It is hard to determine what happened in this photo which shows a humpback whale slowly sliding backward into the water as I was not present when the photo was taken. Lunge feeding occurs when a whale comes up suddenly under a school of herring and comes out of the water with its mouth wide open engulfing the herring and spraying water everywhere. Not mush spraying here. Not enough splash to be the remainder of a breach. My guess would be a young humpback after a less than successful lunge or maybe one that has been watching to many orca spyhopping?
