Species
Blue Whale
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The largest animal known to have ever lived, a baleen whale found in every ocean except the Arctic, reaching lengths beyond thirty meters and weights beyond 150 metric tons. Despite this size it feeds almost exclusively on krill, small shrimp-like crustaceans, which it captures by lunging through dense swarms and filtering thousands of liters of seawater through the baleen plates in its mouth in a single gulp. Blue whales were hunted to the edge of extinction in the twentieth century before international whaling bans took effect, and populations remain a small fraction of their pre-whaling size despite decades of legal protection.
Facts
Disputed
Population Estimate10,000
Global blue whale population estimates range roughly from 10,000 to 25,000 individuals depending on which of several genetically and geographically distinct subpopulations are counted and how recently each ocean basin was surveyed; the lower figure recorded here is the more conservative published estimate, not a settled consensus number. Scientific Name Conservation StatusIUCN Red List, assessed by Cooke, J.G. in 2018 (errata version published 2019). Global trend Endangered but increasing in the most-depleted regions (Antarctic and North Atlantic), recovering from 20th-century whaling. Cross-Tradition Connections
Demonstrates
The whale's streamlined, fin-bearing body shape is a classic example of hydrodynamic convergence shared with unrelated fish and extinct marine reptiles adapted to the same open-ocean environment.
Blue whale feeding grounds and migration routes track current-driven upwelling zones, where cold, nutrient-rich water sustains the dense krill swarms the species feeds on.
In Biome
In Ecosystem
NOAA's own text names Antarctic waters near the ice edge broadly rather than the Peninsula specifically; the Antarctic Peninsula's ice-edge waters sit within this described Southern Ocean summer feeding range.
Sources
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