New Delhi: Blue Whale is a creature to behold, mainly due to its sheer humungous size. The marine mammal and a baleen whale can reach a maximum length of 29.9 meters and weigh up to 199 tonnes and these make it the largest animal in history. Once found in abundance, the population of blue whales began to reduce since the end of the 19th century as we, the humans took it upon ourselves to hunt them down. It was such a mayhem that in 1966, the International Whaling Commission had to ban the hunting of all blue whales. In 2018, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed them as Endangered.
Blue Whale and the latest discovery
According to a recent study published in ‘Frontiers in Marine Science’, researchers have made a significant breakthrough when it comes to blue whales. The scientists studied the blue whales in the Antarctic for 15 years and published their findings. Researchers collected almost 3,900 hours of sound data in which they focused on three different types of calls of blue whales by using passive acoustic devices known as sonobuoys. These special buoys, when plopped in the ocean, can pick up the calls of Antarctic blue whales and locate them.
According to the study, Antarctic blue whales have three distinct calls, including the one exclusively made by the males, the Z-call, the Unit-A call which is found only in that region, and the ‘social’ D-call which both male and female whales make. These calls provide valuable insights into whale populations and behavior.
Brian Miller, a marine mammal acoustician from the Australian Antarctic Programme led the study which informs us about the behavior and distribution of Antarctic blue whales. According to Miller, this study is the most recent circumpolar date on the distribution of blue whales. Now researchers can reliably listen for the whales, sail to them, and see them. They can follow those animals and even take small biopsies of their skin and blubber.
While scientists are yet to decipher the exact meanings of these calls, they can monitor the movement of the whales by combining acoustic data with other methods like AI algorithms and drone footage and examine the impact that climate change can have on the population of blue whales and krill, their major food source. There can be more research using uncrewed vehicles, fitted with hydrophones (underwater microphones) and other instruments to their swim speeds and calls. According to Miller, this could become the springboard for future work as passive acoustic monitoring will play an important role in future research about Antarctic blue whales.
The article originally appeared on News Nine.