Congrats to Doc White, whose photo “Big Blue Mouthful” is featured in: "Unforgettable Underwater Photography" (London’s Natural History Museum, 2018).
“This picture was the first ever to show, full frame, a blue whale with its throat pouch expanded, the pleats forced open by the engulfment of a gargantuan amount of water and shrimp-like krill. Having lunged through the krill swarm, the whale is expelling the water, forcing it through the massive sheets of hair-like baleen material, which hang from its mouth. To find large enough aggregations of krill, a blue whale is forced to travel great distances. But when a large swarm is located, the lunge-feeding technique is highly energy-efficient.
Photograph: Doc White/Unforgettable Underwater Photography/NHM”