Launched in 2007 by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, this wonderful, screen-filling, animated blue-whale banner — which is composed of 10,000 JPEG images — opens with an intimidating close-up of the giant whale’s eye. As you scroll along its side, tiny bubbles and otherworldly sounds create the eerie impression that you’re drifting alongside the mammal. It’s a humbling experience — like exploring the surface of a new, and beautiful, planet.
The Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti). At up to 32.9 metres (108 ft) in length and 172 metric tons or more in weight, it is the largest animal ever known to have existed.
Blue Whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans until the beginning of the twentieth century. For over 40 years, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 Blue Whales worldwide, located in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate. Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000). There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the North-East Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.