01 Find a krill patch
Acoustics and experience, not a cartoon compass.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed33
Intelligence67
Range93
Resilience30
Cultural impact76
Ecological role91
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are blue whales recovering like some humpbacks?
Some Northern Hemisphere stocks look better. Antarctic blues remain far below pre-whaling. EN is still the honest card.
What did 1966 change?
The IWC protected blue whales after the factory-ship years had already taken the Antarctic majority. Protection was a lock on an empty room in the south.
Is the 1982 moratorium a blue-whale law?
It is a commercial-whaling pause for many species. Blues were already protected; the moratorium is the political weather that kept factory ships from a sequel.
Why ecological role near the top?
A blue whale eats tonnes of krill and returns nutrients in faecal plumes; a fall feeds the benthos. In this atlas that pump outranks most terrestrial carnivores except elephants and wolves.
Did Roger Payne study blues?
Payne whale-song fame is mostly humpback. Blue-whale acoustics (low-frequency pulses) are a later Navy-and-NOAA file.
What is a pygmy blue whale?
A southern subspecies/form -- smaller, still EN, often confused in catch histories.
IUCN: Endangered
Operating a blue whale life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Lunge-feeding on krill swarms -- the most expensive gulp, paid by the densest food. Fasting between polar summer and low-latitude winter.
Information before motion
Low-frequency sound that crosses basins. Eyes are secondary in that budget.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A blue whale without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. A 1966 lock on a emptied south, and ships on the healthier coasts. EN is still the species card.
Diagrams
Blue whale forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Blue whale life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Lunge and filter
Pleats expand; baleen keeps the swarm.
03 Defecate at the surface
The pump that ecology papers cash.
04 Migrate or stay
Some stocks move; others are more resident than school posters said.
05 Call in bass
Pulses for spacing and census.
06 Die and fall
A carcass as a deep-sea year.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
A 1966 lock on a emptied south, and ships on the healthier coasts. EN is still the species card.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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