Rare Blue Whale Spotted Off Boston Coast

BOSTON -- A rare adult blue whale was spotted over the weekend 15 miles off Gloucester during a research cruise.
Researchers at the Whale Center of New England said that they were startled to find the whale on Sunday.
During the nearly 45 minutes that the whale was observed, its limited movement around the area suggested that the animal was feeding on a localized prey source. Despite their huge size, blue whales specialize in feeding on plankton, especially krill. The whale was seen in the same vicinity as approximately a dozen feeding humpback whales.

Whale Center staff took photos of both sides of the animal, where each individual whale has a distinctive pigment pattern used to identify individual whales. The photos will be contributed to an ocean-wide catalog of blue whales, coordinated by Canadian whale researchers, which contains more than 300 individual whales.
Blue whales are the largest mammals, and possibly the largest animals, ever to live. The largest blue whale ever accurately measured was 102 feet, although animals longer than 90 feet are rare in the North Atlantic