It’s one of the most unique and complex feeding behaviours in the animal kingdom, and now humpback whales have been caught on camera ‘bubble-net feeding’.
Researchers from the University of Hawaii have captured beautiful footage of the animals bubble-net feeding in the waters off Southeast Alaska.
While humpback whales are usually solitary creatures, during bubble-net feeding the animals team up.
As the name suggests, the whales blow bubbles beneath a school of fish, creating a ‘net’.
This allows the whales to efficiently gulp thousands of fish at once.
The latest video shows the rare technique both from above and from the whale’s perspective.
Lars Bejder, Director of the UH Mānoa Marine Mammal Research Program, said: “The footage is rather groundbreaking.
“We're observing how these animals are manipulating their prey and preparing the prey for capture. So it is allowing us to gain new insights that really haven't been able to do before."
To capture the whale’s perspective footage, the researchers used suction cup tags fitted with cameras and sensors.
This footage was paired with drone data to create a one-of-a-kind video of the bubble-net feeding in action.
Mr Bejder added: “So basically we have two angles and the drone's perspective is showing us these bubble nets if you will and how the bubbles are starting to come to the surface and how the animals come up through the bubble net as they surface, while the cameras on the whales are telling us from the animal's perspective, so overlaying these two data sets is quite exciting."
The researchers hope the video will help scientists to understand how humpback whales feed, how often they need to feed, what they feed on and how fast their bodies change or grow.
