Humpback whales live all over the world, but they move around from the summer in the poles to the winter in the tropics. I met some humpback whales in the Antarctic Peninsula during my travels there, and they are some of the most gentle and curious animals I have ever seen. In the pictures you can see how one of them came to check us out on the zodiac.
These whales were eating tiny crustaceans called krill… there is a lot of krill in the Antarctic waters! Once the summer is over in the Antarctic, these whales will go north to warmer waters and they won’t eat for months, until next summer when they will come back to these places to find more of this krill soup. Some of the whales that visit the Antarctic Peninsula have been seen as far away as American Samoa!
Humpback whales are enormous! You can differentiate them from other whale species looking at their stubby dorsal fin, their very big pectoral fins, and the shape of their tail… And they are the only whales that have knobs on their faces. Each humpback whale has an unique pattern on the back of the tale, and it can be used to tell each one of them from the others.
