Whales Facts

Whale oil was used in automobile transmissions as late as 1973.

In 1970, a dead whale washed up on an Oregon beach. Officials decided to dispose of it with half a ton of dynamite. A WWII explosives veteran warned them it was way too much. They ignored him. The explosion launched car-sized chunks of blubber 800 feet. One crushed a brand new Oldsmobile in the parking lot. The owner had just bought it from a dealership running a "Whale of a Deal" promotion.

A sperm whale rammed and sank a British couple's yacht in the Pacific. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey escaped into a rubber raft with almost nothing. They survived 117 days - catching fish with their bare hands, fighting off sharks, and drinking rainwater. A Korean fishing vessel found them 1,500 miles from where they went down.

Hundreds of strangers showed up at Ruakaka Beach in New Zealand when 40 pilot whales stranded themselves at dusk. Volunteers dug trenches around the whales, slid fabric sheets beneath their bodies, and lifted them off the sand in coordinated teams - forming a human wall to guide each animal back into the sea. Thirty-six of the forty whales made it home.

Every winter there's a migration bigger than the Serengeti's - and almost nobody has heard of it. Hundreds of millions of sardines surge up South Africa's east coast in a shoal over 7km long. Dolphins herd them into bait balls near the surface. Sharks rush in from below. Cape gannets plunge at up to 86km/h and a Bryde's whale swallows the whole ball in one pass. Scientists still debate why the sardines bother.

Two whales got stranded on a sandbar at Mahia Beach in New Zealand. A mother and her calf kept beaching themselves for over an hour. Rescuers were close to giving up. Then a wild dolphin named Moko showed up. The whales seemed to answer his calls. They followed Moko through a narrow channel and swam free.