Just now
By Victoria Gill, @vic_gill, Science correspondent
Footage of humpback whales captured by drones has revealed how the animals manoeuvre their whole bodies when they feed.
As BBC News filmed with scientists in the Antarctic Peninsula, one whale used its four-metre-long fin to sweep a net of bubbles around its prey and trap them, known as “bubble-netting”.
“The flick of that of that flipper really shows how adaptable, how creative, these animals can be,” said Dr Ari Friedlaender from the University of California Santa Cruz.
Humpbacks are “much more acrobatic” than other similarly sized whales, Dr Friedlaender said.
The wildlife charity WWF’s global whales expert, Chris Johnson, said the solo whale we watched “bubble-netting” was “using its fin as a tool” to trap krill, the tiny crustaceans that Antarctic whales eat more than one tonne of each day.
Humpback whales are the only species known to produce these solitary “bubble nets”.
The act can only be seen in detail from the air, so the use of drone cameras has revolutionised scientists’ ability to study it.
The aerial view that drones provide has also shed light on the recovery of whale populations in parts of the world where they were hunted to the brink of extinction in the 20th Century.
An international team of researchers, including some from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has used drone cameras to study whales in South Georgia, a key location for the whaling industry in Antarctica.
BAS researcher Stephanie Martin shared with the BBC what she says is the first drone footage of a mother-calf pair of southern right whales off the coast of South Georgia.
The post Drones reveal Antarctic whale ‘acrobatics’ first appeared on EnviroLink Network.