Blue Whales - Science topic

Documenting long-term changes in the trophic structure of food webs and how species respond to these changes is essential to forecast their vulnerability and resilience to environmental stressors. Over the past decades, the St. Lawrence marine ecosystem (Canada) has experienced major changes in its physical, chemical, and biological conditions from...

Aim: Species distribution models (SDMs) are essential tools in ecology and conservation. However, the scarcity of visual sightings of marine mammals in remote polar areas hinders the effective application of SDMs there. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) data provide year-round information and overcome foul weather limitations faced by visual survey...

Social information is predicted to enhance migratory performance, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the extreme spatial scale of oceanic ecosystems remains unclear. Here w...

Usually, it is easy to tell species apart by what they look like, for example, a blue whale and a horse. Chinstrap and Adelie penguins are closely related species, but we can still tell them apart by their unique color patterns. However, sometimes different species look incredibly similar, and we must use special methods to tell them apart. These a...

Historically, the Seychelles archipelago was an opportunistic whaling ground for fleets en route to and from the Antarctic. Soviet whalers illegally killed 500 blue whales near the Seychelles in the 1960s. Since then, no dedicated research has occurred to understand the ecological importance of this region for blue whales. Based on opportunistic si...

Marine mammals have always captured the imagination of the people they share their environment with, but few people know that various species populate the waters of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The world’s second largest population of dugongs reside in the Abu Dhabi Emirate, while two species of dolphins (Indian Ocean humpback and Indo-Pacific b...

Evaluating potential impacts on marine animals or increased sound levels resulting from offshore wind energy construction requires the establishment of baseline data records from which to draw inference. This study provides 2 years of baseline data on cetacean species’ presence, vessel activity, and ambient sound levels in the southern New England...

The present paper reports the molecular analysis (CoI) of a female blue whale Balaenoptera musculus (Linnaeus, 1758) of approximately 40 ft in length, stranded on June 29, 2020 at Mandarmani along the West Bengal coast. This is the second record of stranding of blue whale along the coast after 1934. The strandings provides vital information on spec...

The 20 th century commercial whaling industry severely reduced populations of great whales throughout the Southern Hemisphere. The effect of this exploitation on genetic diversity and population structure remains largely undescribed. Here, we compare pre- and post-whaling diversity of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region sequences for three gre...

The fossil record of cetaceans documents how terrestrial animals acquired extreme adaptations and transitioned to a fully aquatic lifestyle. In whales, this is associated with a substantial increase in maximum body size. Although an elongate body was acquired early in cetacean evolution, the maximum body mass of baleen whales reflects a recent dive...

The temporal characteristics of whale song are considered to be amongst the most stable elements of song production, though very few studies have looked at the timing of discrete sounds or the silences between them. This study indicates that the temporal characteristics of the song of the southeast Indian Ocean pygmy blue (SEIOPB) whale are highly...

This paper describes the distribution, abundance and seasonal variation in blue whales (BWs) on the south coast of Sri Lanka, off Mirissa, where they are faced with anthropogenic threats. Data collection encompassed opportunistic sightings by whale-watching (WW) operations. This study revealed that large aggregations of BWs consistently overlapped...

Objectives: This article concerns the phenomenon of "death groups" – suicidal communities – as a social media phenomenon. It specifies the stages of their development, the characteristics of these groups –– with particular emphasis on the "Blue Whale" game. It is indicated that one of the main roles in committing suicidal acts among young people is...

Ecosystem-based management for marine life conservation is of growing consensus, although the focus on protecting either charismatic or commercially important species still persist, understating species playing key functional roles. Here we quantified the topological importance of species with high economic or conservation value by simulating extin...

Antarctic krill are very important animals. They are well-known as the food of ocean giants such as blue whales, but they also feed many other animals and help to slow climate change by keeping millions of tons of carbon out of the air. Antarctic krill grow no longer than a human thumb, but together they weigh more than any other wild animal specie...

To develop a passive acoustic monitoring system for diversity detection and thereby adapt to the challenges of a complex marine environment, this study harnesses the advantages of empirical mode decomposition in analyzing nonstationary signals and introduces energy characteristics analysis and entropy of information theory to detect marine mammal v...

Marine passive acoustic monitoring can be used to study biological, geophysical, and anthropogenic phenomena in the ocean. The wide range of characteristics from geophysical, biological, and anthropogenic sounds sources makes the simultaneous automatic detection and classification of these sounds a significant challenge. Here, we propose a single H...

Od momentu swojego powstania, media nie tylko dostarczają informacji, ale równieżprzyczyniają się do kreowania postaw i poglądów. Wywierają na życie społeczne ogromny wpływ, który przekłada się na konkretne działania. Artykuł porusza kwestię konsekwencji jakie może wywoływać fake news. Tłem rozważań jesthistoria nieistniejącej gry internetowej Nieb...

