📸 + 💭: matthewunderwater “I can’t believe I saw this animal with my own eyes. 🐋 Blue whales are the largest animals to have ever lived. Far bigger than even the largest dinosaur. Up to 100 feet long, around 200 tons, and yet they live on tiny krill. Shockingly, we humans nearly drove them to extinction, and they have never recovered. In roughly a century of industrial whaling, ending mostly in the 1960s, we killed 98% of blue whales, bringing the population from roughly 350,000 down to about 5,000. We hunted them mainly for blubber and oil used in products like lamp fuel and soap. Blue whales were eventually protected, but the population has only recovered slightly to approximately 10,000 individuals. They are still under threat from ship strikes, fishing gear, noise pollution, climate change, and growing pressure on krill, the very food source they depend on, particularly in Antarctica. If we keep pushing their ecosystems and food systems past the limit, they scarcely stand a ...