Sharon Miller, age 11, of Bradenton, Fla,
Does a whale have to spout water?
A great whale may be as long as a ten‑story building is high. He may be anywhere 3.n the wide, watery wastes of the ocean, from polar sea to polar sea! and a mile or more below the surface. So a whaling ship must voyage back and forth in the likely places, hoping for the whale to give away his hiding place. This happens when the whale spouts up a frothy fountain. Whalers learned long ago how to tell one kind of whale from another by the shape of the spout which bursts above the surface of the sea,
When the lookout on an old whaling ship spotted a frothy fountain bursting above the surface of the sea he hollered, Thar she blows. If the spout was a tall column, dividing at the top to fall down in two graceful arches, he knew that it was the right whale, rich in oil and blubber. The spout of the blue baleen whale is a thick column of frothy mist. The finback whale spouts a slender fountain and the humpbacked whale spouts a rounded cloud.
If a whale did not spout, the whalers could never find him in the wide, deep waters of the ocean. But spout he must or he will drown. The whale is a warm.‑blooded, air‑.breathing mammal and he can stay under water only as long as he holds his breath. This may be 20 minutes or more. Then he must come to the surface to empty his huge lungs and take in another breath of fresh air.
The stale air has been inside the damp caverns of the whale’s lungs long enough to gather a lot of steamy vapor. It also has become warm warmer than the air outside. When the whale breathes out, a great puff of this warm, damp air clashes with the cooler air over the sea, and the vapor it holds turns to frothy mist.
The spout, then, is not a fountain of water, but a huge plume of misty air. The whale takes several puffs to empty his great lungs and with each puff he sends up a foamy fountain, His nostril is the blowhole on the top of his head, It is sealed off from his mouth and throat and connects directly with his lungs. The spout takes its shape from the blow hold. Each type of whale has a blowhole of a certain shape and some whales have two blowholes.
When the great lungs are empty, the whale begins to take in fresh air. He takes puff after puff and at last the warm, wet lung caverns are filled to bursting. When the whale has finished the tremendous job of breathing out and breathing in, the blowhole seals shut like a valve and he can sound safely down into the sea.
All the whales are classified in the order Cetacea along with their smaller cousins the dolphins and the porpoises. The cetaceans are , sea‑.going mammals who gave up life on the land in the remote past. Most of them are playful, sociable animals who enjoy the company of their friends and close relatives, and modern science is beginning to suspect that the cetaceans are among the most intelligent members of the animal kingdom.