Northern Indian Ocean Blue Whale (putative B. m. indica)

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A population centred on Sri Lanka and the northern Indian Ocean that breaks the migration model this Journey otherwise describes: it does not run annually to cold high-latitude feeding grounds but remains in warm tropical water year-round. It breeds roughly six months out of phase with the southern-hemisphere pygmy blue whales and has its own acoustic call type. Its taxonomic standing is genuinely unsettled - it is discussed as a possible fourth subspecies rather than an accepted one. It was found more or less by accident, during sperm whale work off Trincomalee in the early 1980s.