It measures up to a length of 110 feet(33 meters) and is one of the longest whales in the world. A blue whale weighs up to 180 metric tonnes on an average. This is a very huge weight but there are some blue whales which weigh ever more. By considering it’s weight and length, it is considered as the largest animal ever existed.

A blue whale’s body can exist in different shades of blue, like bluish-grey body with a lighter lower body. Even in blue whales, it is believed that there exist three subspecies and they are

• musculus present in north Atlantic and north Pacific,
• intermedia present in the Southern Ocean and
• brevicauda present in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean.

Like all other baleen whales, the blue whale’s diet also consists of small crustaceans and small fish and sometimes they eat squid too. These whales were very abundant since 40 years ago and from then the hunters are hunting them extensively.

Vocalizations of the Blue Whales

Studies conducted on the vocalizations of the blue whales revealed manu interesting facts and they show that the level of sounds made by the blue whales range from 155 to 188 decibels if measured relative to a reference pressure of one micropascal at one meter depth.

All the blue whales make noise at a fundamental frequency of 10 to 40 Hz. The lowest sound frequency of sounds human can hear is 20 HZ. The blue whales make calls at the said frequency and they usually last for an average time thirty seconds. There were reports that the blue whales present in the Indian Ocean, along the coast line of Sri Lanka are said to make songs of four notes which last for around two minutes long. Researches also reveal that this phenomenon is not noticed in all subspecies and it is confined to only the brevicauda subspecies.

Though the possible reasons for these unique vocalizations are not known, some scientists have given some possible reasons which are

• To maintain a considerable distance between two individual blue whales.
• To locate the prey resources.
• To locate the topographic features.
• As a part of individual or species recognition.
• To maintain social organization.
• For contextual transmissions of the information.

These are the unique features of vocalization recorded in the case of the blue whales.