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Humpback Whales 2010: Part 6

Thu, Sep 2nd, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 5 Comments

(Note: Continued from Part 5)

White Hands
One thing that’s fascinated me about the humpback whales that visit Vava’u is the occasional presence of what I call “white hands”…whales that have all, or mostly, white pectoral fins on their dorsal surfaces as well as ventral (i.e., both sides of their pecs).

This is more common among northern hemisphere humpbacks than southern ones. This trait certainly makes it easier to see the whales while they’re swimming, and also to recognise individuals in repeat sightings.

Now, here’s the thing…in most years, we’ve seen none of these whales. In a couple of years, there were lots of sightings…on the order of seven or eight individuals. (From memory 2007 was a big white hand year, though I have to double check images to be 100% sure.)

What are these whales? Where are they from? Why do they only appear from time to time? Is there any possibility that some whales have crossed over from the north and brought the genetic trait, or has it evolved by chance down here?

Anyway, this is shaping up to be another year with zero or near zero sightings. The closest we have is this whale, which was one of three males that essentially dive-bombed a mother and calf (Yoshi, calf number 9 this season) in a contest to be her escort.

Almost a white hand

It’s almost a white hand, thought the dorsal surface of the pectoral fin isn’t completely white.

I’m going to start GPS-marking white hand sightings. If you photograph a white hand in Vava’u, please let me know.

Social Interaction
On 30 August, we went to Toku Island, which is about 70km away from Neiafu. The weather window was clear, and the seas were calm.

It was my first trip to Toku, and it didn’t disappoint.

We spotted a group of three whales before we even arrived, got in the water, and didn’t stop swimming until it was time to go home.

This is what we saw as soon as we dropped in.

The three whales were clearly socialising with one another. There were two large whales with mostly white bellies, and a smaller one that had lots of scratches on its dorsal surface.

They were behaving like a lovey-dovey couple…all touchy-feely, weaving their bodies together, executing pirouette-like moves, and making lots of sounds.

Given that there were three, not two, whales, their behaviour puzzled me. After our first drop, I casually commented that it might be a ménage à trois, with the small one being the female (The other two showed me their “maleness”.).

A cyclone of whales

Even though the two larger whales showed their bellies on multiple occasions (making it easy to sex them), the smallest whale didn’t. To complicate matters, its underside was mottled with dark blotches, making it even more difficult to ID the sex of the whale in the water.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I was able to see enough of the little whale’s underside to be certain that it was also a male.

So…following on the Dancing Queen social interaction I described in Part 4, this is another example of highly intimate social interaction among male humpback whales.

I haven’t really taken note of such interactions before, but it’s possible that I simply overlooked them, or assumed that there was a female involved when there wasn’t.

Three male whales socialising at Toku Island

Given that we know that many other cetacean species exhibit intimate social behaviour among males, it might be that this type of behaviour among humpbacks is also relatively common.

In any case, it was quite a spectacle, and the whales let us swim among them for nearly four hours before the group broke up. One whale left the group and a different one joined, completely changing the mood…resulting in rapid swimming which we couldn’t follow.

Heat Runs
Heat runs, of course, are among the most energetic and interesting forms of humpback social interaction. There have been quite a few in the past ten days or so, two of which we’ve been able to see in the water.

Six-whale heat run passing through the shallows

The first (on 29 August) was a six-whale heat run that we only managed one good drop with, before they decided to take most of the action down deep. We had the good fortune of doing that drop in a shallow area. Watching six adult whales swim over a shallow reef is a powerful and moving experience (such an understatement).

(Note: One of the six whales in this group was singing as it swam in the heat run. We’ve come across this behaviour several times, twice this season.)

On 31 August, we stumbled upon another heat run, this one comprising seven whales.

Seven-whale heat run!

I think we came across them just as they were coming together for the heat run, as they clumped together sufficiently to fit into one frame, a rare occurrence, and they also approached us with some measure of curiosity (possibly meaning that they might not have been too engrossed/ preoccupied yet?).

This was the final day on the water for the six people with me on the boat, so it was quite a way to end the trip.

