Blue Whales
Photo copyright Kate Cummings
- Bigger than the dinosaurs! Blue whales are the largest animals to ever live on earth.
- A Big Heart! Their tongues can weigh as much as an elephant and their hearts as much as a Volkswagen Bug!
- A record year of whales! 2010 represented a remarkable year for upwelling in the Monterey Bay producing extremely high concentrations of krill. It was this abundant krill that brought unusually large numbers of the blue whale, into the bay!
- What an appetite! Being large means eating a lot! A Blue Whale can consume between 4-8 tons (8,000 – 16,000 lbs) of krill, a tiny, shrimp-like creature, in a single day! That’s like eating as many as 32,000 large hamburgers in a single day!