A blue whale was recorded 36 km off Ecuador's central coast on 22 January 2023. Its size was estimated at 18 m by eye. Although whaling records demonstrate that the coast of Ecuador is part of its distribution range, there is only one previous report of the species in recent years. It is unclear if this is because of the low research effort on the...

This study examines the impact of different temporal subsampling strategies on two types of acoustic behaviors of cetaceans, namely the seasonal patterns of blue whale songs and the daily presence of delphinids, to understand the effectiveness of duty cycle recording strategies in long-term passive acoustic monitoring. The research aims to provide...

The use of photographs to assess the health of free-ranging cetaceans has been increasingly used over the last years. To explore the potential threats on baleen whales feeding along the Northwestern coast of Spain (Galicia), we used a non-invasive method through the analysis of photographs to assess markings of natural and anthropogenic origin on t...

Marine mammals spend most of their life underwater, but have to come to the surface to breath, which makes the study of their diving behaviour really important to know these animals better. Many cetacean species are threatened by human activities, and one of the most important anthropogenic threats for whales is noise pollution, which can impair th...

Highly polymorphic single tandem repeat loci (STR, also known as microsatellite loci) remain a familiar, cost efficient class of markers for genetic analyses in ecology, behavior and conservation. We characterize a new universal set of ten STR loci (from 28 potential candidate loci) in seven baleen whale species, which are optimized for PCR amplifi...

Information about blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) in the Eastern Tropical Pacific is scarce with only few whales sighted within the last decades. Molecular, photo ID and acoustic studies suggest a connectivity of Chilean and Antarctic blue whales to potential breeding areas off the coast of Peru and in the Galapagos, whereas blue whales of the...

As part of the International Whaling Commission’s SOWER blue whale research programme, two sighting vessels, the Shonan Maru and the Shonan Maru No.2, surveyed the Madagascar Plateau between 25° and 35°S, 40° and 45°E, in December 1996. A total of 95 sightings of 110 blue whales (assigned in the field as pygmy blue whales – see discussion), 14 sigh...

Context Carnivores influence the spatial heterogeneity of biogeochemical processes in ecological communities through predation and the deposition of animal carcasses, and these processes may lead to positive feedback loops that influence large-scale patterns of nutrient cycling. Objectives We assessed whether ambush predator foraging impacted soil...

Maximum lifespan is a species-specific trait that can vary over a broad range, even between closely related species. We selected the few long-lived vertebrates for which reference genome data is available, specifically the blue whale Balaenoptera musculus and the Pinta Island tortoise Chelonoidis abingdonii. For these species, we used established m...

Oceans across the globe are warming rapidly and marine ecosystems are changing as a result. However, there is a lack of information regarding how blue whales are responding to these changing environments, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. This is because long term data are needed to determine whether blue whales respond to variability in envir...

In this paper, we study to improve acoustical methods to identify endangered whale calls with emphasis on the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus). A promising method using wavelet scattering transform and deep learning is proposed here to detect/classify the whale calls quite precisely in the increasingly noisy...

Animal behavior is motivated by the fundamental need to feed and reproduce, and these behaviors can be inferred from spatiotemporal variations in biological signals such as vocalizations. Yet, linking foraging and reproductive effort to environmental drivers can be challenging for wide‐ranging predator species. Blue whales are acoustically active m...

A multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional pilot expedition was organised by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) to the ice-free areas of the Western Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean onboard ORV Sagar Kanya during the austral summer of 2004 (January-March). This survey, conducted by the Central Marine Fisheries R...

A total of 111 samples from Southern Hemisphere blue whales were sequenced for 420 base pairs of the mitochondrial control region and all but one of those were genotyped over seven microsatellite loci. Comparisons were made between samples from three broad geographic regions: the southeast Pacific Ocean; Indian Ocean; and around the Antarctic conti...

Abstract In 2022 Biosphere Expeditions concluded its 16th year of cetacean photo-identification and distribution studies in the Azores, after a two-year break for COVID-19. The expedition was based in Horta on the island of Faial and work was conducted around the three islands of Faial, Pico and São Jorge. The expedition ran from 21 March to 21 Apr...

Geographic variations in size and proportions of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) were investigated using length data acquired from whaling records and aerial photogrammetric surveys. Results showed that blue whales found in the eastern Pacific off Central and North America are significantly shorter (by approximately 2m) than blue whales found a...

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is one of the most common cetaceans in the waters around Sri Lanka and in a worldwide context one of the highest low-latitude sighting rates for this species has been recorded in these waters. As genetic analyses, acoustic studies and even long-term sighting surveys for blue whales in these waters are limited,...

