Blue whale sightings in the Gulf of California and off Baja California, Mexico (blue circle), and the proposed shipping route for LNG ships from Puerto Liberdad Source: earthjustice.org/wp-content/u...

Radically different sternum shapes in adult blue whales (bottom right) compare to juveniles and other whale species. The sternum bone is where all the muscles attach that allow lunge feeding, and determines the kind of filter feeding for each species doi.org/10.1007/s109...

Compilation of 60 satellite tags on blue whales around Australia/Indonesia reveals migration pathways and occasional vagrant wanderers Source: www.nespmarinecoastal.edu.au/publication/...

Automated machine learning tool WHALESHAPE used to find body length and shape for ~1000 whales including ~100 blue whales. Body length estimates within 5% of manual measures for 96% of blue whale images doi.org/10.1111/mms....

Differences between arch calls and D calls in blue whales in the Northwest Atlantic (Gulf of St. Lawrence). Trained detector is able to distinguish between them, finding that arch calls are longer (6.5 sec vs. 1.8 sec) Source: doi.org/10.1109/CAOS...

How do blue whales search for and locate feeding opportunities in their vast, fluid 3D foraging habitat? Check out our new paper, led by John Ryan, which provides a high-resolution answer to this question using a remarkable confluence of bio-logging and oceanographic data tinyurl.com/wa4usbpp

High-precision localized feeding by blue whales

Ryan et al. use biologging and satellite remote sensing to show how blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) can precisely and persistently localize feeding within a favorable foraging habitat by sensing a...

tinyurl.com

MBARI@mbarinews.bsky.social · 5d ago

Precise giants: New research reveals how blue whales find food in a vast ocean 🐋 MBARI biological oceanographer John Ryan shares how a team of researchers used bio-logging tags and satellite data to learn how blue whales find dense swarms of krill. Learn more: www.mbari.org/news/precise...

Three new sightings of blue whales in the SE Arabian Sea, far offshore from India (225-1240 km from Kerala) in ocean depths of 2600-4500 m, all adults. From Indian surveys searching over 280 hr and 5900 km of trackline. doi.org/10.6024/jmba...

Surge in blue whale sightings off Namibia and South Africa suggests they are making a comeback after many thousands were caught on these coasts from 1910s to 1964. Presence of a high proportion of mother-calf pairs (3 of 14 sightings) suggests a calving/nursing region doi.org/10.2989/1814...

Two blue whales were able to precisely target krill aggregations for feeding by following thermal fronts: places with sharp temperature changes in the ocean Ryan et al. (2026) doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Blue whale calls detected in the mid-Atlantic Ocean on an extensive seismic network showing that peak calling is in December and centered around the Azores. Surprisingly many calls around Madeira Island given the rarity of sightings there. Figure S4 in Saoulis et al. (2026) doi.org/10.26443/sei...

Recorded talk: blue whales around the world. By Bruce Mate, Dawn Barlow, and Kate Stafford, to celebrate the installation of the blue whale skeleton at the Hatfield Center, Newport, Oregon State University www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNZ...

Summer Seminar - July 16, 2026: Blue Whales around the world, OSU MMI Researchers

YouTube video by Hatfield Marine Science Center

youtube.com

Blue whales are very skinny (narrow, small body area) compared to humpbacks and Antarctic minke whales. doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

All models are wrong but some are useful: how computer models are used to figure out the current status of blue whale populations (talk by me, @trevorabranch.bsky.social) www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsOT...

Summer Seminar - June 24, 2026: Dr. Trevor Branch, UW, All models are wrong, but some are useful

YouTube video by Hatfield Marine Science Center

youtube.com

Lunge feeding by blue whales observed north of Timor Leste, during their southbound migration back to Australian waters Source: doi.org/10.1071/PC26...

Lovely drone sequences of blue whales off Alor, Indonesia www.instagram.com/p/DbQRqk8DFq... www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...

Flexible heart beat rates allow blue whales to lunge feed deep under water www.sciencealert.com/scientists-a...

Blue Whales Shouldn't Be Able to Hunt The Way They Do. Scientists Have Finally Discovered How They Pull It Off

When a blue whale dives below the waves, their heart rate plummets to conserve oxygen.

sciencealert.com

New assay developed that can detect blue whale DNA in a sample of seawater... though field testing off Newfoundland did not obtain detectable DNA. Fin whales were more detectable this way than visually, though. doi.org/10.1002/edn3... Object Identifier (DOI)

Blue whale calls off Nova Scotia: the two types of calls (infrasonic songs and audible D-calls) are often heard on different days, thus both are needed to detect blue whale presence in the region. doi.org/10.3354/esr0...

New data from Comoros shows blue whale calls there from the SW Indian Ocean blue whale population, but in less than 2% of the dataset, and primarily (75%) in June (data May-Sept). doi.org/10.1111/mms....

More than a thousand blue whale heart beats measured from new tags with ECGs: heart rate at around 5-8 beats per minute rises to ~22 bpm immediately after a feeding lunge, and then slowly declines while filtering out the krill doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Brilliant work by Rose Hilmo shows individual blue whale tracks in *winter* on feeding grounds in the NE Pacific, demonstrating some that are transiting and others hanging out doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Blue whale skeleton installed at Hatfield Marine Center, Newport, Oregon! news.oregonstate.edu/news/install...

Installation of rare blue whale skeleton gets underway at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center | Newsroom

UPDATE May 21, 2026: The blue whale skeleton is now complete and visitors to the coast are welcome to stop by Hatfield Marine Science Center to view it.

news.oregonstate.edu

New sightings and a stranding of blue whales in the SE Atlantic suggest a recovering, but still rare, population www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2...

In Lamakera, Indonesia (where baleen whaling still occurs), a community survey revealed that 55% see blue whales often. Blue whales are reported caught in in 2021 (baby) and 2022 (adult)*, but should not be. bioflux.com.ro/docs/2026.71... *it is possible these were Omura's or Bryde's whales.

New call types reported for eastern Indian Ocean blue whales, in addition to the classic song sequences and social D-calls doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Pretty cool project: Open Tree of Life. Here are the baleen whales in all their glory, with the surprising side story that blue and fin whales, which hybridize frequently, are not very closely related (B. musculus and B. physalus in the figure)

Rod Page@rdmpage.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I've released my experimental Open Tree of Life browser at iphylo.org/ott-viewer. You can navigate the Open Tree of Life synthesis tree in all its (complicated) glory. Single click on a node for information, double click to focus on that node, search for node by name.

Test of the effect of marine vibrators on blue whale behavior reveals some avoidance in lower prey densities but no change when prey density is high. doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Major effort to uncover blue whale movements using a catalog of 1074 individually photographed whales in the SE Pacific shows no matches between Chile and the Costa Rica Dome, but matches to the Galapagos. doi.org/10.1111/mms....

So excited! All the articles are finished for this special issue, now it's on to the typesetting and layout!

@bluewhalenews.bsky.social White Blue Whale spotted off Mexico! Was also sighted off Oregon last year: www.gob.mx/conanp/prens... www.facebook.com/share/1LFodc... www.facebook.com/share/r/1CVA...