A new population never identified before was found in the Indian Ocean thanks to the recording of an undisclosed song
A new population of blue whales whose presence was unknown was recently discovered in the northwestern Indian Ocean. The mammal group was identified thanks to their song, recorded by researchers in three different locations: the archipelago of Chagos, Madagascar and the coast of the Arabian Sea of Oman.
Until now it was believed that the blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) in the Indian Ocean were represented by two or three subspecies grouped into four populations, each characterized by its own song. Recently however, a song never heard before was collected during a study of another cetacean species in the Mozambique Channel off the coast of Madagascar.
Subsequently, the biologists realized that they had recorded the same song in the Chagos archipelago and concluded that the detected whale population spends most of its time in the northwestern Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and west of the Chagos islands.
Researchers believe the whale group may even represent one new and rare subspecies, rather than simply a population isolated from the others.
“It was truly extraordinary to discover a completely unique whale song, never reported before, and to recognize it as belonging to the blue whale,” said Salvatore Cerchio of the African Aquatic Conservation Fund and author of the study.
Due to the hunt, the blue whales have arrived very close to extinction in the twentieth century and only in the last few decades, following the global moratorium on commercial whaling, have they slowly begun to recover.
"Prior to our logging work off the coast of Oman, there was no acoustic data from the Arabian Sea, so the identity of that blue whale population was initially just a guess," explained Andrew Willson of Five Oceans Environmental Services.
Reference source: Inter-Research Science Publisher
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