After being hunted to less than three per cent of their original population by commercial whalers, blue whales are once again being spotted around mainland New Zealand. Some 370 sightings have been logged in DOC’s marine mammal database in recent decades. Most of those are incidental sightings from tourism and commercial fishing boats, seismic survey boats and fixed-wing planes.
Pygmy blue whales, which were hammered by illegal whaling off our coast in the 1960s and 1970s (see our feature page 82), are found in the South Taranaki Bight throughout the year. It’s possible the whales are even breeding there. Researchers using hydrophones have also recorded the larger subspecies, Antarctic blue whales, around our coastline. These big blue monsters probably use New Zealand as a migration corridor to and from their tropical breeding grounds—the location of which remains a gigantic mystery.
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