This is rare video of humpback whales blowing
bubbles to create bubble nets, to catch their  prey.
This unique behavior was captured by researchers
from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s
Marine Mammal Research Program in collaboration with the Alaska Whale Foundation and Stanford University.
Even more amazing, is the whale’s-point-of-view,
from cameras attached to the animals,
coupled with aerial drone video.
Lars Bejder: We have two angles and the drones
perspective is showing us these bubble nets
if you will and how the bubbles are starting
to come to the surface and how the animals
come up through the bubble net as they surface,
while the cameras on the whales
are telling us from the animal’s perspective, so overlaying these two data sets is quite exciting.
The team worked with labs from Stanford University
and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
They used suction-cup tags fitted with cameras
and sensors to gain an understanding of how
humpback whales feed and use bubbles to form
nets around prey.
Bejder: The footage is rather groundbreaking.
We’re observing how these animals are manipulating
their prey and preparing the prey for capture.
So it is allowing us to gain new insights
that really haven’t been able to do before.
The video and data are providing insights
into how the whales carry out bubble-net formation
and how often they do this to sustain and
gain enough energy and weight, before they
migrate back down to Hawai‘i to breed and
mate.
The bubble-net research is part of a larger
Marine Mammal Research Program project
investigating possible causes of a decline in the humpback whale numbers, including shifts
in habitat use and changes to food availability linked
to prey depletion and climate change.
