People who go out in boats to watch whales want to see whales. And they don’t, of course, want to see whales just cruising placidly along. They want to see whales “do something.”  People generally understand that whether they get to see whales “do something” is a matter of luck or perhaps circumstances, such as prey availability, weather, temperature, current, and so on.  And most people realize that sometimes no whales at all will appear.

Every voyage to see whales begins with a mix of fervent optimism and realistic pessimism as the tour boat loads and leaves the dock.  Maybe the whales will breach. Maybe they will even engage in bubble-net feeding. Or maybe they will just cruise along, and won't do "anything." Or maybe they will be somewhere else.

Regardless of expectations, everyone, experienced viewers and novices alike, gets excited when the first whale is spotted and it arches and rolls and dives promisingly and its flukes magically appear. No matter how distant, how low-energy, how meager, every early display of flukes provokes excitement, comment, and countless smartphone shots and videos.  And even if nothing else happens on a trip, viewers will have enjoyed seeing flukes.  In the best displays, they will see flukes breaking the surface both gracefully and powerfully, water sheeting from the flukes and streaming from the trailing edges of both lobes, the flukes themselves elegant and seemingly smaller that they really are (they can be up to 18 feet across), in profile at their highest point appearing almost as delicate as wings. And viewers can assess and appreciate the immense strength of the whale's caudal peduncle (the whale's tailstock) as the whale’s back and tailstock arc strongly and then pull the flukes back down, beneath the surface.

Some high-resolution photos help show what momentary - and excited - observation might miss when a humpback's flukes appear and then disappear.  

The tailstock of this humpback arcs and pulls the flukes up in a graceful but powerful curve. The flukes flatten and then are drawn down.  The wake from the tailstock shows the whale is still moving forward even as its flukes are pulled vertically downward.

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This sequence catches the water sluicing from the flukes, streaming most densely from the tips.
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The power of the caudal peduncle is on display here. 0M0A9797 0M0A9799 0M0A9801 0M0A9805

This display seems less dynamic, more of a quick flip. But as the flukes became more vertical and better illuminated, there seems to be an injured patch in the flesh on the left side of the whale's tailstock, most visible in the sixth image, a re-processed enlargement of the fifth. Like most adults, it has barnacles on its flukes, but there also seems to be seaweed on the tip of its left lobe.

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Here is a final series, in case anyone wants to see even more fluke photos.  The underside markings of the flukes for each whale in this post are distinctive, and one of the ways individual humpbacks are identified. 

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