When seal and whale travel together, the world wants to watch.
Australian photographer Robyn Malcolm was out whale watching off New South Wales, photographing a pod of whales in the midst of a feeding frenzy, when she managed to capture a photo that took social media by storm Thursday. And she didn't even know she had taken it, according to BBC.
It wasn't until Malcolm was going through the photos later that she discovered the little seal "surfing" the back of an enormous humpback whale. What a shot!
"We'd seen some amazing whales coming out of the water, everything was happening so quickly," said Malcolm, according to Mashable. "And it was when I went back through the photos that I realized I had actually captured the seal on top of the whale."
New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife whale expert Geoff Ross has only heard of one other pairing of seal and whale.
"The only other time was a seal trying to get away from a killer whale... the seal hopped on the back of the pectoral fins of a humpback whale," he said.
Malcolm also captured another unusual sight, a technique called bubble-net feeding by the humpbacks. Scientists had previously thought this technique only occurred in colder waters, as the whales coordinate with each other circling below a school of fish, says Discovery News. When they rise, the bubbles they blow create such a distraction that confusion sets in, containing the fish for their inevitable fate as the whales' meal.
Special thanks to Robyn Malcolm for sharing this incredible picture that will make you smile when you see the seemingly carefree seal surfing his new whale friend.
