The Sei Whale is a baleen whale, the third largest rorqual after the Blue Whale and the Fin Whale. It can be found worldwide in all oceans and adjoining seas, and prefers deep off-shore waters. It tends to avoid polar and tropical waters and semi-enclosed bodies of water. The Sei Whale migrates annually from cool and subpolar waters in summer to temperate and subtropical waters for winter, although in most areas the exact migration routes are not well known. The whales reach lengths of up to 20 metres (66 ft) long and weigh up to 45 tonnes (50 tons). It consumes an average of 900 kilograms (2,000 lb) of food each day, primarily copepods and krill, and other zooplankton. It is among the fastest of all cetaceans, and can reach speeds of up to 50 kilometres per hour (31 mi/hr, 27 knots) over short distances. The whale's name comes from the Norwegian word for pollock, a fish that appears off the coast of Norway at the same time of the year as the Sei Whale. Following large-scale commercial hunting of the species between the late-nineteenth and late-twentieth centuries when over 238,000 individuals were taken, the Sei Whale is now an internationally protected species, although limited hunting still occurs under controversial research programmes conducted by Iceland and Japan. As of 2006, the worldwide population of the Sei Whale was about 54,000, about a fifth of its pre-whaling population.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sei_Whale

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1645:

English Civil War: In the Battle of Naseby, the main army of King Charles I was destroyed by the Parliamentarian New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Naseby

1807:

In the last major battle in the War of the Fourth Coalition, the French defeated the Russians at the Battle of Friedland near present-day Pravdinsk, Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Friedland

1822:

In a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, English mathematician Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine, an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/difference_engine

1846:

Anglo-American settlers in the Town of Sonoma began a rebellion against Mexico, proclaiming the California Republic and eventually raising a homemade flag with a bear and star . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic

1985:

TWA Flight 847 was hijacked shortly after takeoff from Athens, where it with its passengers and crew then endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal as they were forced to travel back and forth several times between Beirut and Algiers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_847

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

stolid (adj): Having or revealing little emotion or sensibility http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stolid

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that is immortal. --Harriet Beecher Stowe http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe