Whales off Wollongong...

[khiemtran]

It's Monday. Have a whale...



I swung by Flagstaff Hill on the way home from work, and sure enough there was a family of humpbacks going past.



These guys are off to the Southern Ocean for the summer. They've still got a long way to go. They were motoring along, although I did see a big splash from a breach way off in the distance.



Here's a shot of one of them with some of the container ships waiting to dock at Port Kembla in the background. The whales look huge until you see the size of the ships.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Love them. Hope they enjoy their time in the cold southern waters. What a different experience of life on Earth they have.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Glorious creatures.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

They are! They are breathtaking to watch.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, it must be quite strange going from the tropics to the Antarctic each year. Also, there's nothing that the adults can eat in the tropics, so the mothers are essentially living off their fat reserves as they feed their calves on the first part of their journey south. The calves are born without enough blubber to survive the Antarctic, so they need to fatten up as they move down the coast.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

They do a lot of feeding up in the northern part of the northern hemisphere too: if you go on a whale watch off Cape Cod that's what you see: them making their bubble nets to herd the tiny krill together and then SWOOSH, they come up from underneath and feast.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The other amazing thing is that the northern and southern populations never actually meet, even though they visit the same places in the tropics. The northern whales go there in the northern winter and the southern whales go there in the southern winter. I imagine at some point the two populations must have diverged. Just think of the stories hidden away there.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that! I thought it was one giant population that went to both the northern and southern extremes (which, now that I think of it, would be hard, but I hadn't thought logistics before).

Yeah, real stories for sure. I wonder if they even speak the same language anymore. They can communicate over huge distances underwater (when sonar signals aren't interfering), so if they do still speak the same language, they can keep in touch even if they don't see each other--maybe. Not sure how far "huge distances" extends)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I love seeing whales. :D

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's very cool at this time of year. I swung by the beach again today after work, but I didn't see any this time (although I did see a deer on the way home).