Sea lion 'swallowed' by a whale in rare photo

Wildlife photographer Chase Dekker has taken what he believes to be a 'once in a lifetime' picture of a humpback whale "swallowing" a sea lion

The Californian photographer has been obsessed by wildlife and whales for most of his 27 years, but he'd never seen such a sight before.

Last Thursday he saw something he wouldn't have believed had he not taken the photo to prove it.

Normally gentle giants, the humpback whales don't normally eat seals. They prefer a diet of tiny fish and krill, but last week this whale misjudged a mouthful during an encounter with passing sea lions.

"It wasn't a huge group, only three humpback whales and about two hundred sea lions," Dekker told the BBC.

Aiming for a school of anchovies, the whale managed to pick up a hapless sea lion.
In the picture, it's hard to tell who is more surprised: the whale or the seal.

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Just the other day I witnessed something out on Monterey Bay I had never seen before. While the humpbacks were lunge feeding on a school of anchovies, a sea lion apparently didn't jump out of the way fast enough and got trapped inside the whales mouth! At some point the sea lion escaped and the whale seemed fine too as it continued to feed, but it must have been a strange experience for both parties! That sea lion had the true "Jonah Experience"!

A post shared by Chase Dekker Wild-Life Images (@chasedekkerphotography) on Jul 24, 2019 at 10:13am PDT

"We were watching them feed for a long time and then eventually the event - as I call it the once-in-a-lifetime event - happened, and I still can't believe it," said Dekker.
"I had about a split second while the whale was coming up to really comprehend that the sea lion was on top of the whale before shooting the rest of the sequence."

According to the photographer, the sea lion was able to swim away unharmed if shocked.
Fortunately humpback whales don't have teeth, but bristle like hairs with which they filter out animals too large to swallow.

Big animals like sea lions.

Dekker told the BBC that whales and sea lions have evolved to hunt in the same shoal of fish, so such a mistake is extremely rare.

The largest group Dekker has encountered is about 100 whales to 3000 sea lions. "It can get really insane," he said, but never has he seen such a mistake.

Chase Dekker is next on his way to Tonga to observe migratory humpbacks arriving from New Zealand.

The waters around Tonga are nursery grounds for whales to breed and give birth, so hopefully there will be less worry of a feeding frenzy gone wrong.

However, naturalists are now warning that the biggest danger to humpbacks is not choking on seals but being disturbed by tourists.

Last month researchers from AUT raised concern of the impact of tourism on whale behaviour in nursery grounds near Tonga. "It's a wonderful experience for the tourist, but it does have the potential to disturb what is a really important part of the lifecycle of whales," Professor Mark Oram told RNZ.

The country's officials are looking at new ways to restrict the impact of operators that offer snorkelling with whales and whale spotting safaris as experiences.

Humpback nursery areas in Tonga could soon be no-go zones for local tour operators.
In New Zealand humpback whales regularly pass through our waters, though they can be hard to spot.

Passing North up the country in winter, they can generally be spotted returning from the nursery grounds along the West Coast in spring.

See more of Dekker's photos at chasedekker.com

Whales of New Zealand

	Humpback whale An adult can grow up to 15m in length. Travel mainly along the East Coast of the South Island and through Crook Strait in winter, returning along West Coast in spring.
	Bryde's whale Pronounced 'Brooders'. Named after a Norwegian discoverer Johan Bryde. Can grow up to 14m and belong to the same group as humpback whales.
	Orca Can grow up to 9m in length. Males can live to 60 years, females up to 90 years. NZ is home to between 150 and 200 individuals. Prevalent throughout our coastline in large numbers.
	Southern Right whale Large baleen whales which are native migrants to New Zealand. They are skim feeders. As water enters their mouth, prey is sieved and trapped in the whales' fine baleen plates.
	Sperm whale Can grow up to 18m in length. In any one season there are around 86 sperm whales present in Kaikoura, most of which are likely to be male.