DRONE footage off the coast of Galicia shows a blue whale – the largest mammal on earth - swimming close to the Cíes Isles.
Captured on Wednesday but only just aired, the video shows a whale of an estimated 26 metres (just over 85 feet) in length flipping her tail and exhaling water jets.
The film is not very close-up, so it lacks detail to the naked eye, but the pilots from the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute (BDRI) in Galicia say it is the first time a drone has been used in Spain to snap these colossal animals on camera.
Although blue whales (seen more close-up in the second picture) in Spanish waters are less common, the world's second-largest mammal – the rorqual or fin whale – is becoming a more and more regular sight in the western Mediterranean.
Between spring and early autumn, rorquals – often several at a time – can be seen relatively close to the shores off the San Antonio cape between Dénia and Jávea in the north of the province of Alicante.
This area, which is mainland Spain's easternmost point, is on the direct migration route south from the Ligurian Sea.
Sightings of rorquals have become so frequent that marine biologists in the region have started referring to the San Antonio cape as the Autopista de las Ballenas – literally, the 'Whale-Way'.
First photograph by the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute in Galicia (BDRI); second photograph by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries on Wikimedia Commons
