Whale of a time

http://marine.earth-touch.com/index.php/item/humpback_whale_breaches_enroute_to_warmer_waters

This image, taken by Roger Horrocks of http://marine.earth-touch.com/ was taken over the weekend off the south coast.

The added comment:
Increasingly we are seeing groups of humpback whales, Megaptera
novaeangliae, making their yearly migration from the cold feeding grounds of
Antarctica to the warm spawning grounds of the tropics. One of the larger
baleen whales, the humpback whale was almost hunted into extinction until a
ban in hunting in 1963 gave these leviathans the opportunity to make a
gradual but sustained come back. An intriguing and spectacular behavioural
characteristic of these whales is breaching, in which the animal appears to
make a real effort to jump clear out of the water. Why they do this is
unclear, but experts suggest that as it is often done in groups, it may play
a role in communicating with other individuals. Another theory is that it is
useful for dislodging parasites.