Two Sutherland Shire nature watchers were monitoring a peregrine falcon in the Royal National Park yesterday when a blue whale came into view.
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One watcher, Steve Anyon-Smith, said they believed it was the first record of a blue whale seen from the Royal and one of only a few Sydney records. A giant blue whale, which was seen off Dover Heights on September 20, was thought to be migrating south along the coast.
He said marine experts from Macquarie had confimed it was a blue whale.
National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesman Lawrence Orel said from Mr Griffith’s photo he believed the animal was ‘very likely to be a blue whale’.
‘‘It is quite possibly the same animal that was spotted last week,’’ Mr Orel said.
An endangered creature, the blue whale mammal is the earth’s largest animal. National Geographic says a blue whale tongue can weigh as much as an elephant.
Mr Anyon-Smith said it had been a bumper time for viewing whales over the past year, especially rarer types such as a fin whale, four nautical miles off Bondi, and then two sei whales which he said had never been recorded from Sydney — ‘‘not even when whalers were active’’.
The blue whale is the 23rd different cetacean that the pair had seen off the Sydney coast.
Have you seen any unusual or rare sea creatures recently?
