Costa Rica Adopts Anti-Terrorism
Law
Próspero Fernández
Gets Clean Up Whit Closure of Illegal Exits
Costa Rica
Leads Tourism in Region and Latin America
Baby Blue Whale Caught on Film -- Youngest
Yet
'Green Novel' Pits Man Against Big Oil,
Set in Costa Rica
Work on 27 de
Abril and Playas del Coco Roadways Continues
Annual Inspection Of Fishing Boats Begins in
Guanacaste
Baby Blue Whale Caught on Film -- Youngest
Yet
A baby blue whale filmed off Costa Rica is
thought to have been the youngest ever
captured on camera, according to a National
Geographic documentary to air Sunday.
The baby is believed to be the first proof
that a blue whale hot spot in the Pacific
Ocean is a birthing ground for the
endangered species.
During a January 2008 expedition to the
"Dome" - a warm-water region that draws blue
whales from hundreds of miles away - the
researchers had begun to lose hope of
finding a calf. Then two telltale spouts
began erupting at the sea surface.
"Oh, tell me that one of them is a small
blow, please," Bruce Mate, of the Marine
Mammal Institute at Oregon State University,
says in the documentary.
One of the spouts did turn out to be that of
a calf, which approached the research
boat—surprising the scientists, given blue
whale mothers' protective reputations.
A photographer and videographer dived in and
soon had the visual evidence needed to
identify the whale as a baby blue, perhaps
only weeks old.
Averaging 25 feet (7.6 meters) long at
birth, blue whale babies nurse for about
seven months until they double in size.
Gaining about 200 pounds (90 kilograms) a
day, they are the biggest babies ever known
to have roamed the Earth.
Blue whales were heavily hunted until a
worldwide ban in 1966. Today they are listed
as endangered by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature, meaning they face a
very high risk of extinction in the wild.
Kingdom of the Blue Whale airs in the United
States on the National Geographic Channel,
Sunday, March 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Migration Mystery
By comparing new and old photos of blue
whale spot patterns—which can be as
distinct, in their way, as human
fingerprints—expedition member John
Calambokidis later identified the Dome
mother as a summer resident of California's
Channel Islands. The researchers speculate
that mother and baby returned to the
islands, rich with krill but fraught with
danger from increasing shipping traffic.
The destinations of other whales at the Dome
remain a mystery—unfortunately for
conservationists looking to safeguard blue
whale migration routes.
On a previous trip, researchers had found
that more than 75 percent of the whales at
the Dome were from the U.S. West Coast. But
the recent expedition found only 25 percent.
"It caught us by surprise," Calambokidis
told National Geographic News. A whale
expert from the Cascadia Research Collective
in Washington State, Calambokidis has
received funding from National Geographic's
Committee for Research and Exploration. (The
National Geographic Society owns National
Geographic News.)
The Dome's significance to blue whale
breeding, though, is no longer in question.
"We're quite confident now that this is one
of the very, very important areas for blue
whales in the entire world," Mate said. |
