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Fin Whales

Noted for its speed, the fin can travel over twenty miles per hour, earning it the nickname, “greyhound of the sea.” This baleen species is second only to the blue whale in size and weight. For visitors on whale watching tours in South America, it is a breathtaking sight when a fin whale breaches so vigorously that its whole body leaves the water, though only witnessed occasionally. Before diving, the animal usually makes several vertical blows that may spray as high as twenty feet. Of the two subspecies of fins, the Antarctic fin that inhabits the Southern Hemisphere is the largest, growing to ninety feet, ten feet longer than those that inhabit northerly waters. Weighing fifty to seventy tons, the fin reaches maturity in six to ten years. Females give birth every three to four years after a gestation of eleven to twelve months and wean their young after six to eight months.

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Information about Fin Whales

In addition to its enormous size and flat head, the fin whale is identified by its unusual coloring that visitors on Antarctica tours or elsewhere may notice. The fin’s body varies from light gray to dark brown with a white underside. Its lower jaw is whitish-yellow on the right side and mottled dark gray and black on the left. The same is true of the creature’s tongue but in reverse. Scientists speculate that this coloring may help the animal to confuse its prey, rather than serving as camouflage to elude its predators, the orca and Japanese whalers. It has a dorsal ridge. Its dorsal fin is larger than that of the blue whale. It has fifty to 100 pleated throat grooves that expand when it feeds. Its 250 to 350 pairs of baleen plates are almost three feet long.

The fin’s diet consists of a greater variety of fish than other baleen species, adding pollack and cod to the typical whale diet of krill, other crustaceans and small fish. It may dive 700 feet in search of larger prey, staying submerged for as long as thirty minutes. At the surface, the fin encircles its prey before turning on its side to swallow, a technique that visitors may observe during their travel to Antarctica. Norwegians called them “fish-drivers,” because the fin’s feeding technique helped fishermen to catch herring and other fish species along Norway’s coast.

Fins travel solo or in small groups and are found in all of the world’s oceans. Because they spend so much time in the open sea, less is known about their habits than other whale species. Fins of the Southern Hemisphere are thought to feed during summers in Antarctica where lucky travelers on Antarctica tours may get to see them. They migrate to breed and give birth in the temperate waters along South America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, though travelers on Chile tours or during travel to Argentina may or may not be able to observe them.

Fin whales live about ninety years. After nearing extinction, the fin whales of the northern Pacific gained international protection in 1966. It took another decade to stop the commercial harvest of the Antarctic fin. Some 60,000 fin whales are thought to exist today, a third of which inhabit waters in the Southern Hemisphere, though the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission has no estimate of the southern populations. Out of its annual quota of fifty fin whales, Japan killed one fin whale during the 2009-2010 season.

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