From blue whales and great white sharks to leatherback turtles, colossal squid, and giant clams, a paper published this week in the journal PeerJ looks at the true size of the ocean’s largest marine species. A team of scientists, including Aquatic and Fishery Sciences’ Trevor Branch, lead the charge aimed at addressing the challenges associated with accurately measuring and cataloging the largest animals in the sea. Understanding how large an animal can get and how that varies is important for their conservation. To carry out the research, teams worked with various marine centers, numerous experts, and scoured the literature and data to reveal the true sizes of 25 of the biggest marine species.
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