Sunday, August 01, 2010

Lunge Feeding Fin Whales









Hello everyone, we have been lucky enough to see lunge feeding fin whales on a number of our departures this season. It is so amazing to see how powerfully these whales can lunge through a school of fish at the surface. Usually what happens is you will start to see a group of birds at the surface all actively feeding, the porpoise are there as well...also feeding and what you want to do is keep your eyes on the birds. If you see the birds all lift off the water at the same time you know something large is coming up soon.

I took this series of photos last evening, in the first photo you can even see the baleen of the fin whale on the right hand side. And there were 2 fin whales lunge feeding here side-by-side. Their baleen is white on the front, right third of the right hand side and matches their white lower right jaw. The picture on the top is of me holding 2 herring, one in each hand, and this is what these whales, birds and porpoise are feeding on. The fish were picked up out of the water by Fundy Tide Runners and Dave was nice enough to come over and let us have a look....I grabbed a few to show our passengers.


Thanks for checking in today, I'm hoping to get out on the Scout Boat tomorrow morning and do some searching offshore. I will let you know what we see.

Cheers,
Danielle

PS I had to pose for a pic in this hat a passenger brought on the boat!

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