Humpbacks are ‘baleen’ whales, so instead of teeth they have 270-400 baleen plates which hang from the top jaw. This week we observed the whales feeding on large schools of bait fish, it has been widely believed that the whales only feed in the Antarctic however these sub-adults were certainly taking advantage of the abundant food source in our Marine Park.
They have developed a hunting technique known as ‘bubble netting’, where they swim in a spiral direction underneath a school of fish or krill blowing lots of bubbles then head-lunging with their massive mouths open wide, the food is caught in the baleen plate, they then use their tongue to lick consuming between one and two tonnes each day.
Captain Kerry Lopez