We still love Tui De Roy’s photo she let us use on the cover of @society4conbio.bsky.social!

Does anyone have any incredible photos of blue whales that you are willing to share for a special issue on blue whales, e.g. drone, interesting behavior, gorgeous backdrops, mother-calves, etc.?

Blue whale songs from the central/western North Pacific population heard in the Northern Marianas, peaking in June and December but relatively low call numbers and likely from distance animals. No visual sightings of blue whales in survey. Source: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Two new blue whale strandings off the SW coast of India in 2023 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Blue whales not so great at turning corners, as measured by centripetal acceleration, only better than gray whales, while humpbacks are the clear champions (allowing them to produce tight bubble rings for feeding). doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Humpback whales are amazingly maneuverable, due to their extremely long flippers, and can turn on a dime. Blue whales are not too bad but clearly built for long-distance speed and not turning doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

We are very excited to welcome Trevor Branch to the podcast this month. Trevor is a Professor at University of Washington who runs models and does research on a number of things including Blue Whales.

Trevor Branch blew our minds a few times in the latest episode of the #WhaleTalesPodcast with his facts about Blue Whales but his Fun Flipper Fact might have been the most insane of all! 🤯🐳😲 buff.ly/zLH7Y0N #WhaleTales #BlueWhales @trevorabranch.bsky.social

We loved having @trevorabranch.bsky.social on the pod and are so happy that he shares his long awaited Blue Whale encounter with us! Read it on our website or listen to episode 83 🐳😍 buff.ly/B7A7AsK Photo credit: E. Cabrera, Centro de Conservación Cetacea: CCC Chile #WhaleTales #WhaleTalesPodcast

Very fun episode this month - @trevorabranch.bsky.social definitely blew our minds a few times with his incredible cetacean facts 🤯

As far as blue whales go no changes. Still includes B. m. indica as a separate subspecies (no genetic or other evidence). Still has N Pacific and N Atlantic as one subspecies (genetically separate). No subspecific status for SE Pacific (new papers show this is grouped with NE Pacific genetically).

Predictions of Antarctic, SW Indian, and SE Indian Ocean blue whale populations based on the extensive OHA-SIS-BIO network of hydrophones doi.org/10.1038/s415...

New free book: "Marine mammal acoustics in a noisy ocean", looks like an incredible intro to how sound works in the ocean and an overview of some of the big outstanding questions and answers. By Erbe et al. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Anyone have a copy of this "Proceedings of the Symposium on Marine Mammals of the Indian Ocean" Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1983

Cost of saving blue whales from ship strikes on the US west coast? Slowing vessels to 5 knots, with 8 deaths per year applied to 3% of region costs $28-78M. To reduce to 5 deaths needs speed limits in 43-47% of waters and costs $581-1217M doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

I'm talking about how the fear of orcas affects baleen whales on Monday at Science on Tap in Seattle, always an incredible audience asking lots of interesting questions www.scienceontap.org

Very cool online stranding database for Indonesia, includes 8 strandings of blue whales, run by Icha Mustika and others. Paper: doi.org/10.3390/ocea... Database: www.whalestrandingindonesia.com/new-database...

Really cool study: detecting penguin and whale dives from the sonar on krill-fishing vessels in the Antarctic. Amazing graphics too. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

"The greatest enemies of [blue whales] are whalers. And the narwhal or 'sea unicorn', a cetacean armed with a long pike, which pursues them, pierces them, and eats them." Who knew???? ;)

Incredibly old human-worked bone fragments in Spain/France include 2 from blue whales (labeled as "2" in the figure), and are dated back to 14,000 to 20,000 years ago! Most came from fin, sperm and gray whales... interesting since gray whales are extinct in the Atlantic now. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Long term blue whale song 2008-23 in southern California shows complex patterns: no clear trends over the decades; declining peak frequency over the time period; within each year a high frequency at the start of each summer then declining; no patterns by hour of the day. doi.org/10.1121/10.0...

A public talk by me 30 June in Seattle: "Whales fear orcas, changing their songs, migration and growth"

Incredible Blue Whale Fluke. Read the full story here: buff.ly/Yu7Pmrv Photo by Judith This is an encounter from 2014 #WhaleTales #BlueWhales

Satellite tracking of a blue whale from the Galapagos in August to the Costa Rica Dome in January and then to the outer coast of Baja California in July. Adds even more complexity to the variety of migration routes and paths for NE Pacific blue whales doi.org/10.1111/mms....

