Whales found in and near Singapore waters: A 6,000kg teen, the ‘Singapore whale’ and Jubi Lee

Although rare here, baleen whales have been recorded before, with carcasses found near Pulau Bukom in 1980 and in the South China Sea near Pedra Branca in 2009.

This species of baleen whale was recognised by science only in 2003.

Before that, it was misidentified as a Bryde’s whale due to similarities in size, body shape and geographic distribution.

It is smaller than other baleen whales and has been documented to exhibit foraging behaviour such as lunge feeding on krill swarms and other zooplankton.

Poorly understood and rarely sighted, it has a lightly pigmented asymmetrical chevron in front of the fin on its back, known as the sickle-curved dorsal fin.

The Raffles Museum in Stamford Road, now the National Museum of Singapore, used to have on display the skeleton of a 13.4m-long blue whale that was stranded near Melaka in 1892.

The skeleton, once dubbed the Singapore Whale, was exhibited from 1907 to 1974, before it was given to the National Museum of Malaysia. It can still be found today at the Labuan Marine Museum in Malaysia.

Blue whales are the largest animals on the planet and local media reports at the time referred to the Singapore whale as a “fish of monstrous size”.

In exchange for the gift, Malaysia was to train local museum technicians on the nuances of modelling and casting of exhibition specimens.

A female sperm whale was found dead on July 10, 2015, floating off Jurong Island with a gash on its back. It was suspected to have died from a ship strike.

Blood was still flowing from her wounds when local scientists got to it, though it was suspected that it had been dead for over a week.

Its discovery during Singapore’s Golden Jubilee year led a museum staff member to give it the nickname Jubi Lee.

Sperm whales had never previously been found in the waters around Singapore or peninsular Malaysia. From the whale’s DNA and with the aid of computer models, scientists learnt that Jubi Lee had likely hailed from a pod in the Indian Ocean, west of Singapore.

They also learnt from the content of the whale’s stomach that, as with many others of its kind, Jubi Lee favoured squid.

The skeleton of Jubi Lee is now displayed at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.