Besides seeing the seven whales mixing it up in the water, everyone saw several full breaches. Of note was one time when I was in the water and saw one of the lead whales take off at high speed ahead of the others.

Female whale in the heat run breaching

Knowing from experience that this probably meant an impending breach, I lifted my head out of the water and shouted “BREACH!!!” loudly enough to give the people on the boat a few seconds of advance warning before the whale came flying out of the water about 30 metres ahead of me.

That wasn’t the best part though.

Immediately afterward, all of the other whales executed forward face-flop breaches in rapid succession…so, Kaboom! followed by Boom!, Boom!, Boom!, Boom!, Boom!, and Boom!

I watched from the water’s surface in absolute awe (and also frustration since I couldn’t take photos).

Whales in heat runs often breach, but I’ve never seen every whale breach in rapid succession like that. It was like having a 21-gun salute with several hundred tonnes of blubber.

What a sight!

The sexy-hot female driving the boys mad

At one point, we watched as a sudden change in mood overtook the whales. Within milliseconds, the whales went from milling around at a relatively leisurely pace to what seemed like a frantic panic. Several whales blew bubbles simultaneously, and then whisked off at super-duper-tremendous high speed.

Back on the boat, we saw that they rendezvoused with three other whales, engaging in what can best be described as a “fracas”, until eventually, only six to seven whales were left (out of a total of ten).

We heard from another of my boats that later in the afternoon, a pod of dolphins joined the whales (actually, they zipped in like jet fighters to harass the bigger animals)…making for quite an entertaining spectacle.

Heat run whales charging off to intercept other whales

Deep Waters: Speculation Update
All these experiences are interesting, but trying to extract meaning from them is a challenge. Spending hundreds of hours in the water with whales over many years and talking with friends who’ve done the same helps, but the fact remains that we collectively know next to nothing about what these whales do and why they do it.

This season, I’ve pushed myself to try to pull together experiences and observations (both my own and those of other experienced people here) to try to make some sense of what’s going on.

I know it’s speculation, but there aren’t that many people in the world who’ve spent so much time in the water observing humpback whales, so I guess I’m as well placed to speculate as anyone else.

Diving humpback whale

To update what I’ve written in previous posts, I basically still think that a relative abundance of horny males to breeding females is driving much of what we’re seeing.

Notably, it seems like there have been a lot of heat runs, with four to seven males to a given female, and we’ve seen multiple instances of multiple males descending upon a mother and calf, starting very early in the season.

Much of the hormone-driven action seems to be taking place offshore, drawing many whales away from the shallower waters closer to the islands, and hence away from where many whale watch boats are crusing.

This may also help support my notion about Ikumi and her mom…that the scarcity of whales in the waters closer to the islands has resulted in lots of space and freedom from harassment by other whales. Hence, their record 14-day (and counting) stay so far.

In Part 2, I wrote:

“I’ve also sensed in the past that high-baby years seem to run somewhat countercyclical with seasons with a relatively high number of heat runs and mating pairs. This seems to makes sense, since females with babies are relativley less likely to be engaging in courtship/ mating (though it does happen), while females without babies are relatively more likely to do so.

So…one of the things that will be of interest to me as the season progresses is to see how the baby count goes versus the relative frequency of heat runs and mating pair encounters.”

What the final baby count for this year will be still has many weeks to play out, so it’s premature to proclaim this a high- or low-baby year, but we have definitely seen a lot of heat runs and apparent mated pairs.

I do have one amendment to make to my speculation though (See Part 4).

I had been conjecturing that there were relatively few breeding females around, in substantial part because of the high number of humpback whale babies over the past several years.

But given the plethora of heat runs we’ve seen and heard about over the past couple of weeks or so, I’m adjusting a bit, and thinking that perhaps the number of females that “recycled” rapidly and are ready to mate again might actually be relatively high.

Four of seven whales in a heat run

This might seem contradictory to what I wrote in earlier posts, but it’s not. I still think the baby boom last year underlies much of what’s going on, but instead of positing that having most or all of those females out of breeding circulation this year would mean lower breeding-related activity through the season, I’m starting to think that the females that were recent mothers might be “recycling” faster than I expected, and getting back into the mix to reproduce again.

