Featured Image Credit: Newport Coastal Adventure Video
Last Wednesday, Newport Coastal Adventure captured incredible aerial footage of a humpback whale absolutely dominating a tightly schooled ball of anchovies. This time of year, humpbacks can typically be seen feeding off the coast of Central California. However, the Southern California company not only used a drone to capture the feast but even managed to capture the formation of the bait ball beforehand.
The hungry hungry humpback, along with other marine mammals, was cruising nearby with a solid plan of attack called lunge feeding. Unfortunately for the anchovies, even though they were dedicated to their plan of defense, they proved to be no match for the behemoth. You can even see the humpback’s ventral pleats expand during the preliminary lunge and practically decimating the majority of the fish.
In actuality, every time the anchovies pulled together and formed a bait ball, it basically set them up as the perfect target for the whale’s next gulp. Captain Ryan Lawler told Grind TV, “We watched before our eyes as a school of about 2,000 anchovies was eaten until the very last one.” The capt. also added, “We saw at least a half dozen lunge feeds in a span of 15 minutes by this one whale, and then everything went back to normal.”
Check out adventure company’s AWESOME footage:
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