New research shows that humpback whales’ oversized, wing-like flippers give them unmatched agility among baleen whales, enabling their unique bubble-net feeding strategy that traps prey with tight, high-speed spirals of bubbles.
Whales, like planes, are built for efficiency in a fluid medium. Both possess long, streamlined bodies: some sleek like private jets, others stockier like cargo planes. And impressively, they often weigh about the same, with some species regularly exceeding 100,000 pounds. This is comparable to a fully loaded Boeing 737, one of the most widely used commercial airliners. In both cases, propulsion comes from the rear: flukes in whales, and jet engines in planes.
But one major structural difference lies in their control surfaces. While planes rely on enormous wings to keep their massive weight from plummeting and to maneuver their rigid frames through the air, most whales have relatively small pectoral flippers. Neutral buoyancy in water frees whales from the need to generate lift like an aircraft. Yet despite lacking large “wings”, many of even the largest whale species display remarkable agility, using flexible bodies and banked maneuvers to steer through the ocean with surprising precision.
Bubble-net feeding: A unique strategy
The humpback whale’s oversized pectoral flippers, more akin to airplane wings than the small flippers of other whales, are thought to enhance their remarkable turning performance. In fact, their scientific name, Megaptera novaeangliae, means “big-winged New Englander”, a nod to both their unusually large flippers and the region where the species was first described.
Their agility is on full display during a specialized foraging strategy known as bubble-net feeding. In this behavior, a whale swims in a tight spiral while exhaling air through its blowhole, creating a rising ring of bubbles that corrals small fish or krill into a dense cluster. This “net” allows the whale to concentrate its prey and increase the efficiency of its lunge. While this behavior has been documented in humpback populations worldwide—from Alaska to Antarctica to the Gulf of Maine—it has never been observed in any other whale species. This led us to wonder: what makes humpback whales uniquely capable of this incredible feat? And are other baleen whale species even capable of performing these maneuvers?
To test this, our team at the Marine Mammal Research Program joined up with our partner organization, the Alaska Whale Foundation, in Frederick Sound, Southeast Alaska, to deploy non-invasive suction cup tags on solitary bubble-net feeding whales, and record concurrent morphological measurements using a drone. Over a week, our team deployed tags on five individuals and documented 197 bubble-netting events. We then analyzed the data and compared our findings to a large dataset that had over 100,000 turns from seven different baleen whale species (including worldwide data from humpback whales).
Turning performance during solitary bubble-net feeding
These whales were making quick, incredibly tight turns. On average, the outermost bubble ring measured about 15.7 meters across, while the innermost ring was just 9.9 meters—smaller than the whales themselves. The tightest turn we recorded was only 6.5 meters wide, which was just slightly larger than half of the whale’s body length. Remarkably, the whales maintained an average swimming speed of 1.50 m/s across both inner and outer rings, meaning they didn’t slow down even as the turns became sharper.
Imagine trying to take a sharp turn on a bike while keeping your speed steady — no slowing down, no drifting wide. As you turn tighter and go faster, the more force it takes to stay on course. Now, picture a 30-ton whale doing exactly that. At a swimming speed of 1.5 meters per second (about 3.4 mph), a humpback must generate over 11,500 newtons of force just to hold its tightest spiral. In other words, that’s roughly equivalent to the weight of a small car pushing sideways through the water!
Could other whales produce bubble-nets?
From the sourced dataset, we also found that none of the other species of baleen whales were generating the required amount of centripetal acceleration to create the innermost ring during their everyday behaviors. In other words, every other species of whale examined lacked the turning performance required to create the long-duration, tight, high-speed turns that humpback whales regularly use in bubble-net feeding. While this is not necessarily reflective of the maximum potential of these species, and speculating on the performance ability of these species is difficult, this was in stark contrast to the humpback whale data from their study, where their humpbacks were achieving centripetal accelerations over three times the mean value used in solitary bubble-net feeding.
