Kuschner's whale
.jpg)
Kuschner's whale, named for Georg Kuschner, is a species of toothed whale closely that closely resembles the species of the Balaenopteridae family of whales, which are themselves baleen whales. Kuschner's whale is one of the least protected whale species globally due to its tendency towards multiple births, with an estimated 36% of births being multiples in contrast to the less than one percent occurrence found in most whale species. Kuschner's whale is generally regarded as a low-quality catch for fats and oil, but ranks highly in meat and bone grade.
Kuschner's whales appear to be opportunistic feeders, and primarily subsist off of other large marine life, including squid, jellyfish, and smaller cetaceans such as porpoises and dolphins, and as a result are encouraged as targets of whaling to prevent catastrophic depopulations of other cetacean species. Kuschner's whales are also known to eat sharks if able, but often resort to eating man'o'wars and lord'o'war colonies on the ocean surface when food is scarce. Since the 1930s, when accounting of whale populations began in earnest, the population of Kuschner's whales has dropped from an estimated 410,000 individuals to just over 100,000, primarily migrating in belts along the Levantine Ocean and the Sea of Istroya, with the primary breeding grounds sitting between the Sarpedonic coast and the Melian Isles. This population has proven highly resilient to the comparatively small scale of modern whaling industry, primarily ranging out from the Melians and northern Alshar.