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a technique that measures strain changes along an optical fiber to distances of ∼100 km with a spatial sensitivity of tens of meters. In November 2021, 4 days of DAS data were collected on two cables of the Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array extending offshore central Oregon. Numerous 20 Hz fi...

Recovering marine animal populations and climate-driven shifts in their distributions are colliding with growing ocean use by humans. One such example is the bycatch of whales in commercial fishing, which poses a significant threat to the conservation and continued recovery of these protected animals and is a major barrier to sustainable fisheries....

The NOAA-NPS Ocean Noise Reference Station Network (NRS) is a passive acoustic monitoring effort to record the low-frequency (<2 kHz) sound field throughout the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Data collection began in 2014 and spans 12 acoustic recording locations. To date, NRS datasets have been analyzed to understand spatial variation of large-scal...

During three surveys in the austral summers of 2013, 2015, 2019, data on Antarctic blue whale blow rates, dive times, swim speeds, and broadscale movements were collected using video photogrammetric tracking and intra-voyage photo-identification. A total of 24.4 hours of video observations were suitable for blow interval or movement analysis. Simil...

Details are provided on 17 previously unreported catches of blue whales, and 93 catches of North Pacific right whales, all taken illegally by the former USSR. The blue whale catches were made between mid-July and mid-September 1972 in the eastern North Pacific at distances of from 96 to 626 nautical miles from the US west coast (Oregon and Washingt...

This study analyzed forms of local wisdom in Lamalera on whaling, the role of the Lamalera locals in whaling, factors influencing Lamalera locals in whaling and, the consequences and solutions to the factors that influence the Lamalera community in whaling. The researchers used the ethnographic approach and the Sustainable Levelihood Approach (SLA)...

The eastern Great Australian Bight (GAB) is a significant marine ecosystem, featuring a range of marine mammals and large pelagic fish including blue whales, sharks and tuna. Previous research has classified the region as generally oligotrophic, apart from late austral summer months when seasonal upwelling triggers phytoplankton blooms in the regio...

Marine sediments from the western coast of southern Africa record the origin of the Benguela Upwelling System, one of the most productive in the world. High productivity, in turn, is reflected in a diverse marine mammal fossil assemblage, comprising whales, dolphins and a phocid seal. Here, we describe new records of baleen whale (mysticete) fossil...

Marine mammals include toothed and baleen whales, as well as seals, sea lions, sea cows, sea otters and polar bears. They are adapted to an aquatic life in oceanic, coastal and riverine habitats. They range in size from sea otters to blue whales. The extreme diversity of marine mammals is related to their adaptations to different habitats and their...

Satellite tags were deployed on two Antarctic blue whales ( Balaenoptera musculus intermedia ) in the east Antarctic sector of the Southern Ocean as part of the International Whaling Commission’s Southern Ocean Research Partnership initiative. The satellite tracks generated are the first and currently, the only, satellite telemetry data that exist...

The number of strandings and unusual mortality events that involve marine mammals may have increased, and potential pathogens of the respiratory tract have been found during examination of individuals in many of these events. Given that the core microbiome is key to understand host-bacteria relationships and to identify their relevance for host hea...

Neural Networks I developed this audit outline based on LGPD to protect artificial and natural neural networks. Like the idea of a non-romanticized transmitting master, a Plato, a Fernão Gaivota who summons the enlightened to go to the square to face death, inciting his integrity, in a blue whale, to suicide, to take his correspondence, to an envir...

BACKGROUND The Blue Whale Challenge (BWCh) was a widely reported media hoax in 2017, presented as a online game that encouraged teenagers to commit suicide. The actual link between this internet phenomenon and the suicide remains doubtful. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to analyze the scale of BWCh interest and the suicidal content in polish T...

In response to the imperfections of current sequence alignment methods, originated from the inherent serialism within their corresponding electrical systems, a few optical approaches for biological data comparison have been proposed recently. However, due to their low performance, raised from their inefficient coding scheme, this paper presents a n...

Length measurement of individuals provides useful information for biological and ecological studies and is instructive in estimating and parameterization of population dynamics and to identify changes in population structure. This study presents a photogrammetric method to estimate the total length of blue whales from a boat, using sequential image...

During systematic line-transect aerial surveys flown to collect data on marine mammal den-sity and behavior in the Southern California Bight (for detailed methodology, see Jefferson et al., 2014; Lomac-MacNair & Smultea, 2016; Smultea, 2016), the opportunity arose to inter-rupt the survey to circle and video-document a blue whale (Balaenoptera musc...

Supplementary material file to: Smultea, M.A., F.C. Robertson, and D. Fertl. 2022. Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) Mother–Calf Pair Behavioral Response to Vessel in the Southern California Bight. Aquatic Mammals 48(6), 690-692.

