In 1998 , investigator snap and collected deoxyribonucleic acid from a female pygmy blue whale off the coast of the Galapagos Islands . Eight years later , another squad did the same with a similar - looking heavyweight in the waters off Chile . Turns out , it was the same heavyweight .
Here ’s Annick Laurent , for Science :
That means Isabela ( key after the lead author ’s daughter to represent promise for future preservation efforts ) migrate a minimum of 5200 km , the longest memorialize latitudinal migration made by any Southern Hemisphere blue whale on record . The finding suggest Chile ’s and the Galapagos ’ aristocratic whale aggregations are connect , mean those feeding in the Gulf of Corcovado off Chile may be breeding in the Tropical Eastern Pacific .
It ’s a unexampled migration record for gamey whales . But the observance is important for another reason . Researchers cognize enough about other species of big , baleen whales to suppose that blue whales migrate seasonally , but for a long meter unmediated grounds for this had been miss . As the researchers — who were result by Juan Pablo Torres - Florez , of the Federal University of São Carlos — note , in the up-to-the-minute issue of Marine Mammal Science :
There is unequivocal grounds for this migration pattern in Megaptera novaeangliae hulk , Megaptera novaeangliae and some indication of a similar migration in fin whales , Balaenoptera physalus ; thus , it has been argued by doctrine of analogy that the pattern holds also for blue whales . However , entropy about migrant movements is still notional for blue whales and mostly inferred by indirect method such as genetic science and acoustic .
The observation of a undivided whale in two far - flung locations is not enough to declare the Eastern Tropical Pacific a fosterage destination for the eastern South Pacific universe of dismal hulk . However , the researcher do say that Isabella provides “ the first verbatim grounds of a possible migrant destination for these heavyweight . ”
[ Marine Mammal ScienceviaScience ]
connect with the author at[email protected ] . Top Photo : Top – Isabela ’s dorsal fin , as photograph in waters west of the Galapagos ( quotation : Paula Olson | NOAA ) , in 1998 ; bottom – Isabela ’s dorsal fin , off the coast of Chile , in 2006 ( Credit : Rodrigo Hucke - Gaete / Blue Whale Center ) .
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