Danube bleak Danube bleak The Danube bleak or Caspian shemaya ("Alburnus chalcoides") is a species of freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae. It is found in Iran, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Danube bleak is an elongate slim fish which can reach but a more normal size is 15 to 30 centimetres (6 to 12 in). There are 57 to 70 scales along the lateral line. The abdomen is compressed into a keel and the posterior end of this has no scales. The dorsal fin has eight to nine
Blue whale Naturae" of 1758, would have known this and may have intended the ironic double meaning. Herman Melville called this species "sulphur-bottom" in his novel "Moby-Dick" (1851) due to an orange-brown or yellow tinge on the underparts from diatom films on the skin. Other common names for the blue whale have included "Sibbald's rorqual" (after Sibbald, who first described the species), the "great blue whale" and the "great northern rorqual". These names have now fallen into disuse. The first known usage of the term "blue whale" was in Melville's "Moby-Dick", which only mentions it in passing and does not specifically attribute