Fin Whale

Fin Whale battle analysis

The fin whale is the second-largest animal alive, but its real signature is speed. Its body is long and slender, with a sharply V-shaped head and small pectoral fins, and it can reach about 40 km/h. Early whalers did not target it because it was too fast and lived far offshore. For killer whales the problem is the same: Ford and Reeves describe the fin whale as a "flight" species that responds to attack by swimming hard and straight, and the rare successful kills recorded took packs of orcas an hour of pursuit.

That strategy defines how it would fight. A 45-tonne fin whale has enormous raw power and great tissue depth, so a single predator struggles to injure it seriously, and it can simply leave. But it carries no teeth, and it is not known to swing its tail or flippers at attackers the way humpbacks and gray whales do. If it is cornered or overtaken by a coordinated pack, it does little to defend itself.

Its feeding is some of the most explosive behavior in the ocean. A fin whale accelerates into a school, drops its huge reinforced jaw and balloons its pleated throat to engulf a volume of water and prey approaching its own body size, then filters it out through baleen. Males broadcast long infrasonic pulses that are among the most powerful sounds any animal makes. The result is a giant with high Stamina and strong Defense, respectable Agility for its size, and an Attack held down by the lack of any weapon or will to use one.

Habitat & range

Fin whales live in all the world's oceans, mostly in deep offshore waters from temperate to polar latitudes. Many populations migrate between summer feeding grounds and winter areas, while some groups appear to be resident, for example in the Gulf of California, the East China Sea and the Mediterranean Sea (NOAA).

Diet & hunting

Fin whales eat krill, small schooling fish such as herring, capelin and sand lance, and squid. They lunge into prey with the mouth open, expanding 50 to 100 throat pleats, and can eat up to 2 tons of food a day (NOAA). Tagged whales off Southern California glide during descent, make a series of lunges at depth and then swim steadily back to the surface (Goldbogen et al. 2006). Feeding dives reach about 250 m and last up to around 15 minutes (ADW).

Social life

Fin whales are often seen in groups of two to seven and sometimes gather in large mixed feeding groups with humpbacks, minke whales and Atlantic white-sided dolphins (NOAA). Only males produce the loud, repeated songs linked with breeding (Croll et al. 2002).

Conservation

The fin whale is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (2018 assessment, as summarized by Wikipedia; the IUCN page itself was not readable in this run) and as endangered throughout its range under the US Endangered Species Act (NOAA). Commercial whaling greatly reduced populations; current threats include ship strikes, to which fin whales are among the most vulnerable species, fishing-gear entanglement and ocean noise (NOAA).

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