Sunday 4 February 2018

Clues from an endangered blue whale population


January 31, 2018, Flinders University

Clues in the DNA of endangered blue whales – the largest living animal – has shown that Australia is home to one population that likely travels widely and is adapted to a range of environmental conditions.

Blue whales are at this moment in Australian waters taking advantage of the abundance of krill that occurs during the summer.

They feed typically in waters off Cape Jaffa (east of Adelaide) to Cape Otway (west of Melbourne) and also in waters west of Rottnest Island in Western Australia.

However, these giants will not stay long: they will soon be migrating north to spend the winter in warmer waters around Indonesia, and will return again next summer.

"The question remains whether the blue whales using Australian waters are one, interbreeding population, or are multiple populations that may have different adaptations to different environmental conditions," says Dr. Catherine Attard, a member of a team of scientists from Flinders University who set out to answer this question with their collaborators the Centre for Whale Research in Western Australia and the Blue Whale Study in Victoria.

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