As technology improves, and particularly our capabilities to observe and record our environment, we begin to unravel the mysteries of nature on our planet. Despite the fact that 95% of the Earth's oceans are unexplored, we have still uncovered many wondrous secrets that the murky depths have hidden from us for so long.
A prime example of us slowly discovering more about the environment, oceanic or otherwise, and its inhabitants is this video that was recorded with the use of a flying drone. It depicts fin whales swimming near the surface off the coast of Garraf, a Barcelona county, in Catalonia, Spain.
It shows two of the gigantic animals surfacing and re-diving underwater, presumably sifting through the water using their complex feeding apparatuses to consume billions of micro-organisms and sustain themselves. The animals can be seen turning on the sides and moving faster while capturing tonnes of water by opening their huge mouth, inflating the front half of their vast bodies.
Then, upon closing their mouths again, they remove the water they took in through their baleen plates. This, in the meantime, leaves the food they need for sustenance inside their mouths. With the water expelled, their bloated bodies deflate and go back to their slim selves. They repeat the same process a few times. Call it a very complicated form of chewing!
This is the first time we have footage of this species behaving in this manner near a Mediterranean coast. It's not only important because it's unique, but also because it gives researchers new information on these animals' feeding habits, including what they prefer to eat to sustain themselves.
The fin whale is a migratory animal that goes to the Catalan Coast to feed during springtime. Since 2013, the EDMAKTUB Organization has been in charge of studying and monitoring these huge mammals through their Fin Whale Project.
The mammals are also called the razorback whale, or common rorqual, and they are the second-largest species of mammal on the planet, after the famous blue whale. They can grow up to almost 28 metres in length and almost 74 tonnes in weight.
Roy Chapman Andrews, an American naturalist, called the animal the sea greyhound: '... its beautiful body is like a yacht and the animal can surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamship.'
The current fin whale population is between less than 100,000 to 119,000 globally.