Precise giants: New research reveals how blue whales find food in a vast ocean
Despite protections, blue whales remain endangered, primarily because of the risk of collisions with ships. MBARI's Blue Whale Observatory uses a suite of technologies to study these animals and their primary food source, krill, in the Monterey Bay region. The findings from this body of research can help resource managers protect these majestic animals.
New research reveals how blue whales find abundant krill swarms in a vast ocean. Despite protections, these massive marine mammals remain endangered primarily due to the risk of collisions with ships. To study blue whales and their primary food source, MBARI's Blue Whale Observatory employs a suite of technologies, integrating various sensing methods to collect data about whale behavioral ecology.
MBARI's lead author, John Ryan, a biological oceanographer, explains that blue whales must consume an enormous amount of calories to sustain their size and long migrations. Krill swarms are essential for their feeding, but locating them in the ocean is challenging. The study aimed to understand how these giant animals locate krill swarms - whether they sense krill swarms directly or detect specific ocean conditions that guide them to krill swarms.
Data from two perspectives were used: the whales themselves and satellites viewing Earth from space. Whales were equipped with small electronic tags to record movement, activity levels, and feeding habits, as well as ocean conditions. Satellite data provided detailed descriptions of the physical environment around the whales using radar altimeters and NOAA infrared thermal sensors.
The research shows that blue whales systematically target surface thermal fronts, moving from cooler to warmer waters before diving to locate dense krill swarms. They respond to their constantly changing environment in precise, systematic ways, pinpointing their feeding efforts along thermal fronts. This finding indicates that blue whales can sense and track fine-scale temperature gradients to guide foraging, suggesting a remarkable capacity for memory, comparison, and orientation.
This discovery has broader implications for understanding how many species with dense prey aggregations survive and opens the door to exploring whether this is a fundamental foraging strategy across diverse predator species. It also enables better protection of endangered blue whales by understanding their behavior and how it intersects with human activities that unintentionally threaten them.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
