Moment giant fin whale's huge mouth engulfs thousands of gallons of water

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1. 1

   Moment giant fin whale's huge mouth engulfs thousands of gallons of water

   BBC NewsPublished Oct 20, 2026Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “Videographer Rhys Morgan captured footage of the world's second largest whale lunge feeding This is the moment the planet's second largest living creature opens its giant jaws and swallows thousands of gallons of water during feeding. The fin whale was filmed by videographer Rhys Morgan off the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales, and it shows the mammal's expandable pleats take in up to 18,000 gallons of water and krill. Morgan said "it was complete luck" that he captured the whale feeding and swimming with dolphins on his drone while fishing with a friend. Second only to the blue whale, the fin whale is one of the largest animals ever to have lived, reaching up to 24m in length and weighing up to 70 tonnes. Despite its enormous size, the fast-swimming creature is elusive and spends much of its life in the open ocean and often surfacing only briefly before disappearing beneath the waves. The mammal can be found all over the world's oceans but is most at home in cooler waters. The fin whale is about 24m (79ft) in length and weighs up to 70 tonnes Morgan, from Houghton, Pembrokeshire, works at an oil refinery by day, and said he was "brought up on the water", but became interested in marine videography after using his friends drone to capture footage of sea creatures across the surface of the ocean.”

2. 2

   The Soft Palate Enables Extreme Feeding and Explosive Breathing in the Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus).

   Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) (Vogl et al.)Published Jul 9, 2024Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “Also, among the acquired features was an enlargement of the rostral end of the soft palate into an oral plug that occludes the opening between the oral cavity and pharynx and prevents water incursion into the pharynx during the engulfment phase of a feeding lunge. During this engulfment phase of a lunge, the volume of water entering the oral cavity can exceed the volume of the whale itself. Here, using dissection of fetuses and adults and a magnetic resonance imaging dataset of a fetus, we examine the detailed anatomy of the soft palate in fin whales. We describe several innovative features relative to other mammals, including changes in the attachment and positions of the major extrinsic muscles of the palate, alterations in the morphology of the pterygoid processes related to the palate and pharynx, and the presence of distinct muscle layers in the part of the palate caudal to the oral plug. Based on the anatomy, we present a model for how the soft palate is positioned at rest, and how it functions during feeding, breathing, and swallowing.”

3. 3

   Life in the slowest lane: Feeding allometry lowers metabolic rate scaling in the largest whales.

   Science advances (Blawas et al.)Published Aug 6, 2025Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “The hypothesized impacts of whale foraging on ocean productivity are ultimately defined by their metabolic rate, but determining energy expenditure for ocean giants remains challenging. The largest baleen whales use a high-drag lunge-feeding strategy that is hypothesized to come at a high energetic cost, thus requiring exceptional calorie intake. We used biologging tags to measure respiratory rates in foraging rorquals and demonstrate that their field metabolic rates are less than half that predicted by prey consumption estimates and by scaling predictions from smaller marine mammals. The relative cost of rorqual foraging decreases with increasing size as larger whales spend disproportionately longer time filtering prey from engulfed water. By decoupling active swimming and filtration, the largest rorquals forage with limited movement costs. The evolution of lunge feeding confers an energetic advantage that is unique among filter feeders and may have provided an evolutionary pathway to the largest body sizes.”

4. 4

   Constraints on lunge feeding: krill can clog the baleen of filter-feeding whales.

   The Journal of experimental biology (Ackermann et al.)Published Jul 9, 2026Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “But there is a problem hidden in this apparently efficient scheme. Spread uniformly across the 2.9 m2 of the baleen window, 144 kg of krill forms a layer 6.3 cm thick. If the accumulated krill clog the filter, it could increase the time needed to expel water, decreasing the rate at which lunges could be made, and negatively impacting foraging efficiency. We devised a model that incorporates measurements of the hydraulic resistance of accumulating krill and the pressure applied to water in the buccal pouch by contraction of muscles and elastic rebound of blubber in the pouch's walls. Given the stress typical of mammalian muscle, the model suggests that approximately 16 min would be required to empty the buccal pouch of an average gulp of krill - twice the duration of typical foraging dives - severely reducing feeding efficiency. Filter time could be reduced to the observed 31 s if a fraction of the baleen window is maintained clear of krill, but it is unclear how that might be achieved. Important questions remain as to how baleen whales feed.”

5. 5

   Fin whale (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaChecked Oct 20, 2026

   “The fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), also known as the finback whale or common rorqual, is a species of baleen whale and the second-longest cetacean after the blue whale. The biggest individual reportedly measured 26–27.3 m (85–90 ft) in length, with a maximum recorded weight of 65.5 to 120 t (64.5 to 118.1 long tons; 72.2 to 132.3 short tons). The fin whale's body is long, slender, and brownish-gray in color, with a paler underside to appear less conspicuous from below (countershading). At least two recognized subspecies exist, one in the North Atlantic and one across the Southern Hemisphere. The species is found in all the major oceans, from polar to tropical waters, and is absent only from waters close to the pack ice at the poles and relatively small areas of water away from the open ocean. The highest population density occurs in temperate and cool waters. Its prey mainly consists of smaller schooling fish, small squid, and crustaceans, including copepods and krill. Mating takes place in temperate, low-latitude seas during the winter.”

6. 6

   Fast and Furious: Energetic Tradeoffs and Scaling of High-Speed Foraging in Rorqual Whales.

   Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) (Gough et al.)Published Aug 27, 2022Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “In all cases, the small amounts of propulsive thrust generated by the tail were unable to overcome the high drag forces experienced during engulfment. Assuming this thrust to be minimal, we predicted the minimum speed of lunging across scale. To minimize the energetic cost of lunge feeding, hydrodynamic theory predicts slower lunge feeding speeds regardless of body size, with a lower boundary set by the ability of the prey to avoid capture. We used empirical data to test this theory and instead found that maximum foraging speeds remain constant and high (∼4 m s-1) across body size, even as higher speeds result in lower foraging efficiency. Regardless, we found an increasing relationship between body size and this foraging efficiency, estimated as the ratio of energetic gain from prey to energetic cost. This trend held across timescales ranging from a single lunge to a single day and suggests that larger whales are capturing more prey-and more energy-at a lower cost.”