Blue whales are a wondrous species - the largest animal on earth and graceful swimmers despite their bulk. And it seems like they haven't yet been reduced to being just another feature in books of natural history.
Last month, blue whales were spotted along Spain’s Atlantic coast after an absence of more than 40 years. In fact, there have been several whale sightings in the region in the recent few years.
Spain banned whaling as late as 1986, by which an entire generation of blue whales had disappeared. Now, more than four decades later, the descendants of the few that had survived are returning to their ancestral habitat.
“In recent years it’s been discovered that the blue whale’s migration is driven by memory, not by environmental conditions,” says Alfredo López, a marine biologist at a Galician NGO that studies marine mammals. “This year there hasn’t been a notable increase in plankton, but here they are. Experiences are retained in the collective memory and drive the species to return.”
