herring
tags: Bait Ball Feast, natural history, animal behavior, plankton, herring, seabird, humpback whale, television, BBC, streaming video
In late summer, the plankton bloom is at its height. Vast shoals of herring gather to feed on it, diving birds round the fish up into a bait ball.
On the 3rd of October, 2006, Nicolas Makris watched a quarter of a billion fish gather in the same place. They were Atlantic herring, one of the most abundant fishes in the ocean and one prone to gathering in massive schools. This was the first time that anyone had watched the full scope of the event, much less capture it on video.
The first signs of the amassing herring appeared around 5pm and by sunset, the gathering had begun in earnest. Once a critical level of fish was reached, the shoal expanded at a breakneck pace, suddenly growing to cover tens of kilometres within the hour. By…