An international team of researchers has discovered what it believes to be a new population of blue whales in the western Indian Ocean.

Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived on our planet, and they are found around the globe in all oceans. Check out our recent article on 7 facts of Blue Whales or the video Blue Whales 101. All blue whales sing very low-pitched and recognizable songs, and conveniently for researchers, every population has its own unique song.

In a recently published paper in the journal Endangered Species Research, the researchers describe a new blue whale song that is heard from the Arabian Sea coast of Oman across to the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean and as far south as Madagascar in the southwest Indian Ocean.

While analyzing the Oman acoustic data, the team recognized the same unusual song. This novel blue whale song was recorded even more prevalently off Oman than Madagascar, and it became clear to the researchers that they had found what was likely a previously unrecognized population of blue whales in the western Indian Ocean.

For more detail read the article on phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-population-blue-whales-western-indian.html