A wildlife photographer recently captured some dramatic footage of a scuffle between a pod of humpback whales and a sea lion off the west coast of the USA.
Wildlife enthusiast Chase Dekker, who works for a marine tourism company specialising in whale- and dolphin-watching excursions in the Monterey Bay region of California, shared footage recently of a pod of humpback whales feeding in the bay. One humpback, however, didn’t take too kindly to having its meal interrupted by a pesky sea lion (family of the seal and walrus).
In Dekker’s images, the sea lion is almost being cradled in the wide, open mouth of the humpback whale, who appears to have half swallowed it. According to the photographer, whales like the humpback (rorquals with pleated throat grooves) which lunge-feed by opening their mouths wide to engulf water and filter food and nutrients through their baleen, usually close them quite quickly again, but this whale clearly ‘bit off’ more than it could chew, and nearly swallowed the sea lion too, by the looks of it.
Notice the seal in the bottom right corner in the water, free at last.
‘We saw something that we’ve never seen before,’ Chase Dekker posted to the Sanctuary Cruises Whale Watching Facebook page. ‘While the humpbacks were lunge feeding, a sea lion apparently didn’t jump out of the way fast enough and got trapped inside the whale’s mouth! At some point the sea lion escaped and the whale seemed fine too as it continued to feed, but it must have been a strange experience for both parties! That sea lion had the true “Jonah Experience”!’ Dekker remarked, referring to the Abrahamic religious parable.
All images: Chase Dekker via Sanctuary Cruises Whale Watching/Facebook
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