Quote:
Originally Posted by mtnbykr2
Nice shot....a little suspect...but nice shot
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It's actually an easier shot to get then some might think.
Those Humpback whales are not breaching, as the reporter wrongly states, but actively feeding.
What they do is they find schools of fin bait then circle them blowing bubbles to drive them into a tight ball, then they rise up open mouth in the center of the bubble circle and take the whole ball or as much of it as they can along with a huge amount of seawater into their mouths. They then settle back down and filter out the bait with their balleen.
When whales breach they leap up out of the water in a unpredictable even dangerous fashion, when they feed like that they come up right in the middle of a visible bubble circle they created, and though their noses come up out of the water they could never clear the water breach style due to the weight of the massive amounts of water they take into their mouths. In the pic you can tell those whales mouths are filled with water, and from the surrounding birds I bet the were on chovies or Sardines.
It's actually one of the few times Humpbacks are safe to approach due to the fact it's such a known predictable behavior.
To get a picture like that all you have to do is find feeding Humpbacks, paddle up to the edge of the bubble circle and wait for the whales to come up. I've done this myself in my skiff offshore in the northern section Catalina Channel up towards SBI. On a dead calm glassy overcast day I came up on three humpbacks feeding like this on a massive school of anchovies and I spent over and hour following them, positioning my skiff right outside the bubbles and watching them come up right next to me. The original baitball was massive but in a short while they had taken it down to nothing. It's probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen out there.
Jim