Scientists at NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts attached tags with video cameras to the backs of wild humpbacks and saw the whales teaming up to hunt fish on the seafloor.
This is the first time this collaborative seabed feeding has been documented directly in humpback whales. The findings are published in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology.
The marine scientists watched footage of 110 seafloor hunting events recorded by the video tags and noticed that the whales swam along the seafloor and approached each other in an unusual pattern.
“In events with at least two animals, they moved toward each other to form a 'star' formation, with rostrums pointed to a central location among the whales,” write the authors in the study. “Separation ranged from a few metres to rostrums almost touching.”
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This strategy helped them round up their prey – tiny fish called sand lance – before opening their mouths at almost exactly the same time to swallow as many as possible.
"We do not yet know whether this collaborative strategy is unique to humpback whales hunting sand lance in the Gulf of Maine or if it occurs in other whale populations and habitats," says the study’s lead author David Wiley, the sanctuary's research ecologist, in a press release.
Although amazing to watch, something about this clever strategy has the scientists worried. “Unfortunately, the behaviour takes place along the seafloor,” Wiley adds, “putting them at increased risk of becoming entangled in bottom-set fishing gear."
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