The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever existed, measuring 30 metres in length and weighing 180 metric tons! A bluish-grey marine mammal with a slightly lighter underbelly, the blue whale comes in three varieties: B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean, B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and B. m. brevicauda of the Indian Ocean and Southern Pacific Ocean.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, blue whales were abundant in almost every ocean on Earth. Sadly, for over 100 years they were hunted by, not hosting dedicated, but whalers until almost extinct. In 1966 the international community brought whales under their protection and in 2002 it was estimated that between 5000 and 12000 blue whales exist worldwide. Before whaling, the largest population of B. m. brevicauda’s, or Pygmy whales, was in the Antarctic, numbering roughly 239,000. It is most common for blue whales to live alone or with one other whale, and it is not in their nature to form close-knit groups as is so often seen in other baleen species.