
  | publisher = Dawson's Book Shop
  | year = 1972
  | location = Los Angeles
}}{{clarify|reason="Dawson's Book Shop" is not a publisher but is a book seller; state the publisher;|date=March 2022}}</ref> In the winter of 1859–60, Scammon, again in the bark ''Ocean Bird'', along with several other vessels, entered San Ignacio Lagoon to the south where he discovered the last breeding lagoon. Within only a couple of seasons, the lagoon was nearly devoid of whales.<ref name=Henderson1972/>

Between 1846 and 1874, an estimated 8,000 gray whales were killed by American and European whalemen, with over half having been killed in the Magdalena Bay complex (Estero Santo Domingo, Magdalena Bay itself, and Almejas Bay) and by shore whalemen in California and Baja California.<ref name=Henderson1972/>
[[File:Gray Whale Spyhopping courtesy of Marc Webber USFWS.jpg|thumb|Spyhopping off the Alaskan coast]]
A second, shorter, and less intensive hunt occurred for gray whales in the eastern North Pacific. Only a few were caught from two whaling stations on the coast of California from 1919 to 1926, and a single station in Washington (1911–21) accounted for the capture of another. For the entire west coast of North America for the years 1919 to 1929, 234 gray whales were caught. Only a dozen or so were taken by British Columbian stations, nearly all of them in 1953 at [[Coal Harbour, British Columbia|Coal Harbour]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Tønnessen |first=Johan |author2=Arne Odd Johnsen |author2-link=Arne Odd Johnsen  |title=The History of Modern Whaling |year=1982 |publisher=University of California Press, Berkeley |isbn=0-520-03973-4 }}</ref> A whaling station in [[Richmond, California]], caught 311 gray whales for "scientific purposes" between 1964 and 1969. From 1961 to 1972, the Soviet Union caught 138 gray whales (they originally reported not having taken any). The only other significant catch was made in two seasons by the steam-schooner ''California'' off [[Malibu, California]]. In the winters of 1934–35 and 1935–36, the ''California'' anchored off [[Point Dume]] in Paradise Cove, processing gray whales. In 1936, gray whales became protected in the United States.<ref>Brownell Jr., R. L. and Swartz, S. L. 2006. The floating factory ship California operations in Californian waters, 1932–1937. ''International Whaling Commission'', ''Scientific Committee''.</ref>

====Western population====
The Japanese began to catch gray whales beginning in the 1570s. At Kawajiri, [[Nagato Province|Nagato]], 169 gray whales were caught between 1698 and 1889. At [[Tsuro, Japan|Tsuro]], [[Shikoku]], 201 were taken between 1849 and 1896.<ref>Kasuya, T. (2002). "Japanese whaling", in ''Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals''. W. F. Perrin, B. Wursig, and J.G.M. Thewissen, eds. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 655–662, {{ISBN|978-0-12-373553-9}}.</ref> Several hundred more were probably caught by American and European whalemen in the [[Sea of Okhotsk]] from the 1840s to the early 20th century.<ref name="Weller, D. et al 2002">{{cite journal|title=The western gray whale: a review of past exploitation, current status and potential threats |author=David W. Weller |author2=Alexander M. Burdin |author3=Bernd Würsig |author4=Barbara L. Taylor |author5=Robert L. Brownell Jr|url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=usdeptcommercepub|journal=Journal of Cetacean Research and Management |volume= 4|issue=1|pages=7–12|year=2002|display-authors=etal|via=University of Nebraska - Lincoln}}</ref> 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. 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.<ref name="Weller, D. et al 2002"/>

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.<ref name="fisheries.noaa.gov"/>