This reveals two key insights. First, humpback whales are capable of significantly greater turning performance than what they typically employ during solitary bubble-net feeding, suggesting they operate well within their biomechanical limits. Second, even if other whale species were physically capable of producing a bubble-net, doing so would likely push them to the edge of their performance envelope, making it a biomechanically costly and impractical option for regular foraging. For these other species, attempting bubble-net feeding would be like driving a car at its redline constantly: technically possible for brief moments, but energetically unsustainable. Such large energetic costs would likely outweigh the benefits of corralling prey in these bubble-nets.
Why Other Whales Can’t Keep Up
Using tag data from the five solitary bubble-net feeding whales, we modeled the lift force generated by average-sized pectoral flippers and found that their flippers can produce nearly half of the force required to turn. Using published data for a minke whale and a subadult fin whale, we modeled their pectoral flippers’ contribution during similar turns. The results show that minke flippers generated only about 10% of the required force and fin whale flippers a mere 4%.
To put this in perspective, it’s like making a sharp turn on a bike with full handlebars (the humpback) versus trying to make the same turn using only your body weight to steer (the other whales). One is built for precision and control, while the other has to overcompensate just to stay on course. As a result, other baleen whales have to rely on workarounds to turn tightly, such as using their flukes for extra steering, banking their bodies more sharply, or bending their spines to twist through the water. However, all of these alternatives demand more effort and coordination to achieve what a humpback’s large flippers can do naturally and efficiently.
As a result, whales lacking the pronounced morphology of large pectoral flippers would likely need to expend too much energy to execute tight turns efficiently, rendering foraging strategies like bubble-net feeding energetically impractical or unsustainable. Baleen whales require dense aggregations of prey to make foraging energetically profitable, and because of their enhanced ability to maneuver, humpback whales can exploit less dense aggregations of prey that might otherwise be insufficient through the use of complex foraging strategies like bubble-net feeding. A big reason that they can create these bubble-nets is because they have these large, unique pectoral flippers that allow them to maneuver so efficiently at such a large body size.
The Bigger Picture
This study reminds us that evolution produces solutions that often seem impossible at first glance. The idea that a 30-ton animal could execute precision maneuvers that rival those of much smaller, more agile creatures challenges our assumptions about the limits of biological design.
As we continue to explore the ocean’s mysteries, studies like this reveal that even well-known species can surprise us. Though humpback whales have been studied for decades, new technologies are allowing us to uncover, with unprecedented clarity, the sophisticated biomechanics behind their most extraordinary behaviors.
The next time you see footage of a humpback whale erupting through the center of a bubble net with its throat pleats expanded and mouth full of krill, remember: you’re witnessing the result of millions of years of evolution perfecting one of nature’s most intricate hunting strategies. And it all comes down to having the right equipment for the job. In this case, a pair of absolutely massive, tubercle-covered flippers that would make any plane engineer proud.
Sources and further reading
Check out the study now published in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Cameron Nemeth and colleagues in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
- Goldbogen, J. A., Pyenson, N. D. and Madsen, P. T. (2023). How Whales Dive, Feast, and Fast: The Ecophysiological Drivers and Limits of Foraging in the Evolution of Cetaceans. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 54, 307–325.
- Fish, F. E. and Battle, J. M. (1995). Hydrodynamic design of the humpback whale flipper. J. Morphol. 225, 51–60.
- Szabo, A., Bejder, L., Warick, H. A., Van Aswegen, M., Friedlaender, A. S., Goldbogen, J. A., Kendall-Barr, J. M., Leunissen, E. M., Agnot, M. and Gough, W. T. (2024). Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake. R. Soc. Open Sci. 11, 240328.
- Segre, P. S., Gough, W. T., Roualdes, E. A., Cade, D. E., Czapanskiy, M. F., Fahlbusch, J., Kahane-Rapport, S. R., Oestreich, W. K., Bejder, L., Bierlich, K. C., et al. (2022). Scaling of maneuvering performance in baleen whales: larger whales outperform expectations. J. Exp. Biol. 225, jeb243224.
- Weber, P. W., Howle, L. E., Murray, M. M., Reidenberg, J. S. and Fish, F. E. (2014). Hydrodynamic performance of the flippers of large‐bodied cetaceans in relation to locomotor ecology. Mar. Mammal Sci. 30, 413–432.
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