Blue whales Balaenoptera musculus are the most abundant and widely distributed cetacean species in Sri Lankan waters. A vessel-based opportunistic line transect survey focusing on marine mammals was conducted in Sri Lankan waters between 24 June to 12 July 2018, while an ecosystem survey was performed by the R/V Dr. Fridtjof Nansen. The entire tran...

Microparticles, such as microplastics and microfibers, are ubiquitous in marine food webs. Filter-feeding megafauna may be at extreme risk of exposure to microplastics, but neither the amount nor pathway of microplastic ingestion are well understood. Here, we combine depth-integrated microplastic data from the California Current Ecosystem with high...

Blue whales are rarely sighted off the coasts of South Africa due to their low numbers and offshore habitat preference. Visual observations to search for marine mammals were conducted onboard a platform of opportunity during the Integrated Ecosystems Programme survey in November 2019. A cow–calf pair of blue whales Balaenoptera musculus was sighted...

The use of the internet has increased among adolescents in recent years. Although internet offers many opportunities such as socializing, obtaining information, it also has the potential to affect vulnerable individuals negatively. Recently the blue whale game, known as the blue whale challenge has attracted the attention of the public with numerou...

To understand the exposure and potential sources of emerging brominated flame retardants (EBFR) and organophosphate esters (OPEs) in marine wildlife from the Norwegian Arctic, we investigated concentrations of EBFRs in 157 tissue samples from nine species of marine vertebrates and OPEs in 34 samples from three whale species. The samples, collected...

Northern Chilean Patagonia is a mega-estuarine system where oceanic waters mix with freshwater inputs in the coastal fjords, channels and gulfs. The aim of this study was to examine the distribution of blue and sei whales with respect to oceanographic conditions of the study area from the estuarine inner sea to the outer ocean. Ocean gliders were u...

Trophic transfer of energy through marine food webs is strongly influenced by prey aggregation and its exploitation by predators. Rapid aggregation of some marine fish and crustacean forage species during wind‐driven coastal upwelling has recently been discovered, motivating the hypothesis that predators of these forage species track the upwelling...

Automated photo-identification of blue whale individuals has received little attention over the years compared to humpback and right whales, most likely because of the difficulty of the task: blue whales are identified using the low-contrast pigmentation of their skin (light and dark shades of grey displayed in patches of varying sizes). This paper...

Little is known about the year-round occurrence of blue whales in Atlantic Canadian waters. We used passive acoustic monitoring to investigate blue whale call presence and increase our understanding of year-round blue whale occurrence along the eastern edge of the Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotia, Canada. Blue whale calls were recorded at 3 deep water si...

The Antarctic minke whale ( Balaenoptera bonaerensis ) (AMW) is one of the smallest species among baleen whales, occurring in the southern hemisphere from Antarctica to near the equator, and performing seasonal migrations from polar to tropical waters. Information about (AMW) occurrence in the winter breeding grounds is scarce, mostly coming from o...

Migration is a complex behavior that has evolved in multiple taxonomic groups as a means of accessing productive foraging grounds and environmentally stable areas suitable for reproduction. For migratory whales that forage throughout the year because of their high energetic demands, changes in the abundance of prey in different areas along their mi...

Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly employed to monitor whales, their population size, habitat usage, and behaviour. However, in the case of the eastern Indian Ocean pygmy blue whale (EIOPB whale), its applicability is limited by our lack of understanding of the behavioural context of sound production. This study explored the context of sin...

Climate impacts affect marine ecosystems worldwide with island nations such as New Zealand being extremely vulnerable because of their socio-economic and cultural dependence on the marine and costal environment. Cetaceans are ideal indicator species of ecosystem change and ocean health given their extended life span and cosmopolitan distribution, b...

The use of bioacoustics to answer scientific questions is increasing all over the world. Recording animal sounds, comprehending echolocation, long-term monitoring of species presence and measuring the anthropogenic noise in the aquatic environment are some applications in this area. In Latin America, bioacoustics is relatively recent, since the fir...

Eastern South Pacific southern right whales (ESPSRW) are a subpopulation of southern right whales ( Eubalaena australis ) off the coasts of Peru and Chile recognized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered as a result of heavy whaling efforts in the late 18th to 20th centuries. Most recent populatio...

Using photographs of swimming blue whales and mounted skeletons, the body form of the largest known animal is correctly restored, no previous effort having been entirely accurate in part because of the absence of rigorous technical efforts prior to this study. The maximum total length/depth ratio is about 7.5-8.1, with the greatest depth in the che...

Although gigantic body size and obligate filter feeding mechanisms have evolved in multiple vertebrate lineages (mammals and fishes), intermittent ram (lunge) filter feeding is unique to a specific family of baleen whales: rorquals. Lunge feeding is a high cost, high benefit feeding mechanism that requires the integration of unsteady locomotion (i....