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Habitat:
Along coast; usually on continental shelf or island banks; sometimes in open seas
Range:
Humpbacks migrate along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the Atlantic, they migrate between Iceland and the West Indies. They also enter the Gulf of Mexico. In the Pacific, they migrate from the Bering Sea to Mexico and also to Japan. Another population lives in the eastern North Atlantic, migrating from near Iceland and Norway towards Spain and North Africa.
Diet:
krill and small schooling fish such as herring, sand lance, capelin, mackerel, pollock and haddock
Hunting:
Perhaps the most unique example of cooperative feeding is the "bubble netting" technique practiced by humpback whales. Several humpbacks dive below a large school of fish and swim in an upward spiral while emitting a cylindrical curtain of bubbles around the fish, making a bubble "curtain". Then the whales rush into the concentrated school of fish and gulp huge mouthfuls.
Feeding:
Like all other baleen whales, humpbacks feed by taking in large
mouthfuls of seawater and fish. They strain the water through their baleen
and swallow the fish that remain in their mouths.
