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| Click to enlarge. Minke whale breaching! |
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| Elizabeth |
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| Every day the water opens up a little more. |
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| This little hole from last week is now open water with lots of whales! |
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| Minkes are the smallest of the baleen whales, eating plankton, krill, and small fish. They have 2 blowholes, but they start blowing out air before they reach the surface, so the spray isn't as spectacular as some whales (although we saw a lot of blowing and spraying today!). Apparently they can live up to 50 years. Ha, it's possible my Dad may have seen the very same whale 46 years ago. |
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| The whales breathe several times in a minute before gulping a huge breath, arching their backs, and going deep for as long as 20 minutes. We watched them swim underneath a quarter mile of ice pretty quickly. They can swim up to 25mph! |
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| The whales swam way out toward the ice shelf and had to poke themselves up through tiny holes. I saw heads bob up several times. |
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| Minke whales are pregnant for 10 months, and they weigh 882 pounds when they are born. Whew. |
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| The water stays disturbed for some time after they dive. |
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| Last big breaths before headed out to the channel where the Russian ice breaker is still working. |
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| Scott made this sequence of a whale breaching. Click to enlarge. |
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| Pic from the internet to show what they look like under water |
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