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Daniel Kraus, author of the novel <em>Whalefall</em>.
whales

Podcast: A Whale of a Tale with Daniel Kraus

We get the backstory to the new novel Whalefall, about a man who finds himself in the belly of a sperm whale.
The Podcast Team August 21, 2023
Hvalfjarðarvegur, Iceland

Beached Whalers

Two whaling vessels that were sunk by an anti-whaling organization in 1986 now sit on the shore of this beautiful fjord.
A reconstruction of <em>P. colossus</em> shows it in its coastal habitat. The head is an educated guess because a skull has not been found yet.
science

Paleontologists in Peru Discover What Might Be the 'Chonkiest Whale Ever'

And maybe the heaviest animal the world has ever seen.
Roxanne Hoorn August 2, 2023
Orca pods can develop their own cultures that result in distinctive behaviors, including cooperation with humans.
museums

The Killer Whales of Eden and the 'Law of the Tongue'

Orcas and humans once hunted together in southeastern Australia, until their millennia-old relationship broke down.
Roxanne Hoorn August 1, 2023
West Mifflin, Pennsylvania

The Blue Whale of Noah's Ark

The last funhouse of its kind, where guests enter through the mouth of an 80-year-old blue whale.
Albany's Historic Whaling Station
Frenchman Bay, Australia

Albany's Historic Whaling Station

Home to the last shore-based whaling station in Australia.
Edrom, Australia

Davidson Whaling Station

The site where whalers teamed up with orcas to hunt baleen whales.
The Black Sea at Cape Kaliakra, Bulgaria.
maps

The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History

The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.
Frank Jacobs, Big Think March 3, 2023
Wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory became obsessed with going to Antarctica to capture the largest known whale gatherings in the world.
nature

Capturing the Mysterious Antarctic Whale Gathering on Film

No one was sure about the size of these almost-mythical wildlife events—until we got it all on camera.
Bertie Gregory January 12, 2023
Fads—like, for instance, wearing a dead salmon as a hat—can spread within a trendsetter's pod and to other pods the group interacts with.
science

How Young Killer Whales Became Hooligans

Yes, orcas have viral cultural trends, too.
Shoshi Parks September 29, 2022
Along the Vietnamese coast, temples constructed in reverence to whales and other marine mammals—such as this one in Phan Thiet—house valuable information on the country’s little-studied cetaceans.
temples

How Vietnam’s Ancient Whale Temples Are Helping Science

For centuries, hundreds of shrines have preserved crucial information about the marine mammals' diversity and distribution.
Anne Pinto-Rodrigues September 19, 2022
Detail of Whalebone Fence on the Wadden Sea island of Rømø
Rømø, Denmark

Whale Jawbone Fence

Danish whalers once brought back whale bones to use as building materials in places where wood was scarce.
outsider art

Podcast: The Blue Whale of Catoosa

Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.
The Podcast Team August 4, 2022
Tokyo, Japan

The Whale Monument

Emerging from the sidewalk, this sculpture of a whale commemorates the importance of baleen in traditional Japanese puppetry.
A pod of short-finned pilot whales.
science

A Whale of a Tale about a Science Breakthrough Ignored for Decades

In 1981, Helene Marsh and her mentor discovered the truth about a basic biological process—but it took many researchers years to accept it.
Madeline Bodin March 17, 2022
There are thought to be more than 300 belugas in captivity across 13 different countries, with the highest number housed in Russia, Japan, China, Ukraine, Canada, and the United States.
aquariums

The Tricky Business of Saving a Baby Beluga

For the first time, scientists were able to save a young whale stranded in Cook Inlet. What should happen next?
Sarah Durn February 7, 2022
Whale tails
South Burlington, Vermont

'Reverence' (Whales Tails)

A pair of black granite tails dive into a sea of grass in landlocked Vermont.
A transient killer whale power lunging—a hunting technique—off the California coast. A small subset of transient orcas specialize in taking down large marine mammals.
animals

Meet Outer Coast Killer Whales, Big Game Hunters of the Deep

Scientists say the animals have a distinct culture and vocal dialect, and specialize in taking down large prey.
Rochelle Baker November 8, 2021