Humpback Whale and Surprised Seal (Photo by Brooke Casanova, taken off Anacortes, Washington USA)

Dear Readers, I’m sure many people were alarmed when they saw this photo today. Is that whale about to eat that poor seal? Well, no, and for a variety of reasons, though because of the way that they feed, humpbacks often end up with larger items on their menu than they anticipated.

When I was whalewatching in Monterey Bay back in 2018, I was lucky enough to witness the feeding tactics of humpbacks close up. You could often tell what was going on from miles away simply by watching the seabirds.

Photo by Peter Dunn

Humpbacks are baleen whales – they feed on tiny fish that they corral into a ball by blowing a ring of bubbles around them. As the fish start to mass together, they jump out of the water in their panic, and this attracts various kinds of gulls, shearwaters, and even pelicans.

The birds, in turn, attract sea lions.

Sealions massing above humpback whales (Photo by Peter Dunn)

And then this happens…

Humpbacks lunge-feeding (Photo by Peter Dunn)

As I mentioned in my blogpost about this trip, I’d seen scenes like this on ‘Blue Planet’ but never imagined that I’d see it for myself in a million years. Normally all the birds and the sealions manage to get out of the way of the whales in time, but I have seen a whale spit out a bedraggled pelican, and the whales sometimes ‘trumpet’ in irritation at the sealions. Something to bear in mind, though, is that the throat of a humpback whale is very, very small in diameter, and so the chance of anything as large as a bird, let alone a sealion, ending up in the stomach of a humpback is very unlikely.

A few words here about the photographer, Peter Dunn. He was our guide on this trip, and a more knowledgeable, well-organised and kinder human being you couldn’t hope to meet. Sadly, Peter was diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2020, and contracted Covid-19 while he was in hospital. He died in May 2020, and what a loss that was, to his family and to the UK nature community. He was also a great photographer, and I think the photo below, of a mother whale breaching with her baby by her side, is one of his best photographs. What a wonderful man he was. You can read his full obituary here.

Double-breach – Photo by Peter Dunn

Peter Dunn in Antarctica