If this were the case, we’d still see relatively fewer babies this year (at least in comparison to last year), but there would be more breeding-ready females in circulation.

The early sightings of mated pairs and relatively early sightings of mothers and calfs with one or more escorts could still mean that there is high competition for females. But if a substantial number of young females joined the breeding-ready population and already mature ones recycled rapidly to reproduce again, that might contribute to the frequency of heat runs we’ve encountered.

If something along these lines is taking place, we might, then, see another uptick in the baby count next season.

And again, the possibility that I’m completely wrong is always out there.

People
What can I say? I’ve been incredibly fortunate people-wise.

Whenever I put together a group of people for an extended trip, my biggest concern is incompatibility. Sometimes people just don’t see eye-to-eye. That’s part-and-parcel of being human.

Fortunately, all my groups have been fantastic. This latest one, comprising four people from Singapore, one from the US and one from Sweden, was an absolute pleasure to have here.

Front: Rachel, Serene, May; Back: Maria, David, Patrik

Just having nice people who get along well isn’t enough for a trip like this. Even though it’s a holiday for everyone, there’s a lot of hard work involved too.

Our daily schedules are always demanding, sometimes reaching the point of qualifying as grueling, and I take my time with the whales very seriously, so I’m highly appreciative when my fellow travellers do so as well.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun. We had loads of it…thanks to everyone’s terrific attitude, well-developed sense of humour, and ability to put up with my (nonstop) nonsense.

Just so you don’t get the mis-impression that I was the only one being silly, here’s a short video that pretty much encapsulates what the past ten days was like (video courtesy of David):

Thank you Serene, May, Rachel, Maria, David and Patrik for being such fabulous companions!

Humpback Whales 2010: Part 5

Wed, Sep 1st, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 1 Comment

Serene, Rachel, May, Maria, David and Patrik have just left Vava’u after an amazing ten days on the water with humpback whales.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s been a relatively difficult season, with seemingly fewer whales around than normal (at least, fewer whales willing to stick around and play for a bit), and what whales are here seem to be unsettled, mostly on the go.

Despite this challenging backdrop, we’ve had some mind-blowing encounters over the past week and a half, including: a few new baby whales; multiple repeat encounters with Ikumi (the 5th ID-ed humpback whale calf of this season); a totally crazy day in the water with pilot whales, oceanic whitetip sharks, and a striped marlin (not to mention humpback whales); an interesting four-hour swim with three socialising adult male humpbacks; and to wrap up…an all-day encounter with a seven-whale heat run that involved bubble-blowing, tail-slapping, grunting, snorting, lunging, and breaching.

In short…wow.

Toku (11th ID-ed humpback calf) with mother

Baby Humpback Whales
Since my last update, our humpback whale calf ID count has increased to 11 baby whales. We’ve named the new ones:

- Geri
- Lele
- Yoshi
- Kurosuke
- Toku

We’re slightly behind the count as of the same dates in the past two years (14 and 12 at the same time in 2009 and 2008, respectively), but so far, the build-up in calf sightings seems to be following a similar pattern.

The big calf story, however, is Ikumi, calf number 5 this season.

We’ve now photographed her on ten separate occasions over the past 14 days. That’s blown away our previous sighting record for any previous calf, which was four times.

Since we first saw her on 17 August, Ikumi has blossomed from teeny baby to large, extroverted humpback whale.

She plays a lot, both alone and with swimmers in the water. Her mom has grown accustomed to people in the water, and doesn’t seem to mind having (reasonable) people and boats around. Basically…Ikumi enjoys being the centre of attention.

Ikumi (5th ID-ed humpback calf) playing during our 7th encounter

To convey a sense of the change over time, here is an excerpt from my notes from our first encounter: “It was difficult to get near them in the water”; and our second: “Mom was very cautious”.

Now, both mom and baby seem just as happy as can be when people are around.

