The sei whale is a baleen whale, the third-largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale. Its name comes from the Norwegian word for pollock, a fish that appears off the coast of Norway at the same time of year as the sei whales. As of 2008, its worldwide population was about 80,000, less than a third of its prewhaling population.
About Sei whale in brief
The sei whale is a baleen whale, the third-largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale. It is among the fastest of all cetaceans, and can reach speeds of up to 50 kmh over short distances. The whale’s name comes from the Norwegian word for pollock, a fish that appears off the coast of Norway at the same time of year as the sei whales. As of 2008, its worldwide population was about 80,000, less than a third of its prewhaling population. Following large-scale commercial whaling during the late 19th and 20th centuries, over 255,000 whales were killed. Sei whales are rorquals that include the humpback whale, blue whale, fin whale, and minke whale. Two subspecies have been identified from each other, the northern sei and southern sei, also called Balaenoptera borealis and Balaena rostrata. The species is thought to have lived in the Miocene and Miocene epochs as long ago as the Little Miocene, when members of various families in the Mysticeti, including the Balaopteridae, have a series of pleats or grooves on the anterior half of their ventral surfaces. It has also been referred to as the lesser fin whale because it somewhat resembles the fin whales. It consumes an average of 900 kg of food every day; its diet consists primarily of copepods, krill, and other zooplankton. It migrates annually from cool, subpolar waters in summer to temperate, subtropical waters in winter with a lifespan of 70 years.
The specific name is the Latin word borealis, meaning northern. In the Pacific, the whale has been called the Japan finner; \”finner\” was a common term used to refer to r orquals. In Japanese, the Whale was called iwashi kujira, or sardine whale, a name originally applied to Bryde’s whales by early Japanese whalers. Later, as modern whaling shifted to Sanriku—where both species occur—it was confused for the sea whale. Now the term only applies to the latter species. It can swim at great speeds, because it can swim for a few hundred yards, but it’soon tires if the chase is long’ and ‘does not have the strength and staying power of its larger relatives’ It has been compared to the cheetah, as it has the same speed and strength as a large, fast, fast-swimming tiger. It was first discovered in 1819, when a 32-ft whale stranded near Grömitz, in Schleswig-Holstein. In 1865, the British zoologist William Henry Flower named a 45-ft specimen that had been obtained from Pekalongan, on the north coast of Java, Sibbaldius schlegelii. In 1946, the Russian scientist A. G. Tomilin synonymized S. schLegelii and B. borealis. In 1884–85, the Norwegian scientist G. Guldberg first identified the B.jhvalium of Finnmark.
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This page is based on the article Sei whale published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
