Jumping for joy! Photographer captures the jaw-dropping moment a minke whale leaps out of the water and opens its mouth<br />
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A California photographer has captured a minke whale displaying some extremely rare behavior in the wild.<br />
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Photographer Slater Moore was working on the Newport Beach-based Ocean Explorer whale-watching boat on Saturday when he witnessed a lone minke whale breaching off the right side of the vessel.<br />
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Minke whales, which grow to be about 29-feet long, are not known to breach often in the wild, but sometimes jump out of the water in groups or to feed.<br />
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However, this time the minke whale appeared to be breaching just for fun as it opened it's mouth coming out of the water and closer it before going back in.<br />
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With its mouth wide open, the minke appeared very joyful as the 100 passengers watched the whale breach a total of 10 times.<br />
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'Everybody was freaking out; it was insane,' Moore told Grind TV. 'Nobody had ever seen anything like that.'<br />
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The pictures were subsequently posted to Facebook where they ignited a discussion online about the whale's surprising behavior.<br />
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Ursula Tscherter, a minke whale research with the Ocean Research and Education Society, told GrindTV that the pictures show an 'amazing and very peculiar' behavior.<br />
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'I am intrigued by the final little splash of water coming out of the closing mouth … lovely … and she closed it before landing,' Tscherter added. 'I don’t think it’s related to feeding.'<br />
©Slater Moore/Exclusivepix