With the adult and baby whale both so comfortable with our presence, I tried something different on 26 August, which was our sixth encounter with the pair.

When humpback whale babies surface to breathe, they sometimes play for a bit before swimming down to rest next to mommy. Typical play comprises swimming in big circle, splashing a bit, hanging head-down in the water, and turning upside down with belly at the surface and head arching back.

On one occasion when Ikumi came up, I did my best impression of a baby whale, flipping upside down with belly to the surface and head arched back, as well as hanging head-down, fins-up and twirling.

Ikumi looked befuddled, giving me the “Huh?” expression (that I so often get, irrespective of species), and went back down to the sanity of her mother’s side.

So much for bright ideas, right?

Well…on the next day, during our seventh encounter, I did the same, and boy did she react. I don’t know if she remembered what I did the day before, or if perhaps she was in a different mood, but as soon as she saw my baby whale impression, she went nuts!

Soon, we were both hanging upside down, watching each other twist, twirl and flop (me doing much of the flopping; she doing more twisting and twirling). As I did my best to act like a baby humpback, Ikumi seemed to delight in saying: “No, no, no. Let me show you how it’s done”, and then…well, showing me how it’s done.

Hanging upside down together with Ikumi

I know it sounds far-fetched, but I have witnesses who were in the water and on the boat, all watching Ikumi struggle to educate me.

Of course, we were making a huge racket at the surface, so I kept an eye on mommy, who…just sat there, about 12 metres directly underneath us.

At times, I could hear the baby making sounds, so whatever sounds she was making must’ve been happy ones, perhaps akin to “wheeeeee!!!!!” or “whoooppeeeee!!!!!”, because mom didn’t budge.

As a result of my antics, Ikumi stayed at the surface the entire time her mom was resting. This may not sound like much, but to me…it’s a really big deal.

As I mentioned earlier, normally babies go to the surface, breathe, play a bit and go back down. Typically, they’ll do this several times before mommy comes up for a breath, and then they repeat the cycle.

For a baby to come up and stay up implies several things.

First, Ikumi was having fun. There’s no other way to put it. Forget the dictum not to ascribe human traits to animals. Ikumi was having fun. Period. And she felt secure enough not to go back to mommy’s side.

Second, mom was completely comfortable. Each play session (we had three extended play sessions that day), lasted well over 15 minutes, probably closer to 20+ minutes. Mommy never budged, even without the periodic tactile feedback/ communication mother and baby engage in when the infant returns to its mother’s side.

Third, and most important, I speak baby whale.

Ikumi saying “Whooppeeeee!!!”

In all seriousness, I’ve never seen a baby stay at the surface for the entire duration of its mother’s breath cycle, and certainly not repeatedly. (It happened twice again the next day.)

Besides being special in a magical-Disney-moment sort of way, Ikumi and mom are intriguing in another respect.

Since I started recording calf encounters in a methodical manner in 2008, the most encounters we’ve had with any single calf was four times (Val, calf 13/ 2008 and Stitches, calf 4/ 2009).

Most calfs we see between one and three times, and then never again.

I had assumed that this was indicative of the fact that humpback whale mothers and their babies use Vava’u as a stopover to/ from other places, not necessarily spending a lot of time here.

I still think this is probably the case, and that Ikumi and mom may be outliers.

It’s certainly possible, though, that moms and babies are spending more time around Vava’u in general, and we’ve somehow missed having more repeat sightings in the past. I ascribe a lower possibility to this scenario though, given the number of boats on the water.

Outliers are always interesting, because exceptions to the rule often illuminate otherwise obscure aspects of the general rule.

So I’ve been asking myself repeatedly…what is the difference between Ikumi and all the other calfs? Or perhaps, what is the difference in the circumstances in which Ikumi finds herself, as compared to other calfs?

The “Aha!” moment came when I considered the relative dearth of whales this year.

There just aren’t as many whales around as we’d normally expect.

I’m speculating that perhaps one of the primary factors underlying the apparent mobility of mothers and calfs in more “normal” years is pressure from other whales.

