Pink Milk and Poop

I love learning new things.

The little blobs floating in the water in many of my recent whale photos are reddish in color. Especially where they are concentrated near the surface. I assumed it to be a quirk of my camera. After all, what else could it be?

When I read the Wikipedia entry on Humpback Whales a surprising little fact jumped out at me. Humpback Whale milk is PINK! (what do you think of that Malcolm?!) Now all the reddish debris makes sense. Wow.

Letting my mind wander a little farther I realized there is a third option to explain the murky water around Maui's humpback whales - baby whale poop! Whale calves spend their days gobbling up the milk their mothers' squirt out into the water, so of course they have to relieve themselves from time to time! Dolphins poop on me all the time and theirs is not solid, even though they eat solid fish and squid. So chances are pretty good that baby whale poop is not solid either.

So, that murky water I swim in - a mixture of whale poop and old whale milk. Who could deny that I have the greatest life in the world?!