slumry
Novice
Humpback whales in SE Alaska spend the summer feeding and they use a technique known as bubble net feeding to do so. They feed as a coordinated group with one whale going around in a circle creating a bubble net around a school of fish while another drives them to the net by “vocalizing.” At some signal the rest of the whales swim from the below the net catching fish as they go. The feeding whales then all erupt at the surface. We had been watching whales feed all day long from a small boat and the whales never got more than about ½ mile from the boat. The boat was just drifting when someone noticed some “vocalizing.” Where the whale is shown was exactly where the boat was five seconds from when the picture was taken. We saw the circular bubble net neatly surrounding the boat. In theory whales do not hit boats and all the whales but this guy had broken off from the feed. If we had not gotten the boat started and gunned it out of there no telling what would have happened.