With a given quantity of baby-friendly real estate, the more whales there are, the more crowded it’ll be on average…meaning the greater the pressure there is to find someplace more peaceful.

We’ve sighted Ikumi and mom in areas that are generally popular with mothers and babies…but importantly…we haven’t seen many other mothers and babies in these areas over the past two weeks. Or any other whales for that matter.

In a more typical year, there might be more mothers and calfs, as well as other whales (such as potential escorts), that might exert pressure on a given mother and calf…leaving them with little elbow room, so to speak, and forcing them to move on.

Again, this is speculation on my part, but 14 days (and counting) versus four days is a significant difference, so there must be some underlying reason.

Other moms and babies we’ve sighted this season have not stuck around for so long (as far as we’re aware), so another possibility could also be that Ikumi’s mom is spectacularly lazy.

Everything but the Whale Shark
There are some days in your life that you’ll never forget. The 25th of August was one of those days for me.

Pilot whale swimming at depth

The day started off well, with a new mother and calf, which I named Lele…the Tongan word that means “to run”, as the pair moved constantly, and it was a challenge keeping up with them.

After several drops in the water, mom was growing comfortable with me, and it looked like the pair would settle in nice, clear blue water to give us an excellent encounter.

At that moment, mother and baby inexplicably took off at high speed.

I’ve been in the water with humpback whales often enough to know when a whale is happy and when it’s not. When I left the mother and calf in the water, they were happy. So something happened.

What exactly happened wasn’t apparent for a few minutes thereafter, when we suddenly saw a phalanx of dorsal fins appear. At first, we thought they were dolphins, but soon realised they were pilot whales.

Part of the squadron of pilot whales

Pilot whales can be vicious, acting like pack hunters and tearing their prey to bits and pieces. I think Lele’s mother heard the squadron of cetaceans approaching and took her baby to safety.

We, of course, jumped in. The pilot whales weren’t terribly friendly, but they didn’t really avoid us either. They were mixed in with two adult humpback whales…playing together.

I’ve seen dolphins descend upon humpbacks many times, and in every instance, the whales weren’t happy. I think hyperactive dolphins are to humpbacks what a frenzy of mosquitoes are to me…annoying and irritating. Something you want to swat.

In the case of the pilots, however, the humpbacks were clearly enjoying themselves…swimming in seemingly choreographed patterns, rolling in and out of the pack.

Once again, the best way I can describe what we saw is…the humpbacks and pilots were enjoying themselves. They were having fun, just like groups of kids meeting at a park. I have to anthropomorphise, because…there’s no other plausible explanation.

I was too far away to get a better photo.

Then came the ocean whitetip sharks. Two of them, trailing behind the pilot whales. The first approached to check me out, then turned away after it decided I wasn’t an easy meal. The streamlined predators hung around for the entire encounter though, periodically coming back to make they hadn’t inadvertently passed up a tasty snack.

We conjectured that the oceanics may have been trailing the pilots hoping to pick up scraps for an easy meal.

On another drop, a striped marlin joined the fray, swimming most closely to Serene, then checking the rest of us out before heading on. “Nothing interesting here”, I could almost hear it thinking with a despondent sigh.

Given the unusually high number of whale shark sightings we’ve had in Vava’u this season (something on the order of seven), we half expected one of the enormous fish to turn up, but unfortunately, no whale shark swam past.

We certainly couldn’t complain though, given how much we saw that day. It was literally, “Everything but the whale shark”.

To Be Continued
So much happened that this post is getting really long, even though I’m doing my best to edit out a lot. I’ll split the rest into another post.

Geri (7th ID-ed humpback whale calf) with mother

Whale Poo-ed. Again.

Tue, Aug 31st, 2010 | Funny Stuff, Marine Life, Places, Adventures No Comments

This photo is pretty much self-explanatory.

Humpback whale poo-ing in my general direction

I swam straight through it, because…well…how often do you get poo-ed upon by a whale? Actually, in my case, at least half-a-dozen times I can recall.

This is the first time, however, that I managed to get a photo of cloudy-liquid whale poo, as opposed to soft-serve-ice-cream-like whale poo.

