--- title: Watch the World's Fastest Whale, the Fin Whale, Jump in this Video description: In a video from the Spanish conservation nonprofit CIRCE, an endangered fin whale is captured leaping from the ocean three times. canonical: https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/ author: Kyle Chayka article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-05T15:05:58.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:10:24.799Z og:title: Watch the World’s Fastest Whale Leap from the Ocean og:description: It's the "greyhound of the sea" og:url: https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch the World’s Fastest Whale Leap from the Ocean twitter:description: It's the "greyhound of the sea" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Watch the World’s Fastest Whale Leap From the Ocean by [Kyle Chayka](https://time.com/author/kyle-chayka/) ## Kyle Chayka Jun 5, 2014 3:05 PM UTC by [Kyle Chayka](https://time.com/author/kyle-chayka/) ## Kyle Chayka Jun 5, 2014 3:05 PM UTC The world’s fastest whale can swim at speeds of up to 23 miles per hour, which means it can jump pretty high as well, as we can see above. A video from [CIRCE](https://www.facebook.com/Circe.org?hc%5Flocation=timeline), a Spanish conservation agency, gives a glimpse at what American naturalist Roy Chapman Andrew called the “greyhound of the sea”—the fin whale. Much like greyhounds, fin whales are skinny, long creatures. They grow to over 60 feet. As this video, shot in the Straits of Gibraltar, shows, this means a streamlined body that’s perfect for zipping through the ocean and leaping above it. Seeing a fin whale surface, as the creature in the video does three times, is exceedingly rare, given that there are only around 100,000 left in the wild. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/"},"headline":"Watch the World’s Fastest Whale Leap From the Ocean","datePublished":"2014-06-05T15:05:58.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:10:24.799Z","description":"It's the \"greyhound of the sea\"","url":"https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/","keywords":["Newsfeed","animals","Whales","Ocean","animal videos"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Kyle Chayka","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/kyle-chayka/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2826758/watch-the-worlds-fastest-whale-leap-from-the-ocean/","name":"Watch the World’s Fastest Whale Leap From the Ocean"}}]}] ```