This site is indebted to the writings of Lyall Watson (amongst others), for his amazing and well-researched book Whales of the World, illustrated by Tom Ritchie.

PIKED WHALE (MINKE) Balaenoptera acutorostrata

The Piked Whale is the smallest rorqual, less streamlined, more chunky than its relatives. The most distinctive feature is the narrow, acutely pointed, almost triangular rostrum, which is much sharper than that of the Fin Whale (B.physalus 5). There is a central ridge on the top of the flat head. The fin is in the last third of the back, and is tall and gives an erect appearance. The flipper is pointed and measures approximately 12 per cent of total body length. The throat is creased by 60-70 grooves running back for 47 per cent of the body length, about as far as the navel.
The colour is a bluish dark grey above and lighter below, with both eye and flipper insertion inside the darker area. The distinctive marking is a bright white patch or diagonal band across the middle of the upper surface of the flipper, the size and shape of which show enormous variation.

Field Identification Piked Whales are more likely to be seen at close quarters than any of their relatives, because they seem to be curious about shipping and approach even moving vessels. They are fast swimmers and keep pace with a ship travelling at 24-30 kph (13-16 knots). Even at this speed they can dive down beneath the hull and surface again on the other side without losing ground.
The blow is low and indistinct, often invisible without a dark background. This may be because they start to exhale while still half a metre underwater. While at anchor in Antarc¬tic bays, we have often watched Piked Whales at close range and seen the blow be&.nning as a plume of white turbulence beneath the surface.
The usual breathing sequence consists of 5-8 blows at intervals of less than a minute, followed by a deep dive that may last as long as 20 minutes. The first exhalation following a long dive is noticeably louder than the others, sometimes producing a thinly visible blast no more than 2 m (6 ft) high, with a strong fishy smell. The fin always appears simultane¬ously with the blow and the tailstock is arched high into the air before sounding; the flukes are never shown unless the whale breaches. Piked Whales do breach, 2 or 3 times in a row, often falling back with a splash, but sometimes re¬entering cleanly in a perfect dive.
Identification at close range presents few problems - the size, head shape and flipper patch are all distinctive - but at greater distances they could be confused with Sei Whales. The baleen is distinctive: there are 260-360 baleen plates (average 300), the largest 30 cm (12 inches) long and 12 cm (5 inches) wide. Fringes of all plates are fine and white, and most of the baleen is pale maize yellow, but many of the plates at the back of the jaw, particularly on the left, are black. In the southern form all the plates are said to be pale and always less than 300. Piked Whales in the Atlantic may also have a smaller number of plates.
There are usually 62 throat grooves. The skull is typical of the genus, though more pointed than in the larger species. There are 47-49 vertebrae. Many large baleen whales show little or no sign of the sternum (breastbone), but in Piked Whales it is relatively large and cross-shaped.
There are few ectoparasites. Natural History In polar waters Piked Whales feed on plank¬tonic crustaceans. In the Antarctic the species seems to be enjoying a population explosion, taking advantage of the absence of Blue Whales. Piked Whales, however, eat more fish more often than any other filter-feeding whale.
The mark on the right side of the jaw and the asymmetry of its baleen suggest that it might, like the Fin Whale, turn on to that side to feed at the: surface, but most of the Piked Whales we have seen have used a gulping technique, involving a certain amount of splashing, sometimes even breaching, to scare fish into a compact huddle before the whale shoots up through the shoal from beneath with its mouth open. The existence of a broken beak tip from a blue marlin, embedded in the upper jaw of a Piked Whale captured in the Antarctic in 1972, suggests that the whale may have been competing for the same prey as that irascible fish.
Piked. Whales are most often seen singly or in pairs, though in the Antarctic feeding grounds it is common to find up to 1,000 whales in a single area. As far as we know, Piked Whales live for about 50 years, reaching sexual maturity at about 6 years, when males are 7 m (23 ft) and females approximately 7.6 m (25 ft) in length. Females ovulate twice a year (in the northern hemisphere in February and August), so that any females that fail to become pregnant in the first mating season invariably succeed in the second. Gestation lasts for 10-11 months and calves are suckled for a further 6, making it possible for these whales to breed every 18 months¬faster than any other Mysticete. This helps to account for the rapid rise in populations following the disappearance of the Blue Whale from many of its old haunts.
The voice of the Piked Whale has been described as a series oflow-frequency grunts, thumps and ratchets. Most are trains of sound at 100-200 Hz which seem to make the call of each individual unique. They also produce pure-frequency pulsed sounds at 4-8 kHz involving series of clicks for 6-8 seconds at a time, possibly used for echolocation.