They also used drone photographs to estimate the volume of water the whales were filtering with each mouthful, based on calculations of their length.
The tags were able to track the whale movements, allowing them to pinpoint how often each animal was feeding. Previous estimates of their food intake was largely based on just a few measurements, so the team looked at data from 321 tagged whales sized between 30 and 100 feet that lived in the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans.
Marine ecologist Matthew Savoca, from Stanford University, is the lead author of a study that looks at how much food these giant mammals actually consume. And restoring their numbers to pre-slaughter levels could help combat climate change, the team says. Before industrial whaling began, giant baleen whales-including blue, humpback and fin whales-once removed as much carbon from the environment as forest ecosystems spanning entire continents, scientists have found.
