Drone Footage Captures Blue Whales Return To California In Massive Numbers

We all know that blue whales are amazing.

You don't have to be Alan Davies in QI to know that they are top of the chart for a fair old list of animal facts, but for the record: blue whales are the biggest animals on Earth - and the biggest ever to have existed, so take that, dinosaurs.

If you happen to live in the Monterey Bay area of California, then blue whales aren't just incredible feats of nature to read about - they're your neighbours, as this amazing footage shows.

In the caption for the video, the Monterey Bay Whale Watch explain how they came to get the footage.

"We saw eight Blue's all within a mile of each other this morning," they wrote.

"Almost every one of them fluked up (showed their tale) while diving. We also encountered lunge feeding humpbacks in Carmel Bay as well as active Risso's dolphins and a Mola Mola Sunfish."

They shot it using drones, using the aerial cameras to capture the whales in all their glory.

"Monterey Bay is one of the best places to see blue whales when krill is abundant," explained Nancy Black, a marine biologist at Monterey Bay Whale Watch.

They love to eat krill - in fact, they can eat up to 9,000 pounds (over 4.5 tonnes) in a day, which equates to 40 million krill during the summer feeding season. They can hold over a tonne of krill in their stomachs at the same time as well, just in case they get peckish later.

Talking about blue whales is like talking about space: the numbers are so large and abstract that they basically lose all meaning. Videos often don't help much either, as they are so big that they tend to be the only thing in the shot with zero point of reference.

Nevertheless, let's have another delve back into the facts: they grow to somewhere between 24 and 30 metres in length, making them about as wide as a football penalty area or a jumbo jet.

They can weigh as much as 200 tonnes, which is obviously loads, but for a sense of perspective: their tongues are as heavy as a whole elephant, their heart is the size of a normal car and their babies are already half a ton when they come out.