“I don’t know how many whales are out here! 6 of them – at least.” Terry is counting whales diving, surfacing, circling. They’re almost rubbing together they’re so close. I wonder: “Are they fishing? They must be fishing”.
It’s common in Alaska for humpback whales to form large feeding groups where each whale has a role to play. The iconic shot of all the whales surfacing together, mouths agape and pleated throats bulging is in every humpback whale documentary. Here in the Salish Sea we have yet to see anything like this group feeding buffet. Perhaps the schools of fish are bigger in Alaska or maybe the schools are in deeper water here and the whales finish gulping under the water. Even without the lunging at the surface half a dozen whales swirling and moving together is fascinating to see.
“Do you recognize anyone?” I ask camera man Terry as he zooms in on the action. “One is definitely ‘Zed’, with the chewed off left fluke.”
“Yeah” Terry answers “and I see Nick with them. See that white fluke? Could be Apollo or maybe even Neptune” Neptune is Apollo’s calf.
“Snouter!” I exclaim as a whale rostrum partially emerges from the water. Snouter is our affectionate name for a whale’s “face” also known by whale lovers as “pickeleface” because of the many bumps on a whale’s chin. Each bump contains at least one single sensing hair. Biologists are not sure what tubercule hairs are sensing but a good guess would be movement and vibration. Like the whiskers of seals and sealions humpback whales could sense schools of fish from the “trails” of disturbance their swimming leaves in the water. Tubercule hairs may even sense electrical charge or something more mysterious since they are rich in nerves.
Mother whales like to support their babies on their rostrums so they might have other functions as well – smell? There is an organ in a humpback’s chin whose function hasn’t been identified as yet. Could it have an olfactory function along with the tubercules? The deeper down the whale whole one ventures the more questions bubble out!