The imnse jet noise erupted over the vast ice plain, and Bi Fang pulled the reins, stopping Sanshao from continuing their advance.
The audience too was startled by the sudden sound, asking what it was.
[What is that sound?]
[What is that?]
[Did sothing explode?]
Bi Fang rolled up the musk ox skin and stepped down from the sled, standing on the ice, gazing into the distance. Under the faint starlight, watching the water spout jet again, he felt as if sothing was undulating repeatedly, and he began to suspect what it might be.
"It looks like a whale."
A whale!?
The Shuiyou were shocked. The drone was flying much higher than Bi Fang, and theoretically, they could see farther than Bi Fang, but looking into the distance, they could only see glaciers everywhere. How could there be a whale appearing and spouting a column of water?
How had it managed to spout?
"Let's go and see," Bi Fang said as he stepped back onto the sled and tugged the reins, directing it toward the direction of the water spout.
As they got closer, the audience, through the aerial drone, finally saw that on the vast ice plain, there was a huge ice cave that had, at so unknown ti, appeared. The sea water was churning inside, and in the cave, a behemoth was undulating continuously, bursting with water spouts.
[It's really a whale!!!]
[How did the whale get here?]
[There are whales in Greenland, what did you think?]
[Wait, there seems to be more than one whale!]
[Two! There are two of them!]
"No, there are three," Bi Fang said.
Bi Fang drove the sled to the side of the cave and finally could see clearly what the huge creatures undulating under the water were.
They were over ten ters in length, with gray bodies covered in white spots, and their rough skin looked mottled and uneven.
[What kind of whale is this? A blue whale?]
[Doesn't seem like it, Old Fang has encountered one before, and it feels different from a blue whale]
"These are three gray whales, they look like a family," Bi Fang, squatting beside the ice cave, imdiately provided the answer, leaving the audience astonished.
[A family?]
[I can't even recognize what kind of whale this is]
[So big, it's enormous]
For those who are not familiar, every large whale species seems to look sowhat alike, but to those who are a bit more knowledgeable, each species of whale has significant differences.
"Gray whales are between 10-15 ters in length and weigh over 30 tons. They are gray, dark gray, or blue-gray with white spots, and their undersides are lighter in color," Bi Fang explained.
"Do you see the uneven surface on their backs?" Bi Fang pointed to the back of the gray whale that had surfaced the water and said, "Those are mainly caused by scrapes from rocks or gravel, and scars left by parasitic life forms like barnacles that have attached themselves to their thickened skin. That's why so people call it the 'gray rock swimr.'"
The mottled skin wasn't visually appealing, and the majority of the audience felt more or less a wave of goosebumps.
Bi Fang then continued to point out so unique characteristics of the gray whale.
"Besides these, the gray whale has many features that are not unique, but when all present together, create a distinct profile. For example, its eyes are oval-shaped, located behind the corners of the mouth and positioned higher than those of other baleen whales; the upper eyelid is slightly longer."
"The ear openings are large enough to insert a pencil, located between the eyes and base of the flippers."
"The baleen is pale yellow with roughly 140-180 plates on each side, each 40-50 centiters long. The plates are thick, the bristles coarse, giving the whole baleen a heavy feel."
"And then there's the bulky body, particularly thick near the flippers. Although they lack a dorsal fin, you can still see the spine with 8 to 15 small hump-like protrusions towards the tail."
"Moreover, gray whales lack throat grooves, emmm, everyone knows Thanos, right?" Bi Fang stroked his chin, suddenly saying.
[Yeah, we know, the purple sweet potato essence]
[How does that relate to Thanos?]
"Exactly, Thanos' chin looks a bit like a whale's throat grooves, which gray whales don't have. So believe that the function of throat grooves is to assist in the expansion and contraction of the chest cavity when the animal breathes, and to increase the capacity of the mouth when feeding. Gray whales are the most primitive type of shallow water baleen whale, so their throat grooves are not as developed as those of other baleen whales."
As if sensing Bi Fang's presence, the gray whale that surfaced to breathe emitted a mournful sound, akin to a crying sigh, much like that of humans. The sound spread continuously across the ice field, and it sprayed a column of water towards the ice cave, which looked more like an ice column.
The mist-like water vapor instantly turned into frost upon contact with the freezing Arctic temperatures. So of it dissolved back into the ocean, while the rest piled up on the ice surface. Bi Fang wiped it with his hand and already it was an inch thick, indicating that the gray whale had been trapped here for a long ti.
"Gray whales have two blowholes located slightly behind the highest point on the snout. The distance between the front ends of the holes is close, about 7 centiters, and the distance at the back is slightly further, about 21 centiters. What we have just seen and heard is it exhaling."
"Also, because there are two, the spray from a gray whale is shorter and thicker, flat at the top, and the columns are very close to each other. So from behind, it looks like two closely situated columns of mist, but from the side, it appears as one. This combination gives the appearance of a distinct water column, which makes it easily visible to us."
Without such a thick column of spray, even with Bi Fang's vision, it would be hard to spot in the Arctic night.
[I see]
[Isn't it dangerous to stand so close?]
[I feel the whale's call is so sorrowful]
At this ti, the audience was filled with puzzlent, especially upon seeing the scars on the top of the gray whale's head. The whale seed to be self-harming.
"There's no danger. I've encountered a blue whale while surviving in the ocean before. Not sure if you all rember what I've said before about whales being divided into two major categories."
"One is the baleen whale, which doesn't have teeth and primarily eats crustaceans like krill; they are quite gentle towards humans in terms of disposition. The other is the toothed whale, which has sharp teeth and prefers to eat large squid, octopus, and fish, and are relatively more aggressive in nature. Gray whales, like blue whales, are a type of baleen whale."
But this did not resolve the audience's confusion about why the gray whales were here and kept surfacing.
Although Bi Fang had said that the skin on the heads of the gray whales was roughened by scrapes from rocks and such, there were clearly many fresh wounds on the whale's head now. It was obvious to anyone that Master Fang must have known as well.
"It's simple, they are trapped."
Trapped?
What does that an?
The audience grew more perplexed.
Bi Fang stood up, looked out over the vast ice field, and narrowed his eyes: "There are ice fields for miles around. Gray whales cannot break through the ice like bowhead whales to breathe through holes and swim to the sea. They can only guard this one opening, continuously breathing."
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