We are now in Australia! Yay! And we have been seeing tons of whales inside the Great Barrier Reef (literally tons, the average humpback whale weighs about 30 tons, the same as Saltair) and we were curious about some of their activities so I researched a list of their behaviors, the first two are probably the most known, but the rest might be new to you.

Blowing is when whales send a spout of mist up onto the air from their blow hole, making it easy to see them from a distance. It happens when the whale is exhaling through their blow hole at the surface. Breaching, which also makes them easy to see from a distance, is when a whale jumps out of the water, exposing a good portion of their body to the air, nobody really knows why though.

In addition to these well known behaviors , there are also a lot of others,  such as mugging, tail slapping, and bubble net fishing to name a few.

Mugging is when a whale or multiple whales come up close to, or swim around boats to “people watch.” When whales do this the captain is required to turn off the boat's engines and wait until they leave.

Skyhopping is when a whale lifts its head out of the water so they can look around or to look at a boat. The funny thing is I also use this technique when I snorkel to know where I am in comparison to a shoreline.

Tail slapping is a technique used for hunting, communication, and defense, where a whale hangs vertically and slaps the water making cracks loud enough to wake somebody up and large splashes. A tail throw is a similar feat, but it is a bit more dramatic

A pec slap is when a whale floats on its back and rolls around, slapping its pectoral fins on the water. It’s mainly playful.

Whales have to consciously breathe and swim, so to rest they do something called logging, where they turn off one half of their brain and leave the other half on to breathe and swim.

To eat, whales have a couple techniques, one is lunge feeding, where a whale lunges at a school of krill with its mouth wide open.

Another feeding technique is bubble net feeding where a group of whales herd prey into a tight formation, then dive deep making loud noises to scare the prey towards the surface. They then rise again in a spiral fashion blowing bubbles on the way up, herding the prey into a tight ball at the surface so they can easily take a gulp of food.