Life on Megaptera novaeangliae

I guess you could say my life is pretty boring.  I do the same things every day:  eat, digest, and secrete calcite to add to my layers of protective shell.  Further, being a sessile creature, I can't move anywhere on my own.  However, my transport is continually moving, taking me wherever it wants to go and bringing my favorite plankton within my grasp to eat.

When I was just a larvae, I found a young humpback whale with the loveliest patch of white on her belly.  Since my energy reserves were starting to wane, I decided she was the one to spend the rest of my life with.  So I attached myself to her chin, underwent my metamorphosis to my adult form, began building my shell, and my life as a whale barnacle was born.

I find much about my transport to be odd, simply because her life is so much more complicated than mine.

She swam continually by an older female of her species until she became old enough and large enough to be on her own.  However, she does come together with other females for special feeding sessions in the cooler northern waters.  These bubble-net sessions are really intriguing.  The whales release bubbles from their blowholes in a wide circle.  These bubbles scare the krill in the near vicinity to group together in the middle of the circle.  Then, the oldest adult female makes a low noise to signal the entire group to rise to the surface to eat the gathered crustaceans.  The whales' large maws gape open wide, and for several seconds, I'm no longer covered by water as my transport's chin breaks the ocean's surface.  Then, water rushes back over me as my transport splashes back down.  The surface I'm attached to feels different as my transport's throat is thoroughly distended, filled with gallons of krill-filled water.  The surface begins to feel normal again as my transport pushes the water through her baleen “teeth” and out of her mouth, effectively trapping her quarry of krill in her baleen that can then be eaten.  I guess this is an effective way of getting a decent meal, but I'm glad I don't have to go to all that work!  All I have to do is hold out my feathery legs and catch the plankton that swim by me.  Much easier!

Big white floating objects, filled with unusual-looking creatures that hold lots of shiny objects that flash in the sun, always seem to follow the pod when they feed in this manner.  I guess I'm not the only one that finds my transport interesting!

While I don't do anything to bother or even irritate my transport, sometimes I get the impression that she wants to get rid of me, particularly when she's in the warmer southern waters and those big white floating things are on the surface again.  When my transport sees one of these, she builds up speed, aiming for the ocean's surface.  Then, she breaks forth, and I gasp for breath as I leave the water.  She rises up and up...only to splash back down, her flippers twirling around her body.  I don't know why, but it's as if she is performing for those creatures.  She also swims on her side, raises a flipper, and slaps it in the water, as some sort of greeting or communication to the floating object.  Sometimes these activities are enough to dislodge some of my fellow barnacles off her chin, belly, and flippers, but not me!  I'm strong and holding on until I die, which is a much shorter life-span than my transport.

Life with my transport became more interesting when she became sexually mature.  I mean, sex for me is no big deal.  It was even non-existent until another barnacle moved in next door to me.  Fortunately, we're hermaphrodites, so both of us were quite satisfied, and our fertilized eggs were sent off into the ocean foam to eventually find a transport of their own.

However, my transport found her mate by responding to a weird vibration that she could hear through the water from over a mile away.  It lasted a long time, about fifteen minutes or so, and she eventually swam towards the source of the vibration.  It was a male, and he was head down in the water at a 45 degree angle and was emitting unusual grunting sounds that I guess you could call singing.  It must have been the “music of love” to my transport, for she spent the next several days with the male in rather close personal contact.

Her feeding in the cooler northern waters afterward were much more intense.  In fact, she seemed to be continuously eating.  When I communicated to my fellow barnacles, they said that her belly was getting much larger, presumably with all the krill she was eating.  Why would she gorge herself so?  On the entire migratory journey back to the southern warmer waters, she also ate and ate.  We all hoped there wasn't anything wrong with our transport.  After all, she was our source of movement and nutrition.

Well, we all found out why our transport ate so much when she began to move very slowly, except when she writhed and squirmed in jerky movements.  After many long hours like this, the message passed along that something was emerging from her body, and it looked like a miniature fluke!  After another several hours, a baby whale was swimming alongside our transport.  Our transport had become a mother!

The white floating objects became more prominent when they witnessed a calf with our transport, but they knew to keep their distance.  Our transport was also a protective mother, as hers had been.  Eventually, the calf set out on her own, leaving our transport to start the entire cycle over again.

Overall, while life as a whale barnacle is pretty boring, the whale itself with all its peculiarities, particularly around those the floating white objects, certainly makes life more intriguing.