Our excursion for this port of call was whale and mammal watching on this small excursion boat pictured above. This excursion was great and we saw so much. Tonight I will tell about what we saw when we found a group of three humpback whales. Something I really wanted to see: humpback whales bubble-net feeding and that wish was granted. This experience is pictured in the next photo. I will tell about this unique way they cooperate to get big mouthfuls at a time. Pictured just below are three big whale mouths gulping up large amounts of fish as they surface with their mouths wide open.
Bubble-net feeding is an ingenious, highly synchronized cooperative hunting technique primarily used by humpback whales. Using exhaled air and synchronized vocalizations, the whales create a cylinder of bubbles that traps schools of small fish into a dense ball near the surface before lunging through them with open mouths.
While other Belen whales theoretically have the capacity to blow bubbles, humpbacks are uniquely built for this maneuver:
1) Specialized flippers (you will see one waving with one of these flippers below): researchers have discovered that humpbacks possess remarkably long, wing-like pectoral flippers that allow for incredibly sharp, biomechanically efficient turns.
2) Learned Behavior: bubble-netting is a learned, cultural behavior rather than a simple instinct. Specific humpback populations, such as those in Southeast Alaska and the Gulf of Maine, pass these tactical hunting skills down to one another.
How it works:
1) Whales dive deep beneath a school of prey and begin swimming upward in a spiral pattern, releasing air from blowholes.
2) The rising air forms a cylindrical “curtain" of bubbles. Because the shimmering bubbles and strange sounds confuse and panic the prey, the fish are tricked into thinking there is no escape and huddle together,
3) Often, a lead whale (the "trumpeter") will emit a loud, piercing feeding call that forces the prey upwards and synchronizes the team,
4) The whales gather in a tight ring outside the bubbles, coordinate their timing, and surge straight to the surface in unison to scoop up thousands of fish in a single gulp.
I’ll tell more about this excursion and what else we saw tomorrow evening.
To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!
No comments:
Post a Comment