Baby Blue Whale Nursing (Exclusive Drone Footage) | National Geographic

[Music] We believe this is the first time that there's been any aerial U footage of nursing of a Bine whale and especially in a blue whale. I do believe it's a first.

We are studying blue whale population in the South Tanaki bite region of New Zealand and along the west coast of New Zealand that has been recently documented, and we're trying to get some baseline information about the population, what they're doing there and their behavior.

We came across a pair that we could see from The Vessel. We were about 100 meters away that we could tell by the size difference between the two animals that one was a mother and one was a calf.

It's a bit of a guess how old the calf is, but we think the calf is probably about 4 to 6 months old. Whales and dolphins have to coordinate breathing with lactation, and what we can see in this video is that the calf is alternating between coming to the surface to breathe and then going under its mom for a period to suckle.

The animals are basically stationary, so we don't think that this was sort of a position that would help locomotion. Once lactation is done at what's estimated to be about 5 or 7 months, the calf is considered weaned and then it should go off on its own at that point.

So these animals are generally solitary. They can aggregate on feeding grounds. Seeing this activity, this nursing activity, as well as the five mom-calf pairs in this region definitely shows us that this population is reproducing and it's an important area for moms to come and raise their young.

The South Taki bite has a fair bit of industrial activity from oil and gas development, and there's also vessel traffic through the area. So there are a number of human uses there that we just need to be able to manage appropriately in terms of protection of these blue whales and their habitats. [Music]