Scientists Discover Population of Incredibly Rare Whales With the Help of Nuclear Bomb Detectors On 6/9/21 at 12:15 PM EDT While blue whales are the biggest marine animals in existence, they're notoriously elusive. But scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia believe that that they have discovered a brand new population in the central Indian Ocean. The new population is comprised of an unknown number of pygmy blue whales. Pygmy blue whales, as their name would suggest, are the smallest subspecies of blue whales. In this context, however, "small" is a relative term. Their beefier relatives might dwarf them by dozens of inches and pounds, but pygmy blue whales can still reach 24 meters (about 79 feet). That's nearly the length of two standard buses, according to the UNSW Newsroom.