Blue whale song data from Mayotte (NW Madagascar) shows Antarctic blue whale singing May-August, and two peaks in SW Indian Ocean pygmy blue whale singing: May-June and Nov-Jan. Songs of Sri Lanka (CIO) and Oman (NWIO) populations detected, but rarely Dreo et al. pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art...

Blue whale calls heard in the SW Gulf of California in the Cerralvo Channel, but only the male-produced song calls and no feeding/social D-calls. Calls greatest in Jan-Feb. doi.org/10.1016/j.rs...

If you love blue whales, and would like to support more research, federal funding here in the US is very uncertain now... I'd happily accept a wealthy benefactor!

@bluewhalenews.bsky.social I stumbled on a post you made on X about a stranded whale in Sri Lanka circa 1946. My Dad was involved in this incident and wrote about it in his memoirs, which don’t quite match the official narrative! Don’t suppose you know where I can find the original article?

A long list of unanswered questions about blue whales posed in 1971 by George Small. How many of these have been answered by science in the intervening 50 years?

Blue whale milk contains about 10 times more fat than cow's milk, it's up to 50% fat! Source: Gregory et al. (1955)

Although blue whales are predicted to have high absolute heat loss; when scaled by body volume, heat loss is lower than for minke or humpback whales doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Blue whales are a lot skinnier than minke or humpback whales, but their surface area to volume ratio is very low doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Really amazing #photo from João Quaresma! Blue #whale and the island of Pico (Azores) with snow in the background. The blue whales have arrived in the #Azores! 🐋🦭🦑

Incredible number of remoras attached to this blue whale sighted off Baja California in March 2025 📷Michael Fishbach, Great Whale Conservancy

Anyone have a copy of Marine Mammals of India by Vivekanandan and Jeyabaskaran in 2012? I'm looking for a copy of just the pages on blue whales.

No fasting in winter for pygmy blue whales: as they migrate from Australia to Indonesia, they snack all along the way, every 1-10 days. New data from tags that track feeding behavior. They are basically hobbits. doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

This is such a great contribution to understanding Pygmy blue whales and their unique songs.. and showcasing the incredible diversity of life in the oceans that we still know so little about. #science #whales #BlueWhale

Blue whales show far more directional movement (left plot, yellow colors) than fin whales (right plot), who tend to stay in the same region for longer (purple colors). Both species have occasional vagrants that wander far from the herd. doi.org/10.1186/s404...

Blue whales off California don't like diving deep at night doi.org/10.1186/s404...

Published! Our huge effort to obtain catch series for each of five overlapping populations of pygmy blue whales. Big collaboration with 30+ coauthors using spatial patterns of blue whale song (unique to each population) to figure out where each resides 1/n

Published! Our huge effort to obtain catch series for each of five overlapping populations of pygmy blue whales. Big collaboration with 30+ coauthors using spatial patterns of blue whale song (unique to each population) to figure out where each resides 1/n

Intermediate-sized whale species (10-15 m) are more maneuverable, allowing them to target fish species (with higher escape speeds) as well as krill. But the larger whale species increasingly feed on krill, and blue whales, the largest of all, are most dependent on krill doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Off Monterey Bay, blue whale song calls have been generally increasing over time (2015-2021), and are heard every day in Sept to November doi.org/10.1371/jour...

More evidence that N Pacific and SE Pacific blue whales are a single subspecies: first genetic data from the NW Pacific clusters with the NE Pacific and is very similar to SE Pacific. Both differ from Antarctic and Indian (pygmy) subspecies. Kiemel et al. (2024) www.icrwhale.org/pdf/TEREP008...

Despite high blue whale pregnancy rates, mother-calf pairs are rarely seen. @trevorabranch.bsky.social proposes a solution: most calves are born immediately after mothers depart summer feeding grounds (with field studies) but weaned just before returning. bit.ly/esr_56_63 @bluewhalenews.bsky.social

Very cool research @trevorabranch.bsky.social on #BlueWhale calves! Suggesting missing calves can be explained by mothers calving when leaving summer feeding grounds & wean on return. Fieldwork in potential calving areas may enlighten us further fish.uw.edu/2025/02/unra... 🗞️ doi.org/10.3354/esr01383

It's because most field studies are in summer feeding places with aggregated blue whales, but calving happens soon after they migrate away in fall/winter, and the calves are weaned just before they return to the feeding spots. www.int-res.com/abstracts/es...

Why are so few blue whale calves ever sighted? I delved into this mystery and I think I have an answer! Paper here: www.int-res.com/abstracts/es... Popular article: fish.uw.edu/2025/02/unra...

Looking for a Canadian marine mammal stranding expert with access to the databases of strandings there, for a blue whale paper collating all strandings globally. Please let me know if you can help.