As soon as orcas appear, if the gray whales are not paralyzed by fright, they head for shore and slide in as close as possible to the beach where sometimes the killers will not follow them. The devilfish will actually get into such shallow water as to roll in the wash and will even try to hide behind rocks. The orcas are not afraid of ships and will not leave the whales they are chasing when the vessels arrive, thus giving much assistance to the human hunters.
The posterior part of a gray whale. Note the scalloped dorsal ridge of the peduncle and the white markings along the sides.
Captain Johnson, of the Rex Maru, brought to the station at Ulsan a gray whale which had been shot in the breast between the fins. He had first seen killers circling about the whale which was lying at the surface, belly up, with the fins outspread. The animal was absolutely paralyzed by fright. The vessel steamed up at half speed and Johnson shot at once, the iron striking the whale squarely between the flippers.
The gray whales live in such constant terror that when porpoises are playing about a single animal, as frequently happens, it will sometimes become terrified and dash madly for the shore, thinking that the killers have appeared.
I have never personally witnessed it, but the gunners tell me that a pod of gray whales can be stampeded much like a herd of cattle. If three or four ships are near each other when a school of devilfish are found, they draw together, each vessel going at full speed, while the sailors beat tin pans and make as much noise as possible. The whales at once dive, but as soon as they rise to spout the vessels rush at them again. The devilfish go down once more but do not stay under long, ascending at shorter and shorter intervals until finally they are plowing along at the surface.
The animals are “scared up,” as the gunners say, and become terrified to such a degree that everything is forgotten except the desire to get away—and even the means of doing that. It is not always possible to stampede a herd, for often the whales will disappear at the first sound and not rise again until a long distance away. If killers are about, it is very easy for the ships to stampede a herd of gray whales.
Even if the devilfish do exhibit considerable stupidity when danger from orcas threatens, at other times they are the cleverest and most tricky of all large whales. One day Captain Melsom, on the S. S. Main, was hunting a gray whale in a perfectly smooth sea. The animal had been down for fifteen minutes when suddenly a slight sound was heard near the ship and a thin cloud of vapor was seen floating upward from a patch of ripples which might have been made by a duck leaving the surface. The whale had exposed only the blowholes, spouted, refilled the lungs, and again sunk, doing it almost noiselessly. The gunners assert that this is quite a usual occurrence when a single gray whale is being hunted.
One of the most interesting things in the life history of the devilfish is the annual migration which occurs as regularly as the seasons. In no other large cetacean is there anything like the migrating instinct which carries the gray whales from the icy waters of the north three thousand miles to the south to seek the warm lagoons of California and Korea in which to raise their young.
On both sides of the Pacific the migrations take place at almost the same time. Along the Korean coast near the end of November single pregnant females appear, traveling steadily southward; a little later both males and females are seen; and finally only males bring up the rear, all having passed by January 25th.