(Image Credit: Craig Hayslip/Oregon State University) Bruce Mate has been tagging blue whales since 1979. After 35 years, he has yet to lose his sense of wonder. "The term 'awesome' is almost trite nowadays, people use it a lot. But for blue whales it's an appropriate term," said Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. "They're the biggest animal that's ever lived on Earth, over 100 feet long, over 100 tons in weight, and their color is a sort of iridescent blue. When you see them rising to the surface you start seeing this glimmer that keeps getting bigger and bigger. They're just amazing," he said. A new online tool funded by NASA that helps protect this endangered whales is set to be released this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The WhaleWatch tool will help decrease whale mortality due to collisions with shipping and fishing gear. About a fourth of the roughly 12,000 blue whales in the world today live in the Pacific Ocean, said Mate. Most of them, along with other endangered whale species, migrate up and down the California coast – along with heavy fishing and shipping traffic to and from the ...
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