"Humpback” refers to the habit of raising and curving its back in preparation for the dive, accentuating the pronounced hump in front of the dorsal fin.
The humpback whale is a baleen whale and a rorqual whale with a rounded body narrowing to a slender tail. The bulky head and jaws have numerous knobs that contain hair follicles and provide sites for barnacles and whale lice.
Humpback Whales are easily distinguished by their wing-like flippers often as long as up to as much as a third of their total body length.
QUICK FACTS ABOUT THE HUMPBACK WHALEs
- The upper body is black but the flippers, ventral groove area, flanks, and underside of the flukes are white.
- The distinctive white patches on the underside of the flukes (tail) are unique to each individual whale, like a fingerprint.
- The blow is generally a tall single, bushy plume reaching up to 4 meters high.
- Humpback whales have small dorsal fins on top of a raised hump.
- When Humpback Whales breach, they are hard to miss!
- Humpback whales divide their lives between the cool, rich waters where they feed and the warmer, clear tropics where they breed.
- They weigh up to 30 tonnes and grow up to 15 meters, larger than the average school bus!
- Their flippers grow to 5 meters long.
.... but despite their staggering size, most of their lives remain a mystery. We know very little about their rowdy courtship competitions..or the gentle ways they nurse their young.