Wildlife & Railway Art - Frédérique Lucas

Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis)

Not recognised as a separate species until the late 1900s, the Antarctic minke bears quite a different look than its northern relative. Although often described as diagnostically having plain grey flippers (setting it apart from the Common minke, that has white flipper bands), there are also Antarctic minkes that have largely light grey or even white flippers, and it’s such an individual that I chose to depict. The round white scars are from Cookiecutter sharks, a species these whales encounter when migrating to warmer waters during the austral winter. Because unlike their name might suggest they are not necessarily Antarctica-bound, occurring throughout much of the Southern Hemisphere and even being resident in certain parts of Brazil.

There’s also something to be said about the noises they make! In the 1960’s, a sort of quacking noise, strangely similar to that of a regular duck, was picked up by submarines. Dubbed the ‘bio-duck’, it had people baffled for FIFTY years, until finally it was discovered in 2014 that these quacks in fact came from Antarctic minke whales. One more mystery solved :D You can listen to their quacks over here.

They are currently the most abundant of all baleen whales, their numbers in the hundreds of thousands - however it is not for a lack of hunting. With the greater whales depleted and hard to find, commercial whalers turned their attention to the Antarctic minkes, killing almost 10.000 of them between 1950 and 1987. Even after the whaling ban in 1986 Japan continued to take several hundred Antarctic minkes each year for their 'scientific research’.

This illustration is part of a commission from SEAMMO (SEA Mammal Monitoring Organisation) to illustrate all 15 baleen whale (Mysticete) species.