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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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  • The seabirds were such an integral part of my experiences with bubble net feeding whales. They followed the feeding whales just as tirelessly as I did from dawn to dusk, and probably beyond. I sometimes relied on them as an early-warning system to indicate where the whales were going to be surfacing, although quiet a lot of times there were false alarms and sometimes there were two different "opinions' going in opposite directions. It wasn't so important to watch them if it was calm because I could usually see the circle of bubbles on the surface, and estimate where the middle of the bubble net was. It was then just a matter of trying to stay as close to the bubbles as possible to avoid the centre where they would be surfacing. But sometimes if the sea was a bit choppy it became a bit more ambiguous because I couldn't tell which way the circle was curving. The best indicators if ever they were around were the sea lions, that always knew exactly where the whales were underwater.
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  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, I You Seen Cove, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.
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  • Humpback whales generally have heavy encrustations of barnacles on their throats, pectoral fins and flukes. Whale barnacles are barnacles belonging to the family Coronulidae. Whale barnacles attach themselves to the bodies of baleen whales during the barnacles's free-swimming larval stage. Though often described as parasites, the relationship is an example of obligate commensalism, as the barnacles neither harm, nor benefit, their host. But they are parasitised by whale lice that are actually amphipods: tiny crustaceans that feed off dead skin and pieces of flesh from their host. In normal situations, population of these parasites seem to stay in check, thereby not hurting their large hosts. Cetacean cyamid species are specific to different species of cetaceans and the one that lives on humpbacks is Cyamus boopis.
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  • This was the place where I observed and photographed their spectacular cooperative feeding using a bubble net the most. Their baleen plates can clearly be seen in this photo. They have about 330 pairs of dark gray baleen plates with coarse gray bristles on the inside hanging from the jaws. They are about 25 inches (0.6 m) long and 13.5 inches (34 cm) wide. They act as filters to trap their prey when they shut their mouths and expel the water.
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  • This is looking west towards the end of the inlet.
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  • This was my first successful entry in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. I was Highly Commended for this photo of a lunge-feeding whale in the endangered species category in about 1994.
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  • This was the photo that won the Mammal Behavior Category in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2002. It wasn’t until after I attended the award ceremony at the Natural History Museum that I discovered that many of the judges were unhappy that it wasn’t awarded the title of the overall winner of the competition, and I subsequently discovered that that was the general public consensus as well. It was unfortunate that the controversy that surrounded the overall winner that year soured such a proud moment in my photographic career. I was contacted a few years later by the new head of the judging panel, Mark Carwardine, to ask for any guidelines for submitting a winning photo, because he felt that my photo was the best entry that year. C’est la vie !<br />
But the moment that can never be diminished or tainted was the moment that I captured the image. I was photographing a bubble net feeding group very near the community of Tenakee Springs, which can be seen to the left of the whale. They came up behind me and I can clearly remember zooming my lens back so that I could fit the entire throat of the whale into the photo, and fortunately I was just able to do that or else it might not have been a perfect award-winning photo.
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  • This was taken just off the entrance to Pleasant Harbour where I either used to anchor my boat or camp on the little islet at the entrance that is on the right of this photo. This was my regular base in my early years with the whales in Southeast Alaska. It was always a thrill to emerge from the beautiful cosy little safe anchorage in the morning and be greeted by volleys of whale blows illuminated by the rising sun against the shaded Glass Peninsula.
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  • Lunga is the largest island in an archipelago of small islands and skerries that stretches roughly 7 kilometres (4.3 m) called the Treshnish Isles. Lunga is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its abundant plant life. Many rare and endangered plants are native to the island. Plants include primrose, birdsfoot trefoil, orchids, sea campion, sea thrift, sea pinks, yellow flags, tormentil and the oyster plant. The Treshnish Isles are also designated as a Special Protection Area due to their importance for breeding seabirds such as storm-petrels, kittiwakes, Manx Shearwaters, guillemots, puffins and fulmars. They are also a marine Special Area of Conservation and grey seals can be found there along with basking sharks, as I was pleased to discover. I particularly enjoyed watching the seabirds nesting on the precipitous cliffs, and a dramatic sea stack called the Harp Rock separated from the island by a narrow passage. It was hypnotic to watch the real masters of flight like the kittiwakes and fulmars launching from their precarious nests and soaring in graceful arcs in front of the cliffs and above the rocks and meadows.<br />
Lunga was populated up until the 19th century, and to the NE of the island, and just around the rocks to the right of this photo can be found the ruins of the village, which was abandoned in 1857. I often used to sit in amongst the ruins looking out across the sea dotted with vegetated skerries towards Mull and the mainland wondering what it must have been like to live there. I camped there for a week, and it was a wonderful place to live during the good weather of the short Scottish summer, but I can imagine how challenging it must have been to eke out a subsistence life there in the past.
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  • Along with the pelicans, frigate birds and cormorants the blue-footed booby was one of the commonest seabirds that I encountered on my journey.
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  • If the magnificent frigate birds enchanted and hypnotised me then the brown pelicans amused and entertained me with their comical appearance and behaviour, although like the frigate birds they were also very impressive at times. This ubiquitous seabird inhabits the entire coastline of Baja California and the Sea of Cortez, and is often seen flying in long elegant formations, with their wingtips just touching the cresting waves. One of the most impressive sights on the entire trip was being in the water when they were plummeting from the sky to catch fish. It is the only pelican species to dive from the air into the water to catch prey with its specialised beaked pouch; other pelicans use an on-the-water group strategy to trap fish when feeding.
