Rice's Whale I can proudly say this is one of the few illustrations done of this new species, the Rice's Whale. Named in 2021, It was previously thought to be a subpopulation of the Bryde's Whale until further studies proved the opposite.

The sad news is that is critically endangered and along with the vaquita, those are two of the most scarce cetaceans in the world which happened to inhabit the same environment. The causes of its decline are still unclear but are believed to be because of the industrialization of the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil spill disaster in 2010 killed nearly 20% of its population.

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Sei Whale

Is the third-largest rorqual before the Fin whale and the Blue whale. Heavily hunted in the XIX and XX century its numbers dropped from 250.000 to 80.000 which in other words mean less than a third of the pre whaling population. Today luckily is protected.

Mass deaths events have been recorded numerous times and the reason why isn't clear but it appears to be endemic poisoning called red tide. It is a phenomenon of decoloration of the sea surface that occurs by an overpopulation of certain microorganisms, apparently caused by the unprecedented warming of the Pacific Ocean. The biggest mass death event documented happened in Chile in June 2015 where 337 death Sei Whales were counted.

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The Bryde's Whale has been a kind of puzzle for scientists because three species use to fall into its category. This is called complex in taxonomy. In other words, three (or maybe four) species of whales were thought to be subspecies, (or just the same species) as the Bryde's whale.

I wonder why not just name all four species the same if they are so closely similar? The devil is in the details. Those little differences that make one species become different from others can be the starting point for a completely new animal in million years. On the other hand, those tiny changes also may be the ones that make the animal adapt better than its relatives and therefore survive the changes of the environment.

So if is similar in appearance, as it seems in the cetaceans, there are movements and changes that are only perceptible in millions of years of evolution.

Can I suppose that the Balaenopteridae family is a young one, therefore many of its members are closely similar? Could be...

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