I bet you never heard of these 4 species of WHALES. I show you WWF maximum cards from REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA: BRYDE'S WHALE (Balaenoptera edeni), MINKE WHALE ( Balaenoptera acutorostrata), PYGMY RIGHT WHALE (Caperea marginata) and CUVIER'S BEAKED WHALE (Ziphius cavirostris)

UL (upper-left): "Bryde's whales ( /ˈbruːdə/ brew-də) are baleen whales, one of the "great whales" or rorquals. They prefer tropical and temperate waters over the polar seas that other whales in their family frequent. They are largely coastal rather than pelagic. Bryde's whales are very similar in appearance to sei whales and almost as large.

"Bryde" is sometimes misheard as "brutus whale". The name comes from the Norwegian consul to South Africa,Johan Bryde, who helped set up the first whaling station in Durban, South Africa in 1908.

They inhabit tropical and subtropical waters worldwide.

Bryde's whales are considered medium-sized for balaenopterids, dark gray in color with a white underbelly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryde%27s_whale

UR: "Minke whale ( /ˈmɪŋki/), or lesser rorqual, is a name given to two species of marine mammal belonging to aclade^[1] within the suborder of baleen whales. The minke whale was given its official designation^[2] by Lacepède in 1804,^[3] who described a dwarf form of Balænoptera acuto-rostrata.^[4] The name is a partial translation ofNorwegian minkehval, possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale.^[5]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale

LL: "The pygmy right whale (Caperea marginata) is a baleen whale, the sole member of the family Neobalaenidae.^[3]First described by John Edward Gray in 1846, it is the smallest of the baleen whales, ranging between 6 metres (20 ft) and 6.5 metres (21 ft) in length and 3,000 and 3,500 kg in mass. Despite its name, the pygmy right whale may have more in common with the gray whale and rorquals than the bowhead and right whales.^[3]

The pygmy right whale is found in the Southern Ocean in the lower reaches of the Southern Hemisphere, and feeds on copepods and euphausiids. Little is known about its population or social habits. Unlike most other baleen whales, it has rarely been subject to exploitation."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_right_whale

LR: "Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris)^[1] is the most widely distributed of all the beaked whales. It is the only member of the genus Ziphius. Another common name for the species is goose-beaked whale because its head is said to be shaped like the beak of a goose. Georges Cuvier first described it in 1823 from part of a skull found in France in 1804. He thought it represented an extinct species — it wasn't until the 1870s that it was realized the type specimen represented a living species."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuvier%27s_beaked_whale

Blue waters of South Africa...

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Happy Blue Monday! (meme)

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