Blue whale mother caught feeding her calf on video for first time ever

The first-ever footage of a blue whale calf suckling, filmed by a snorkeller in East Timor in South-East Asia, has been released.

“It is certainly not a newborn calf,” says Karen Edyvane at the Australian National University in Darwin, “but it’s clearly still suckling.”

Edyvane says capturing the footage was an extraordinary achievement that had never been managed before anywhere. The behaviour was filmed by a snorkeller on an eco-tourism voyage in 2022 who was swimming with pygmy blue whales off the coast of the nation’s capital, Dili, but has only been released now.

Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) are the largest known animal to have ever lived on Earth and can reach lengths of over 30 metres and a weight of almost 200 tonnes. The subspecies of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) found off East Timor are marginally smaller, reaching maximum lengths of 24 metres.

Blue whales calves don’t attach to their mother when they feed – she releases oily milk into the water, which is then swallowed by the calf.

The feeding calf in the video is large, says Edyvane, and probably in its second year with its mother – blue whales wean at three years.

Other key blue whale behaviour has been glimpsed and filmed in the area as part of a decade-long research and citizen science project. Edyvane, who leads the project, says that a database of 2700 pygmy blue whales has been collected since 2014, revealing that East Timor may host one of the world’s biggest migrations of the creatures.

Newborn calves, courtship and pre-mating and feeding behaviour have all been confirmed.

“We haven’t seen a penis yet, but we have seen some very amorous adults getting very funky with each other,” says Edyvane.

Capri Beck at Western Australia’s Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, says until recently no one realised just how many blue whales were migrating off East Timor.

Capturing the footage was incredibly fortuitous, she says. Blue whales are often far offshore in areas that are hard to get to, says Beck. “To even be able to be in the water with blue whales is incredibly rare, let alone to be in the water at the right time and the right place to film a calf suckling.”