Humpback Whales

This month, I wanted to write about humpback whales because I find them amazing creatures and they are definitely one of my favourite marine animals.  To start off, let me tell you a bit about them, and their past.

About Humpbacks

·         They can grow to 12-16m long

·         They can weigh up to 36000 kilograms

·         They have unusually long pectoral fins

·         Life span of 50 years

·         Humpbacks feed primarily in the summer and live off fat reserves during the winter.

One thing that may make humpback whales appealing other than their true beauty is that they are not too shy of human contact. The picture below is one of my all time favourite pictures. It shows a humpback whale with a diver and it seems that they are almost dancing together. Diver have been known to say that whenever they are in the water with them, you feel a certain connection, an appreciation of one another which is not something you get with many other large species like this.

Humpback whales were one of the highly hunted species when whaling was legal and so they had a very sudden decline in population which they are still struggling to regain. Currently there are about 80,000 humpback whales who although are not being hunted anymore are still suffering from boat collisions, entanglement in fishing gear, noise pollution and water pollution continue to threaten this species of whale along with many others.

One of the very many things I find fascinating about humpback whales is their feeding method. Scientists have called this the bubble-net feeding or lobtail feeding. This consists of a group of whales circling a group of fish, krill or other and blowing out bubbles forming a ring shape around the group. This confuses them and sets them all together in a tight group in the middle if the bubble net. The whales then swim underneath the confused fish and dive upwards with their mouths wide open catching tonnes of fish in the process. The picture below demonstrates this process.

Another amazing thing about humpback whales is that there are also very rare albino humpback whales. There is only one or two known to be living. They are beautiful creatures but because they were massively hunted there was no way for them to make it. They cannot reproduce at the same rate as they were being killed off. If there is only one or two left then they will very soon be completely extinct.