Blue Whale: a fast disappearing aquatic friend of ours

Blue whale is the largest animal on the planet. It can be found in all oceans of the world. They usually spend the summer in arctic water and migrate to southern (warmer) waters during winter time. Blue whales are very old creatures - they exist on the Earth 54 million years. Number of blue whales decreased drastically in the first half of the 20th century when whalers hunted them nearly to extinction. Today, blue whales are under protection and their number managed to increase a bit.  When a blue whale exhales, the spray from its blowhole can reach nearly 30 ft (9m) into the air. Well, its time to have a glance at some of the facts you must know about these huge mammals.

• The Blue Whale is the largest creature ever to have lived on earth.
• Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts, as much as a car.
• Amazingly, however, this giant of the ocean feeds on some of the smallest marine life – tiny shrimplike animals called krill. A single adult blue whale can consume 3,6000kg of krill a day.
• They mainly catch their food by diving, and descend to depths of approximately 500m.
• The whale’s mouth has a fascinating row of plates fringed with bristles to help it filter its’ main source of food – Plankton from the water.  There is what looks like a moustache of long bristles on the end of each plate to help it hold the minute prey.  With each mouthful, the whale can hold up to 5,000kg of water and plankton.  Having forced the water out of its mouth, the whale licks these bristles with its fleshy tongue.
• Although the blue whale is a deep-water hunter, as a mammal, it must come to the surface of the sea to breathe.  When it surfaces, it exhales air out of a blowhole in a cloud of pressurized vapour that rises vertically above the water for up to 9m.
• Blue whales occasionally swim in small groups but usually alone or in pairs. They are thought to form close attachments.
• In spite of their bulk, these graceful swimmers cruise the ocean at over 8km/h, and can reach speeds of over 30km/h.
• Though we can’t hear them, blue whales are one of the loudest animals on the planet, communicating with each other using a series of low frequency pulses, groans, and moans. It is thought that in good conditions blue whales can hear each over distances of up to 1,600km.
• Scientists think they use these vocalizations not only to communicate, but, along with their excellent hearing, to sonar-navigate the dark deep oceans.
• Females breed only once every three years and gestation is between 11-12months.  Females usually only have one young.
• A baby blue whale (calf) emerges weighing up to 2,7000kg and up to 8m long. New born whales are helped to the surface of the water by their mothers and are often encouraged (nudged) by other females so that they can take their first breath of air. 
• The calf is suckled in the water, drinking more than 600 litres of milk each day and gaining about 90kg every day for its first year.
• Blue whales have few predators but are known to fall victim to attacks by sharks and killer whales, and many are injured or die each year from impacts with large ships.
• It is thought that whales feel emotions.
• Intensive hunting in the 1900s by whalers seeking whale oil drove them to the brink of extinction. Hundreds of thousands of whales were killed. The 1966 International Whaling Commission finally gave them protection, although they have only recovered slightly since then. Blue whales are currently classified as endangered on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List. It is estimated that only10,000-25,000 blue whales now swim the world's oceans.

 There are three main regions for the Blue Whale: North Atlantic, North Pacific, and the southern hemisphere. Areas that have distinct populations are the Sea of Cortez, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Southern Ocean, Indian Ocean, and California.

A blue whale

Comparison chart

The Triangle of Death: Bermuda triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

1. Located in the Atlantic ocean, the Bermuda Triangle falls between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida.
2. The Bermuda Triangle has long been believed to be the site where a number of mysterious plane and boat incidents have occurred.
3. While it has become part of popular culture to link the Bermuda Triangle to paranormal activity, most investigations indicate bad weather and human error are the more likely culprits.
4. Research has suggested that many original reports of strange incidents in the Bermuda Triangle were exaggerated and that the actual number of incidents in the area is similar to that of other parts of the ocean.
5. While its reputation may scare some people, the Bermuda Triangle is actually part of a regularly sailed shipping lane with cruise ships and other boats also frequently sailing through the area.
6. Aircraft are also common in the Bermuda Triangle with both private and commercial planes commonly flying through the air space.
7. Stories of unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle started to reach public awareness around 1950 and have been consistently reported since then.
8. Unverified supernatural explanations for Bermuda Triangle incidents have included references to UFO’s and even the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
9. Other explanations have included magnetic anomalies, pirates, deliberate sinking, hurricanes, gas deposits, rough weather, huge waves and human error.
   Some famous reported incidents involving the Bermuda Triangle include:

• The USS Cyclops and its crew of 309 that went missing after leaving Barbados in 1918.
• The TBM Avenger bombers that went missing in 1945 during a training flight over the Atlantic.
• A Douglas DC-3 aircraft containing 32 people that went missing in 1958, no trace of the aircraft was ever found.
• A yacht was found in 1955 that had survived three hurricanes but was missing all its crew. At least 1000 lives are lost within the last 100 years. On average, 4 aircraft and 20 yachts go missing every year. 
  
  
  Inside the Bermuda Triangle, US Government has AUTEC (for Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center), which is located on the Andros Island of Bahamas. Here US Navy tests their submarines, sonar and other weapons. However many are of the view that it is more than just the testing center. 
  You will be surprised to know that the first person to report about Bermuda Triangle was Christopher Columbus. He wrote in his journals that inside the triangle, the ship's compass stopped working and he also saw a fireball in the sky. The mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle have been documented for centuries, the Bermuda Triangle's infamy first started with Christopher Columbus. He wrote in his journals that inside this area, the watercraft's compass stopped working and he saw a fireball in the sky too. According to Columbus , when he looked down at his compass and observed that his compass was giving strange readings that day was October 8, 1492. He didn't take it seriously and a he did not inform his crew too, because having a compass that didn't point to magnetic north may have sent the exactly on border crew into the wildly unthinking behavior. This decision was apparently an ideal decision considering three days after when Columbus directly spotted a mysterious light, the crew got alarmed to go back to Spain.
  
  
   Whenever any plane or ship disappears in the Triangle, its debris cannot be found. The reason behind this is that Gulf Stream runs near the triangle, which quickly gets rid of the debris.