8.14.2011

Bubble net feeding

This picture blows. But, this was incredible. Right as we were leaving Tenakee Inlet, this group of humpbacks was working its way around a piece of Chatham Strait making bubble nets one after another after another. A few whales will get together and swim in a circle, making bubbles that create a kind of net. They get closer and closer together, enclosing whatever fish are in between them, and then they swim up through the center with their mouths open. You can’t see anything until they hit the surface. Where they’re coming up is a surprise unless you can find the gulls, who can see the bubbles from above, circling. And after, they repeat the process, getting into the right configuration in a way that you can make out just enough of to tell that its precisely coordinated.


More bad pictures after the jump.























And a video! Not mine.



1 comment:

  1. It seems the purse seiner just copycats the humpback whales! Good thing we humans are smart enough to learn from higher intelligence.

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