June 8th 10:30 AM - Neowise the Humpback lungefeeding near Tsawwassen

It was a gloomy day when the two vessels left the harbour on the morning of June 8th. We headed into the strait of Georgia looking for whales. During our search we heard from another whale-watching vessel nearby that their search was successful, there was a humpback nearby! We turned the boats and started heading that way and found a young whale, Neowise, lunge feeding!

Lunge feeding is one of the most common form of feeding that we see here in the Salish Sea. It’s when a humpback will find a place with high concentrations of food, open their mouths up nice and wide, and they swim through the ball of food quickly. Sometimes they will do this on an angle with the animals or they can shoot straight up from the water! Humpbacks can take huge amounts of water into their mouth, up to around 5,000 gallons! Anything within their mouth will be filtered out by the large baleen plates and swallowed. Unfortunately, this feeding method makes our large filter-feeding whales very susceptible to getting ocean plastic in their system.

Wondering how a humpback can manage to get so much water into their mouth? They accomplish this task using their ventral grooves. These are the slits on the underside of the first half of their body which are fleshy and open to allow more space for their food. We got some amazing looks at the grooves and how they opened up as Neowise fed today. Check out the photos that naturalists Cheyenne Brewster and Janine Van der Linden took during this trip below.

Neowise showing off his fluke going for a dive. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

What a groovy whale, baby! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

What a mouthful! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Neowise surfacing. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

You can see some scaring on Neowise, this helps us with identification. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

A wave of the tail before a dive. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Going down. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Here we can see Neowises tubricols, the fist-sized bumps along the upper jaw. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Splash! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Enjoying his meal. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

These pectoral fins are 1/3 the length of Neowises’ body! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Dive time, looking for his next snack. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Neowises’ dorsal fin, is another tool to help us when identifying the whales. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Look closely, can you spot the barnacles on Neowises’ tail?. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Harbour seal lounging around. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Neowises’ tail. Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Open wide, say aah! Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Neowise lunge feeding. Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Gotta close that mouth to trap all the goodies inside. Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Great blue heron in flight. Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.

Gull bobbing around in waves. Photo by Janine Van Der Liden.