Endangered Blue Whale Off California Coast is a Rare December Sighting

A blue whale that is rarely seen has been spotted off the coast of California, thousands of miles from where they are typically found in December.

Monterey Bay Whale Watch recorded the blue whale and uploaded the video to Facebook on December 19. A humpback whale, a group of gray whales, as well as a pod of Risso's dolphins are just a few of the additional species visible in the video.

Starting off their AM trip, Monterey Bay Whale Watch had a very friendly humpback whale that approached the vessel on its own, according to the caption of their social media post. The humpback whale gave them rather an amazing "mugging" for more than an hour while the group was stationary and the engines were off. They then came across a rare December blue whale as they were returning to the harbor.

Blue Whales

The largest recorded animal on Earth is a blue whale. They can get as big as 98 feet, which is the length of three lined-up school buses or a Boeing 737-500 airplane.

The World Wildlife Fund says that the blue whale can weigh up to 200 tons, or about 33 elephants, and its heart is as big as a Volkswagen Beetle.

According to hydrodynamic modeling, it may not be possible for a living creature to physically grow to a size greater than a blue whale because of energy and metabolic restrictions that prevent enough oxygen from reaching every part of the body and the animal's inability to consume enough food to nourish itself.

Blue whales are typically seen in the summer, according to resident naturalist and cinematographer Evan Brodsky of Monterey Bay Whale Watches. The group only saw a blue whale maybe once every five trips this past summer. In the entire Pacific Ocean, only 10,000 blue whales remain.

In the summer, blue whales use Monterey as a krill-feeding ground, and in the winter, they typically migrate south to warmer waters where they mate and give birth.

The bodies of water off Central America are where whales typically spend the winter.

Blue whales are filter feeders that remove krill from the water using their enormous, sieve-like baleens. Contrary to other cetacean species, blue whales are rarely seen in large social pods and are typically only accompanied by calves after birth.

Rare December Sighting

According to Brodsky, it's extremely unusual to see blue whales in the area in December. As it stands, blue whales are an endangered species; they are less frequent than humpback whales, which people frequently encounter.

According to NOAA Fisheries, from December through March, blue whales with newborn calves can frequently be seen in the Gulf of California or the Sea of Cortez. That is 1700 miles away from Monterey Bay.

Read also: Gulf of Mexico Whales: Discovered Last Year, Facing Possible Extinction This Year 

Endangered

There were reportedly 140,000 adult blue whales in the oceans in 1926, but the whale hunting industry has decimated their populations. Blue whale hunting was eventually outlawed by the International Whaling Commission in the 1950s and 1960s, but populations have since had difficulty rebounding. On the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, they are classified as "endangered."

Outside of hunting, they continue to face a variety of dangers, such as being struck by large ships, noise pollution from human activity, and ingesting chemical pollutants.

The other whale species seen in the video don't migrate, so they are more frequently spotted off California in the winter.

Another Encounter, Then Another, And Another

According to Monterey Bay Whale Watch, on their PM trip, they came across the same blue whale once more a few miles to the west, which led them to a humpback whale that was actively feeding. They then came across 5 gray whales traveling south on their yearly winter migration as a result, which indicates that the season for gray whales has officially begun. After enjoying the gray whales for a while, they came across a group of 70-100 Risso's Dolphins.

According to the post, the ship was in neutral with the engines off when the whales approached it of their own volition, Newsweek reports.

Related article: Isolated Killer Whale Now the Loneliest Orca in the World, Sanctuary Could Save Her