To eat they take huges gulps of ocean water and strain the water for food. The single males sing a beautiful song that sailors have often written about. Humpback whales live in all the oceans and seas across the world. In the past, hundreds of thousands swam the world's waters. Today, the numbers are between 8,000 and 10,000.
Females are a little longer than males.
Their front fins are longer than any other whale, and are about a third as long as the head and body together. They have huge, gray-black sifters in their mouths, called baleen plates, that allow them to sift through the water for the fish and tiny organisms they eat. A humpback's mouth has about 340 baleen plates. Lifestyle Humpbacks are social and travel in small family groups. Sometimes hundreds of them gather together.