What do whales eat?

Whale Diets: Baleen vs. Toothed Whales

What a whale eats depends primarily on which of the two main groups it belongs to: baleen whales (Mysticeti) or toothed whales (Odontoceti). These two groups use fundamentally different feeding strategies and consume very different types of prey.

Baleen Whale Diets

Baleen whales are filter feeders. Instead of teeth, they have baleen plates — flexible, comb-like structures made of keratin — hanging from their upper jaws. These plates strain enormous quantities of small organisms from seawater.

Common baleen whale foods include:

• Krill: Tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that form the primary diet of blue whales, fin whales, and sei whales. A single blue whale can consume up to 4 tons (3,600 kg) of krill per day during the feeding season.
• Small schooling fish: Herring, anchovies, sardines, and capelin are important food sources for humpback whales and minke whales.
• Copepods: Microscopic crustaceans eaten by right whales, which skim the water’s surface with their mouths open.

Feeding Techniques of Baleen Whales

Baleen whales have evolved several specialized feeding methods:

• Lunge feeding: Blue whales and fin whales accelerate toward dense patches of prey, open their enormous mouths, and engulf massive amounts of water and food. Their pleated throat grooves expand to accommodate the volume.
• Bubble-net feeding: Humpback whales work cooperatively to blow a ring of bubbles beneath a school of fish, trapping them in a concentrated column. The whales then lunge upward through the column with mouths open.
• Skim feeding: Right whales swim slowly at the surface with their mouths open, letting water flow through their fine baleen plates to capture copepods.

Toothed Whale Diets

Toothed whales are active hunters that use echolocation to locate and pursue individual prey. Their diets are generally more varied than those of baleen whales.

Common toothed whale foods include:

• Fish: Many toothed whale species feed primarily on fish. Sperm whales consume deep-sea fish along with squid.
• Squid and octopus: Sperm whales are renowned for diving to extreme depths — over 3,000 feet (900 meters) — to hunt giant and colossal squid.
• Marine mammals: Orcas have the broadest diet of any cetacean. Different orca populations specialize in different prey, including salmon, seals, sea lions, and even other whales.

How Much Do Whales Eat?

The amount whales consume varies greatly by species and season. During summer feeding months in polar waters, large baleen whales eat intensively to build up fat reserves. They may then migrate thousands of miles to warmer breeding grounds, where they eat little or nothing for months.

Species	Primary Diet	Daily Intake
Blue whale	Krill	Up to 4 tons
Humpback whale	Krill, small fish	1-1.5 tons
Sperm whale	Squid, deep-sea fish	~900 lbs (400 kg)
Orca	Fish, marine mammals	~500 lbs (227 kg)
Gray whale	Bottom-dwelling organisms	~1.3 tons

For species-specific diets, see what do blue whales eat and what do killer whales eat.