When you possess the highly braggable distinction of being the largest animal to have ever lived, certain social hesitances simply do not apply to your daily routine. In short, life as a blue whale means never having to say you're sorry. Just ask BBC's BAFTA-winning naturalist and TV personalitySteve Backshall, whose interview with noted whale expert Doris Welch was recently interrupted by the very subject of their discussion: a blue whale.
Shortly after his televised enthusiasm inspired millions, Backshall penned a bit of prose for the Huffington Post in which he detailed the emotional layers of that enthusiasm and the importance of capturing a blue whale on camera:
The undoubted highlight of my recent summer filming whales in California for the BBC, was the moment we captured a blue whale live on camera for the very first time. I may have been a little bit over-excited in the immediate aftermath, but to me it was an important moment. Even when I started my wildlife film-making career in the late 90s, trying to film a blue whale at all would have been like trying to film a unicorn. Wildlife photography legend Bob Talbot told me the next day, that in the 80s, conservationists like him thought blue whales were already as good as extinct. And here we were, filming one live, in real time, while a dozen humpback lunged and breached about the front of my boat, drenching me in their spout spray. It was indelible, dramatic, physical evidence that if you protect environments they will bounce back.
To truly fathom the size of a blue whale, the Marine Mammal Centerrecommends you imagine three school buses as the whale's length. The blue whale's heart, presumably consisting of unhinged badassery, is roughly the size of a car. However, the whale is no lean machine, with the average weight of an adult nearing 300,000 pounds.
