It's much harder to that then you'd think. Large whales are dangerous to be in the water around, especially if they are thrashing. They also can dive deep which makes them very hard to track.

For as much as the public thinks we know about whales and dolphins, we actually know pretty much nothing about them because they are so difficult to track. Most of our toothed whale (dolphins/porpoises/orcas) knowledge comes from aquariums, and our baleen whale knowledge is basically nothing. We only know so much about North Atlantic Right Whales cause there are so few and they are tracked heavily by conservation researchers. They have Endangered Species Act funding too, unlike a lot of other cetaceans...

If you ever want to look up a very mysterious group of whales (cetaceans if you want to be scientific) look up the beaked whales. We know like nothing about them, and some species have only been ID'd once 100 years from a single stranding/wash ashore.