(Video) Gray whale swims under boat off Hermosa Beach feeding on krill

04/09/2012

(Video) Gray whale swims under boat off Hermosa Beach feeding on krill

Northbound gray whales continue to make their way up the Baja coast and head back to Alaska completing the longest mammalian migration know to man; over 10,000 miles. The whales head to the warm water lagoons of Baja California every year around January to calf, and then head back to the Bering Sea every spring.

Two of those whales returning home were bumped in to by a private boat on Saturday just off Hermosa Beach, CA. The whales seem oblivious to the nearby boat focusing instead on great balls of krill for a noontime snack.

"We were about 1 mile off Hermosa Beach on Friday afternoon filming for our website HookBuzz.com," said Clark McNulty from Hermosa Beach. McNulty was with his good friends Casey and Jenny Adams on a Catalina 30 sailboat named Pegasus.

" As we were headed back toward the harbor I noticed a whale stick his head out of the water while remaining stationary. He was not swimming but just hanging out in one area. We were absolutely amazed by these two whales behavior. We weren't sure what they were doing at first but then realized they were feeding on blankets of krill," said McNulty.

But how often do gray whales eat krill? "We don't see it very often," said researcher Alisa Schulman-Janizer from the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project. "It is definently more on display this season. There is surface krill everywhere; grays are known to eat over 85 types of prey."

In the video, you can see one of the whales clearly swim under the boat and occupants for a tense moment or two. Jenny Adams seemed concerned."I was going to take a picture but then I got so scared of him going under the boat that I had to stop," she said.

"The whales basically hung out on the surface siphoning all the krill in through their baleen. I have never seen anything like it. Both whales were juveniles with a length of approximately 20-25ft. At one point the whales came right up to the boat almost touching the hull of the sailboat with their faces. One of them even followed the boat for 20 yards or so! We stayed around them for about 35 minutes and then left them alone to continue feeding," said McNulty.

The orange haze you see around the whale are tiny shrimp-like creatures called krill. You can see the whale gorging on it's scrumptious feast and treating the onlookers to an Easter Weekend they will never forget.

Northbound gray whales will be passing by Southern California for at least another few weeks while vast quantities of krill bode well for blue whale enthusiasts.

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