SINGAPORE \u2013 The baleen whale carcass found off local waters near Tanjong Pagar in September 2025 has been identified as a male sub-adult Omura\u2019s whale, or Balaenoptera omurai<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It is considered one of the world\u2019s most elusive species<\/span><\/a> of baleen whales.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what else you need to know about it and other whales found in and near Singapore waters:<\/p>\n At full length, a 10.6m-long living baleen whale would weigh about 5,000kg to 7,000kg, said Marcus Chua, assistant senior curator of Mammalia at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) at the science faculty of the National University of Singapore.<\/p>\n When first recovered in September 2025<\/span><\/a>, only half the whale\u2019s body was found. It measured about 6.3m and researchers estimated it to weigh about 6,000kg.<\/p>\n When first recovered in September 2025, only half the whale\u2019s body was found.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Chua also estimated that the male whale, which is suspected to have suffered a fatal injury<\/span><\/a> from being struck by a ship, was in its late teens and it was classified as a sub-adult.<\/p>\n Baleen whales are large marine mammals distinguished by the absence of teeth. Instead, they have baleen plates in their upper jaw. These plates are made of keratin and bristle-like hairs bound in connective tissue, and are used to filter zooplankton and other small prey from the water.<\/p>\n Sixteen species of baleen whales are known to exist worldwide, ranging from the 6.5m-long pygmy right whale to the 30m-long blue whale.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This species of baleen whale was recognised by science only in 2003.<\/p>\n Before that, it was misidentified as a Bryde\u2019s whale due to similarities in size, body shape and geographic distribution.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Staff at the National Museum at Stamford Road dismantling the skeleton of a blue whale before it was given to Malaysia in 1974.<\/p>\n PHOTO: ST FILE<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Blue whales are the largest animals on the planet and local media reports at the time referred to the Singapore whale as a \u201cfish of monstrous size\u201d.<\/p>\n In exchange for the gift, Malaysia was to train local museum technicians on the nuances of modelling and casting of exhibition specimens.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Jubi Lee measured about 10m when it was found in 2015.<\/p>\n PHOTO: ST FILE<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Its discovery during Singapore\u2019s Golden Jubilee year led a museum staff member to give it the nickname Jubi Lee.<\/p>\n Sperm whales had never previously been found in the waters around Singapore or peninsular Malaysia. From the whale\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n They also learnt from the content of the whale\u2019s stomach that, as with many others of its kind, Jubi Lee favoured squid.<\/p>\n The skeleton of Jubi Lee is now displayed at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 The baleen whale carcass found off local waters near Tanjong Pagar in September 2025 has been identified as a male sub-adult Omura\u2019s whale,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/picture><\/div>
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