LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Whales (Ecotourism): Food
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Fin whales feed mainly on small shrimp-like creatures called krill or euphausiids and schooling fish. They have been observed circling schools of fish at high speed, rolling the fish into compact balls then turning on their right side to engulf the fish. Their color pattern, including their asymmetrical jaw color, may somehow aid in the capture of such prey. They can consume up to 2 tons (1,814 kg) of food a day. As a baleen whale, it has a series of 262-473 fringed overlapping plates hanging from each side of the upper jaw, where teeth might otherwise be located. These plates consist of a fingernail-like material called keratin that frays out into fine hairs on the ends inside the mouth near the tongue.
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Transient killer whales vocalize significantly less than residents because they normally don't use sound while foraging for food. Residents will send out calls to other residents and use sonar clicks to locate their prey. Transients, on the other hand, usually hunt silently, listening and looking for their prey. It is speculated that the reason for this is that the dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions that constitute the transient's primary prey could recognize transient calls and thereby rob the transients of the advantage of surprise. Transients normally begin to vocalize during or after an attack.
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North Atlantic right whales usually travel alone or in groups of 2 - 3 (up to about 12). When they were more numerous, groups of up to 100 were seen together on the feeding grounds. If prey are dense, the whales may feed together, although usually the groups break up to feed individually, probably because of the enormous food requirements of each individual whale. The membership of groups of right whales does not seem to remain fixed. Identifiable individuals can be seen moving from one group to another.
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Krill is the Blue whales favorite food . But they ... eat crabs and fish. This whale has a huge appetite and an adult needs to eat up to 4 tons of Krill everyday which is about 4 million Krill. When the Blue whales leave their feeding grounds they may not eat it for several months. To eat and they simply open their mouths up underwater and catch lots of Krill in their baleen.
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Stone Age people were hunting whales for food as long ago as 2,200 B.C. They hunted slow-swimming, coastal species such as the bowhead, grey and right whales. This subsistence hunting is still practised by some societies such as the Inuit people of Greenland and North America, where the whale plays an important part in the people's survival.
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