The internet has discovered another thing to add to their ‘nightmare fuel’ list after realising what it means if you see a circle of bubbles in the sea.
A video, which was posted to Reddit, shows a BBC and WWF compilation clip detailing a very strange phenomenon.
What appears to be a perfect circle of individual bubbles, then transforms to multiple circles within the huge zone.
While it looks quit mesmerising, it’s what comes after the bubbles that would have any rational person swimming for their lives.
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Let me tell you, you’re not going to want to see those bubbles in the dead of night.
So, what do they mean?
Scarily, it means that giant humpback whales are going to swallow you, or anything within the circles, whole.
This is because it’s their unique hunting technique, as a commenter pointed out: “This is called Bubble Net Feeding, a hunting technique used by whales. They blow bubbles as they spiral around fish, trapping them in a tightening circle. Then they surge from below to gorge on them.”
Another wrote: “Those are humpback whales, I think - they are lunge feeders.”
Bubble Net Feeding, as per the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, is a cooperative hunting strategy by a group of whales.
The highly synchronised orchestration involves a huge amount of intelligence, cooperation and communication between each whale.
Essentially, it occurs when the whales dive deep below schools of fish, and then they blow bubbles from their blowholes to stun and trap the fish closer to the surface of the water.
This way, they can swoop up by swimming in spiral patterns to keep the fish trapped for eating.
The website states that humpback whales are known as ‘gulpers’, meaning they feed by keeping their mouths open, swallowing everything they can before closing their mouths.
Then, they’ll push the water from their mouths using their baleen plates and swallowing the trapped fish.
So, if you were in the circle, you’d be gulped right up and in its stomach before you could even think about what was going on.
To those who saw the video, it was a scary awakening about swimming out at sea.
One person stated they’d rather be eaten by a whale than a shark.
Thankfully, whales are known to spit people out if they mistakenly swallow them.
They wrote: “If I’m out in that water and see bubbles around me, I’m going to hope it’s a humpback whale because I would 100% rather end up in that thing’s ginormous toothless mouth-gullet than be chomped by a great white’s 87,000 teeth!”
Two others declared the clip as being something that’s going to cause nightmares.
The first wrote: “Nightmare fuel, wow Good for them, but eeeeeeeeeeek.”
Another said: “Imagine that at night. Yeah that's nightmarefuel.”
Someone else wrote: “I mean it’s not that big a deal. They’ll spit you out. Eventually.”
One person commented: “That’s always my biggest thing. Like sure they’ll spit you out… 100m under water where you’ll instantly get crushed like an aluminum can in the pitch black.”
Whatever. If I see the bubbles, I’m out.
Britt Jones