Here we see a lunging humpback whale frozen in time whilst rising out of the water like a granite statue. The shot, unlike a statue of course, only lasted for 1/1600th of a second before the action changed once again, but if you take a moment to study just this one frame it can tell a story all of its own, a brief insight into life for one of these leviathans. You can make out many features such as the open eye and the ventral pleats in the whale’s skin under his chin along with the tubercles, those bumps on the nose each of which contain a single sensory hair. The open sores or blotches on his skin are indications of recently lost crustaceans a regular occurrence for whales in their wintering grounds, so you could hazard a guess that this guy must be somewhere warm, he was – Maui. Frame by frame the story then continued to move fast and in another frame he was seen to be lunging at a nearby whale, no doubt battling for the attention of a close by female, see Mighty Battles.