Wellington, New Zealand
\n AP
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n There are easier ways to cross an ocean, but few are as slick or stylish as the remora\u2019s whale-surfing joyride.\n <\/p>\n
\n Scientists tracking humpbacks<\/a> off the coast of Australia<\/a> have captured rare footage that shows clutches of the freeloading fish peeling away from their host in what looks like a high-speed game of chicken, just moments before the whale breaches.\n <\/p>\n \n As the humpback plunges back below the surface the remoras, also known as sucker fish, return to the whale, sticking their landings with the timing and precision of Olympic gymnasts. It\u2019s elegant work for a hitchhiking fish that lives upside-down and survives on dead skin flakes.\n <\/p>\n \n Remora australis spend their lives aboard whales or other large marine mammals, which they ride like giant cruise ships, breeding and feeding their way across stretches of ocean. The species has an adhesive plate on its head that helps to create a kind of vacuum seal, allowing the fish to grab a whale and hang on for the ride.\n <\/p>\n \n The marine scientist who recorded the accidental close-ups of the remoras\u2019 high-speed whale surfing had placed suction-cup cameras on humpbacks during their annual migration from Antarctica to the waters off Australia\u2019s Queensland state.\n <\/p>\n \n Olaf Meynecke planned to study whale behavior, but his video feeds regularly filled with dozens of photobombing remoras, which rode in groups of up to 50 as they clung to the same spots where his cameras were attached.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhenever the whale was breaching and doing in particular fast movements it appears that the sucker fish were responding very quickly to the movements,\u201d said Meynecke, from the Whales and Climate Research Program at Griffith University.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey knew exactly when to let go of the body of the whale before it was breaching the surface of the water and then returned to the same spot only seconds later.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Remoras are harmless to the 40-metric-ton (44-U.S.-ton) giants of the ocean, feeding on the whales\u2019 dead skin and sea lice in a mutually beneficial arrangement \u2014 or at least that\u2019s what scientists say. Meynecke said his footage suggested the whales found their hangers-on annoying.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe\u2019ve had individuals with high numbers of these remoras and they were continually breaching and there were no other whales that they were communicating with,\u201d he said. \u201cIt appeared that they\u2019re trying to just get rid of some of these remoras and they were checking whether they had less after they breached.\u201d\n <\/p>\n The journey\u2019s end remains a mystery<\/p>\n \n Australia\u2019s so-called humpback highway is a migratory corridor traversed by 40,000 of the mammals, bringing them close to the country\u2019s eastern coastlines for months each year as they move from icy Antarctic waters to the balmy seas off the coast of Queensland and back.\n <\/p>\n \n How long much of the 10,000-km (6,000-mile) journey is undertaken by the freeloading fish, which only live for about two years, is still a puzzle, Meynecke said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI suspect that the majority would probably leave at some point, maybe in temperate waters, but then where do they go?\u201d he said. \u201cDo they find other species that they can then use as a host and wait until the humpback whales have come back?\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In the absence of whales, sucker fish avoid predators by seeking other large creatures to latch onto, including manta rays, dolphins and unlucky scuba divers.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMuch to the annoyance of the divers, of course,\u201d Meynecke said. \u201cThey\u2019re not easy to get rid of.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellington, New Zealand AP \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 There are easier ways to cross an ocean, but few are as slick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-279338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}