The Humpback whale is frequently seen off the New England coast during the summer. They gather near offshore ledges and banks where small fish are plentiful.
Humpbacks are baleen whales, meaning they have no teeth.
Instead, they have hundreds of hard, flexible plates of baleen inside their mouth. Each plate has a hair-like fringe on the inner edge. The baleen acts like a strainer to help the whale collect its food. The whale finds a school of small fish, like sand eels or herring, or cloud of krill, opens it mouth and engulfs the school or cloud. Then it pushes all the water out of its mouth and past the baleen plates.