whale tale

Dave Mistretta was fishing in 50 feet of water off Indian Shores on Sunday when he saw something large swimming toward his boat.

"The fluke came out of the water and we knew right away it was a whale (see video)," said Mistretta, who charters the Jaws Too out of Indian Rocks Beach. "There were two white spots on the tail so we thought it might be a humpback."

The 30-foot mammal swam underneath Mistretta's boat then took off swimming south. A spokesperson for the National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed that humpbacks occasionally venture into the Gulf of Mexico after breeding in the warm waters of the Caribbean.

The specie's scientific name, Megaptera novaeangliae, means "big wing of New England," is a reference to the animals extremely long flippers. The common name, humpback, comes from the fact that the whale's dorsal fin sits atop a large hump that is visible when it dives.

The humpback is a baleen whale, a filter feeder, that can reach lengths of up to 45 feet. Mistretta's sighting was considered rare and the captain considers himself lucky to have seen such a magnificent creature in the wild.

(Photo: Courtesy Brad Bandoni. Click to enlarge.)