27-year-old wildlife photographer Chase Dekker can be pretty chuffed with the photos he snapped on July 22 in Monterey Bay, California, whilst out on a whale-watching cruise.

In fact, he believes that it’s the first time a whale has ever been snapped ‘swallowing’ a sea lion, and it’s tough to argue against him.

When describing the incident, according to the BBC, Chase said he was focused in on a group of three humpback whales and around 200 sea lions when things veered into some highly unusual territory:

The animals were feeding on a school of anchovies at the water’s surface when the whale ended up with something a little larger in its mouth than it probably expected.

“We were watching them feed for a long time and then eventually the event – as I call it the once-in-a-lifetime event – happened, and I still can’t believe it,” he says.

“I had about a split second while the whale was coming up to really comprehend that the sea lion was on top of the whale before shooting the rest of the sequence.”

Chase is “more than 100% confident” the sea lion swam away just fine after it ended up in the whale’s mouth.

Out of that sequence, one photo stands out from the rest:

Let’s get in closer to fully appreciate the shock on the sea lion’s face:

Shook.

As Chase has previously mentioned, no sea lions were harmed in the shooting of the sequence:

Humpback whales don’t have teeth, only baleen plates with bristles inside their mouths. They are filter feeders and the bristles filter food from water – and things like sea lions that don’t belong in there.

A whale will usually take less than five seconds lunge-feeding, Chase says, but in this instance sunk slowly over 15 seconds with its mouth open, giving the sea lion ample time to swim away.

“The whale never actually closed its jaws around the sea lion, so it shouldn’t have been harmed. Very scared, I’m sure, but not harmed.”

Lunge-feeding is when the whales charge toward and engulf food in a huge mouthful, before pushing out the water and straining the fish through flexible comb-like structures in their mouths called baleen.

According to Christie McMillan, a biologist with the Marine Education and Research Society in British Columbia, who studies humpback feeding behaviour, what Chase spotted is pretty darn rare. She spoke with Nat Geo:

“The photo blew our minds,” says McMillan, noting that most documented cases like this involve small seabirds.

“Our colleague once watched a very lucky common murre swim out after a whale opened its mouth twice at the surface to let the bird out,” she adds. The researchers have also seen whales release gulls, both alive and dead, which were accidentally engulfed.

Close calls with larger species, from pelicans, to harbor seals, to the odd human diver crop up from time to time, but these events are exceptionally rare.

“I have never seen this happen with a sea lion,” says McMillan. “Nor have I ever heard of it.”

That’s why we’re so thankful that Chase managed to snap a photo.

[sources:bbc&natgeo]