Captain, There Be Whales Here

Friday, 20 August: Part III

Spock: To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.
Gillian: Whoever said the human race was logical?

From the Movie, “Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home”

OK, OK … before all the diehard Star Trek fans get on my case, I admit that Scotty actually said “Admiral,” when he called up to Kirk to tell him that he had successfully beamed a pair of humpback whales aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. I’m taking some artistic license here since it better fits our situation.

Leaving the Orcas behind in the Shelikof Strait, we continued our crossing to Kodiak. Along the way, Dall porpoises joined us for a bit, but they were so fast that I decided it was best to put the camera down and just enjoy their antics. But when we encountered whales a short while later, all bets were off and the camera came out again.

It was a sighting of fin whales in the Kupreanof Strait that brought us back on deck first. There were several of them, and unlike the ones we’d seen on the first day of our boat trip, they stuck around for a while.

Growing to 88 feet (27 m) in length, the fins are the second largest of the whale species. They’re also the second largest living animal on earth after the blue whale. As was the case with most of the large whales, they were hunted to near extinction; they remain on the endangered species list. They rarely, if ever, show their flukes when diving. (For more info, click here.)

Most experts consider the fin whales of the North Pacific to be a third, as yet
unnamed species. The other two species are the north Atlantic and
the Antarctic populations.

While we were enjoying the company of the fins, their more acrobatic cousins — humpback whales — showed up. A member of baleen whales, the humpbacks are smaller than fin whales. They grow only to a range of 39–52 feet (12-16 m) in length. They are found in all of the oceans and migrate long distances between their feeding and breeding areas (the ones we saw are members of the population that feeds in Alaska and breeds in Hawaii). The humpbacks were also hunted to near extinction. Though they’ve made a remarkable comeback, they remain on the endangered species list. (For more information, click here.)

This is one of the most common views one gets of a humpback whale.
(note how much smaller the dorsal fin is compared to that of a fin whale)

At first there were just one or two whales. Soon though, there were so many blows, near and far, that I gave up trying to keep track of the count. They were on all sides of the boat, exhibiting all kinds of behavior. They slapped their pectoral fins, showed their flukes in shallow and deep dives, and best of all … they fed using a method known as bubblenet feeding.

Unlike fin whales, humpbacks display their fluke when they dive.

Have to admit that I didn't even see the puffin in front of
the whale until I looked at the photograph on the laptop screen.

The birds scavenge whatever the humpbacks churn up to the surface.

A deep dive usually is a sign that the whale will be gone for a while.
This time, though, I think this is just a prelude to bubblenet feeding.

So, what is bubblenet feeding? Here’s a description from a lesson plan I found on the National Geographic Expeditions website:

… (also known as lunge feeding), in which a group of whales works together to capture large schools of herring.

Each whale has its own role in the process: one blows bubbles around the herring school to keep the fish from escaping, others vocalize to scare or confuse the fish and help bring them to the surface, and others herd the fish together and upwards. Once the fish are at the surface, all the whales lunge upwards with their huge mouths wide open and try to gulp as many herring as they can.

I have to admit that I was so entranced with seeing humpbacks bubblenet feeding that I forgot to take pictures at first. Luckily, they repeated the behavior several times and I was able to remedy that lapse.

With its mouth open, the humpback becomes a giant scooper.

OK, so again, I converted the images to black and white, but here are a few that I kept in color as the details were getting lost in the conversion. (See if you can find the puffin scampering out of the way as the whale closes its mouth.)

Glimpse of the baleen for which the species is named.
the baleen functions like a sieve, allowing the whale to filter krill,
plankton, and small fish from large mouthfuls of seawater.

The ventral pleats expand, allowing the humpback to take in copious
amounts of water when it is feeding.

Bye, Bye!
(last shot as this whale dived under the single star)

As the whales moved farther away, we moved on, too. Eberhard had his heart set on photographing puffins in the golden afternoon light, but it wasn’t to be. By the time we arrived at the rookery, the birds were long gone.

a lone puffin resting after a fishing expedition.
(yes, i managed to get a bit of a reflection too)

Even though spending time with the whales meant that we missed the opportunity to photograph the puffins, I have no regrets. We got to see some of our favorite whales displaying a behavior that neither Mui nor I had seen before. As the MasterCard ad says, “Priceless!”