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  • There is so much power when the whales explode to the surface when they are feeding cooperatively with bubble nets. I could almost feel the energy being transmitted through the air and water when they exploded to the surface like this.
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  • It felt better to arrive safely at yet another beautiful campsite than I could have ever imagined! I had a wonderful time there before in 1990, especially photographing the colony of breeding seabirds on the cliffs at the northern end of Lunga. It is the smallest of the four main islands in the Small Isles, measuring roughly 2.5 miles (4.0 km east to west) and has a population of around 30, mostly living near the harbour at Port Mor. The other settlement on the island is the farm at Gallanach, and during this visit I was fortunate enough to get to know the family living there, and to have a glimpse of their isolated traditional subsistence lifestyle. The only road on the island, about 1.6 miles long (2.5 km) connects the farm to the port. I camped just behind a really nice sandy beach, where there were often some white horses grazing or walking on the beach. There were plenty of grey seals bobbing their heads above the water and seaweed around the bay. There is a characterful old house there, which is available for holiday rental, and I got to know, and dined with a lovely family staying there. Although it’s such a small community I had a very sociable time while I was there and met some very interesting people. There was a very nice café and shop at Port Mor, that I enjoyed snacking in and meeting some of the locals and visitors. Apart from observing and photographing the breeding seabirds as before I also climbed the main hill on the island, Beinn Airein, 137 metres (449 ft) high. The view out across the choppy ocean dotted with islands was tremendous, and gave me such a feeling of expansive space. I could visually embrace the relentless passage of the strong wind from the distant horizon, whipping up the sea into ranks of advancing whitecaps, before flying up to nip my face with its invigorating salty chill. I was glad that I had braved the adverse sea conditions for another special visit to the Isle of Muck and hope that it won’t be so long before my next visit.
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  • A view along the western side of the island looking northwards towards a sea stack called Harp Rock. It is separated from the island by a narrow channel, and there are many seabirds nesting on the stack and the precipitous cliff facing it. It was a spectacular, if not unnerving place to view the activity of all the different species of seabirds nesting there.
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  • This is the entrance on the West side that faced Admiralty Island. To the right of the photo you can see the distinctive outline of the hills that creates "the Sleeping Giant", as everybody called it. Later on when I was just kayaking, I still liked to stop here to camp because there was a very good place to camp near where I took this photo from. In the opposite direction behind this beach was a small island that was used as a haul-out by Steller sea lions. Whenever they were there you could constantly hear their rumbling groaning and roaring. There is also a lot of seal and seabird activity around the island, and particularly around the kelp beds. One of the regular seabirds there are pigeon guillemots (Cepphus columba), with their distinctive high-piched squeaking. Humpback whales also frequently feed in the nutrient-rich waters around the island, as a result of the strong upwelling created by strong currents colliding. I had my first close encounter with humpback whales lunge-feeding right next to the rocky shoreline of one of the islands.
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  • Sometimes the cooperative feeding group would surface unexpectedly. If the sea was calm and there were plenty of seabirds around to help me to track the whales then it was easier, but if it was more difficult to see the bubbles on the surface or there were distracting sounds of boat engines in the vicinity then anything could happen, and on this occasion the whales exploded out of the water right behind me and I barely had enough time to swivel around to take a photo.
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  • Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia) lunging during cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Tenakee Inlet, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
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Sometimes the cooperative feeding group would surface unexpectedly. If the sea was calm and there were plenty of seabirds around to help me to track the whales then it was easier, but if it was more difficult to see the bubbles on the surface or there were distracting sounds of boat engines in the vicinity then anything could happen, and on this occasion the whales exploded out of the water right behind me and I barely had enough time to swivel around to take a photo.
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  • This was definitely one of my favourite camps in Southeast Alaska because Point Gardiner is such a spectacular location with tremendous views across Frederick Sound and Chatham Strait down to the Pacific Ocean, and Baranof Island with its spine of lofty mountains and glaciers. It wasn't the easiest camp to get to after arriving because of the extensive wave-cut platform at Point Gardiner, and if i was exhausted, which I usually was because the crossing from Kupreanof Island to the south was the longest of the crossings I had to do, having to carry all of my gear to the camp in the dark used up the very last of my energy reserves. There was always so much wildlife off the point. The strong currents of Chatham Strait and Frederick Sound converge there creating upwellings and challenging sea conditions, which attracts a lot of life there, from seabirds to whales. There are extensive kelp beds around the point as well. Just offshore from the point is Yasha Island, which was my favourite sea lion haulout for observing Steller's sea lions at close quarters.
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  • I was camped above a rocky cove at the southeast end of the island. Every day I walked around the small island as if I was the laird of my own little dominion. There was a small fairly well trodden trail that I had to be very vigilant on in places because of its proximity to precipitous drops. This photo was taken at the NW end of the island with a view of some of the offshore skerries. I became very familiar with every different aspect of the island, the birds and the plants. In the middle there was an open grass meadow leading up to a terraced outcrop of rock, which may be a volcanic plug as the islands are volcanic in origin. If I wasn’t sitting near a cliff watching the aerial display of the seabirds I was the king of my own little domain sitting on top of my throne surveying the distant ocean and islands.
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