Gray Whale Approaches a Boat Captain To Have Lice Removed From Its Body; How Do Ectoprasites Affect Cetaceans?

A gray whale and a boat captain have forged a close relationship. A man who has been a whale-watching captain also helps groom the cetaceans.

Captain in Mexico Grooms a Gray Whale

A video that went viral last month melted the heart of viewers because it showed a close bond between the massive sea creature and a man from Mexico.

The clip features a whale in Mexico's Ojo de Liebre Lagoon. It approached Paco Jimenez Franco's boat and lifted its heat from the water.

Franco removed some lice off the whale's body, and it stayed put. Voices can be heard from the background, with one saying the whale "loved it." It even flipped to the other side so Franco could remove the lice in that area.

According to Franco, it wasn't the first time the whale approached him to be groomed. He told The Dodo that the same whale and others had repeatedly approached him to remove the lice from their bodies. He admitted that he found their encounters very exciting, The Strait Times reported.

According to him, when he removed the first one, the gray whale approached him again, so he could continue what he did. Franco said the whale has returned on separate occasions to be groomed, and he was more than happy to oblige.

Franco said he learned more about them whenever the whales approached him and noticed a certain nobility in the mammals. For him, they are incredible.

Many praised Franco for his interaction with the gentle mammal. However, the encounter also opened the eyes of many netizens about whale lice. In the next section, we will discuss more of it.

What Are Whale Lice?

According to Science Direct, whale lice (cyamids) are crustaceans' ectoparasites. They live on the skin of some species of cetaceans, including gray whales.

Their native habitat is restricted to the skin surface of mainly sluggish baleen whales, which are challenging to examine due to their typical submerged and perpetual motion.

Whale lice are arthropods belonging to Cyamidae, order Amphipoda, subphylum Crustacea, class Malacostraca, and genus Cyamus. They share a close relationship with other more frequently seen amphipods, including sand hoppers and caprellids like the common marine peracarids. There are more than 5000 different kinds of crustaceans in total. However, there are only 23 different types of whale lice or cyamids.

How Does Whale Lice Affect Its Host?

As mentioned, they only live on the host's rough patches of skin. According to Smithsonian Ocean, they only cause minor skin damage.

Other whale lice species cohabitate with two to four different types of whales. At any stage of development, cyamids cannot freely move between whales or in the sea. As a result, they pass away if they lose contact with their host, although they can also be passed from mother to calf or during mating between cetaceans. On whales' surface, cyamids are typically found in areas shielded from water flow turbulence. For baleen whales, these areas include those near barnacles, skin folds or ventral grooves of the head, shielded areas around blowholes, eyes, flippers, margins of the lips, on callosities, wounds, and genital slits.

Researchers may distinguish one right whale from another by simply looking at distinctive patterns created by the white bodies of the whales crowding around rough spots on their skin.

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