In a number of cases, they even managed to retrieve skin and breath samples to understand more about the health of the various animals they encountered. Image copyright P.Ensor/BAS South Georgia Whale Project Image caption Whale science: Not just counting but getting health data as well Blue whales are the most massive creatures ever to roam the Earth, and the Antarctic sub-species contained the very biggest of the big at over 30m. This population was also the most numerous of the 10 or so discrete populations across the globe, carrying perhaps 239,000 individuals prior to the onset of industrial