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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Multiple blue whale sightings off Kamchatka Peninsula in June 2017 [blue circles] kamniro.elpub.ru/jour/article...

Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Blue whales are at the bottom of the food web relative to other marine mammals in the Atlantic Arctic: low isotopic nitrogen (y-axis) shows their position doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

New paper: monumental new compilation of blue whale strandings from antiquity to the present, led by Kristina Randrup and @trevorabranch.bsky.social. We found 541 reported records of which 303 were verified as blue whales with high certainty doi.org/10.1111/mms....

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Blue whales in the North Atlantic have distinct "arch" and D-calls that are audible to humans and differ from their songs. In the Gulf of St Lawrence, D-calls are about 4 times more common. While song is male-only, arch and D-calls are produced by both sexes doi.org/10.1109/CAOS...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The lower jaw bone of a blue whale is the largest single bone of any vertebrate ever, including fossils. It is enormously stronger and bigger than the same bone of a common minke whale doi.org/10.1111/j.10...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Why are blue whales migrating past Timor Leste covered with hundreds (hundreds!!!) of cookie-cutter shark bites? Cool video from OceanX starring Mark Meekan youtu.be/GMJrFE27chc?...

youtu.be

Blue Whales Are Covered in Hundreds of Shark-Bite Craters (Timor-Leste)

YouTube video by OceanX

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Blue whales [B. musculus] still very rare in the western Antarctic Peninsula region compared to fin, humpback, and minke whales: only 28 sightings in 39,336 km of search effort doi.org/10.1007/s003...

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

What was the longest ever blue whale? Find out in the next issue of Whalewatcher: all blue whales all the time. ACS members get a free printed copy www.acsonline.org/membership

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Entire special issue of Whalewatcher on blue whales coming soon! Greatest of all time! Edited by yours truly with 30 articles over 130+ gorgeous pages. Members of the American Cetacean Society get a printed copy, become a member here: www.acsonline.org/membership

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Travels and travails of the blue whale skeleton put on display in a multitude of countries after being brought to shore in Oostende in 1827 Redman 2015 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Really cool paper shows how blue whales (and other lunge-feeders) raise their upper jaw to prevent falling over when they open their lower jaw and inflate the pouch for gulp feeding. Results based on video, physical models, and simulation models. Fish et al. 2026 doi.org/10.1111/mms....

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

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

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

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....

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

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...

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Will Oestreich @will-oestreich.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

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

tinyurl.com

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

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...

youtube.com

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

YouTube video by Hatfield Marine Science Center

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

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

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

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...

youtube.com

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

YouTube video by Hatfield Marine Science Center

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

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

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

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

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

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)

doi.org

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

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....

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

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...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

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.

bioflux.com.ro

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

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...

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

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)

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

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-...

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

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....

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

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

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Nitrogen isotopes are used to figure out the level at which whales feed in food webs, but getting accurate measurements from skin samples is difficult since oils in skin bias the measurements. A new paper corrects for this bias. Joy Cabrol: doi.org/10.1111/mms....

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

How do blue whales stop themselves tipping over when they inflate their lower jaw to engulf krill? The upper jaw! The triangular shape of the upper jaw keeps them swimming forward, acting like the delta-shaped wings of a fighter jet Fish et al. 2026: doi.org/10.1111%2Fmm...

Fighter jet https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/xf-92a-delta-wing/

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Paul Eric @pauleric70.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

People don't realize that we share Earth with largest animals to ever exist in the history of our planet.💙😎💙 Majestic Blue whale surfaced near Busselton Jetty, Australia.🇦🇺

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Incredible video of blue whales in Loreto, Mexico, and the unique whale-watching methods used there that involve complete passive boats, engines off, resulting in lower stress for the whales, and longer times between deep dives, and a better whale watching experience! www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJxa...

youtube.com

Ballena azul y ecoturismo en el Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto

YouTube video by CONANP mx

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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Three blue whale sightings in the open waters of the SE Arabian Sea in 2024. Sightings here are rare, although strandings are common, perhaps because blue whales are mostly found far from shore in deep water. doi.org/10.6024/jmba...

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Right whales, humpback whales, and other species likely were hunted in Brazil 5000 years ago, well before evidence of whale hunting in other regions. Remains even include one blue whale bone www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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