The Blue Whale!!

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whales (Mysticeti). At 30 metres (98 ft) in length and 170 tonnes (190 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest known animal ever to have existed.

Long and slender, the blue whale’s body can be various shades of bluish-grey dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath. There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small crustaceans known as krill.

Blue whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the beginning of the twentieth century. For over a century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide, located in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate. Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000). There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.

The first published description of the blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald’s Phalainologia Nova (1694). In September 1692, Sibbald found a blue whale that had stranded in the Firth of Forth—a male 78-feet-long—which had “black, horny plates” and “two large apertures approaching a pyramid in shape”.

The specific name musculus is Latin and could mean “muscle”, but it can also be interpreted as “little mouse”.[18] Carl Linnaeus, who named the species in his seminal Systema Naturae of 1758,[19] would have known this and may have intended the ironic double meaning.[20] Herman Melville called this species sulphur-bottom in his novel Moby-Dick due to an orange-brown or yellow tinge on the underparts from diatom films on the skin. Other common names for the blue whale have included Sibbald’s rorqual (after Sibbald, who first described the species), the great blue whale and the great northern rorqual. These names have now fallen into disuse. The first known usage of the term blue whale was in Melville’s Moby-Dick, which only mentions it in passing and does not specifically attribute it to the species in question. The name was really derived from the Norwegian blåhval, coined by Svend Foyn shortly after he had perfected the harpoon gun; the Norwegian scientist G. O. Sars adopted it as the Norwegian common name in 1874.[17]

Authorities classify the species into three or four subspecies: B. m. musculus, the northern blue whale consisting of the North Atlantic and North Pacific populations, B. m. intermedia, the southern blue whale of the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda, the pygmy blue whale found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific,[21] and the more problematic B. m. indica, the great Indian rorqual, which is also found in the Indian Ocean and, although described earlier, may be the same subspecies as B. m

The blue whale has a long tapering body that appears stretched in comparison with the stockier build of other whales.[22] The head is flat, U-shaped and has a prominent ridge running from the blowhole to the top of the upper lip.[22] The front part of the mouth is thick with baleen plates; around 300 plates (each around one metre (3.2 ft) long)[22] hang from the upper jaw, running 0.5 m (1.6 ft) back into the mouth. Between 70 and 118 grooves (called ventral pleats) run along the throat parallel to the body length. These pleats assist with evacuating water from the mouth after lunge feeding (see feeding below).

The dorsal fin is small,[22] ranging in height from 8–70 centimeters (3.1–27.6 in) (usually 20–40 centimeters (7.9–15.7 in)) and averaging about 28 centimetres (11 in).[23] It is visible only briefly during the dive sequence. Located around three-quarters of the way along the length of the body, it varies in shape from one individual to another; some only have a barely perceptible lump, but others may have prominent and falcate (sickle-shaped) dorsals. When surfacing to breathe, the blue whale raises its shoulder and blowhole out of the water to a greater extent than other large whales, such as the fin or sei whales. Observers can use this trait to differentiate between species at sea. Some blue whales in the North Atlantic and North Pacific raise their tail fluke when diving. When breathing, the whale emits a spectacular vertical single-column spout up to 12 metres (39 ft), typically 9 metres (30 ft). Its lung capacity is 5,000 litres (1320 U.S. gallons). Blue whales have twin blowholes shielded by a large splashguard.[22]

The flippers are 3–4 metres (9.8–13.1 ft) long. The upper sides are grey with a thin white border; the lower sides are white. The head and tail fluke are generally uniformly grey. The whale’s upper parts, and sometimes the flippers, are usually mottled. The degree of mottling varies substantially from individual to individual. Some may have a uniform slate-grey color, but others demonstrate a considerable variation of dark blues, greys and blacks, all tightly mottled.[3]

Blue whales can reach speeds of 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph) over short bursts, usually when interacting with other whales, but 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) is a more typical traveling speed.[3] When feeding, they slow down to 5 kilometres per hour (3.1 mph).

Blue whales most commonly live alone or with one other individual. It is not known how long traveling pairs stay together. In locations where there is a high concentration of food, as many as 50 blue whales have been seen scattered over a small area. They do not form the large, close-knit groups seen in other baleen species…

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