Ikumi

Fri, Aug 27th, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 3 Comments

The star of this year’s humpback whale season in Vava’u so far is definitely this little female calf, which we named Ikumi. She’s the fifth calf we ID-ed this season, and as of today, we’ve seen her seven times, starting on 17 August.

That’s a record. Prior to this, the most encounters we’ve recorded with a single calf is four times.

We’ve literally watched this calf grow something on the order of 500kg over the past 10 days, and we’ve seen her develop from a shy little baby to a healthy, energetic young girl.

Today, I played “baby whale at the surface” by imitating Ikumi’s twists and twirls, as well as hanging upside down with her while her mom waited below. Ikumi absolutely loved it, and treated us to a spectacular show!

Ikumi put on quite a show today.

Oceanic Whitetip Shark

Wed, Aug 25th, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 10 Comments

It was an epic day today, one of the highlights of which was my first time in the water with oceanic whitetip sharks (Carcharhinus longimanus):

Carcharhinus longimanus, one of the most beautiful sharks around

Two of them were trailing behind a large pod of pilot whales, which we saw playing with two humpback whales.

As if that weren’t enough, a striped marlin saw fit to swim by for a visit.

Oceanic whitetip shark with striped marlin in the background

Oh yeah…I also ID-ed another calf, bringing the total to eight ID-ed baby whales this season.

I’m pooped.

Meeting Geri

Tue, Aug 24th, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 2 Comments

We ID-ed our 7th calf for this season today, a cute little female, inquisitive and playful.

Everyone on the boat voted to name the calf Geri, in honour of Geri Murphy, who was on the boat with us for a couple of days before leaving for home this morning.

Geri (7th ID-ed calf of the season) with mother

Geri made quite an impression on everyone, as did this little calf.

We miss you Geri!

Humpback Whales 2010: Part 4

Sun, Aug 22nd, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 4 Comments

The past week started off with more of a whimper than a bang.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we went through a three-day string of no appreciable interactions with humpback whales. That’s unusual for this time of year. And, well…it kinda sucked.

Naturally, we were a bit worried, particularly given the generally slow start to the season over the previous few weeks, but fortunately, our luck changed on 16 August, when the weather settled, skies cleared, and the whales showed up again. Whew!

Over the past few days, we’ve been fortunate enough to see a variety of humpback whale behaviour.

We photo-identified three more baby whales (Saipe, Ikumi, Lahi), bringing the total to six, and we had repeat encounters with two of those three.

We swam with an intense six-whale heat run, found a couple of singers, watched a number of mother/ calf pairs that were moving too much to see in the water, saw male humpbacks battle one another for the right to become escort whales, and got totally confused by a pair of perplexing whales.

First Contact
First contact with cetacean life this week came in the guise of a heat run.

If you’ve read any of my posts about humpbacks over the years, you’ll know that I love heat runs. A lot.

If you don’t know what a heat run is, in short, it’s a bunch of testosterone-crazed male humpbacks chasing after a female whale while snorting, grunting, and cajoling one another, sometimes resorting to body slams, head butts, tail slaps and other acrobatics worthy of the most theatrical of pro wrestling matches.

Three male humpback whales in a six-whale heat run

In this case, the heat run involved six whales, and the intensity was about a six on a scale of one to ten…not too violent to get in, not too relaxed to be dull.

For the six people who were on the boat with me, it wasn’t the easiest of introductions to humpback whales (since observing heat runs often requires swimming as hard as you can for as long as you can), but it was worth the effort.

At one stage, the whales completely surrounded our boat, meaning that they were comfortable with our presence and had sort of “taken us in” to their movements.

After we made several unsuccessful attempts to see them in the water, the whales rewarded us with a high-speed, mid-water fly-by when the hormone-driven cetaceans decided to turn around and take a look at us.

J, one of the guys in the water at the time, came up whooping with joy, remarking that it was sight he would never forget, later describing the experience as like being “in a washing machine with six locomotives” charging through.

J said: “It’s like being in a washing machine with six locomotives!”

Baby Humpback Whales
Almost immediately after that, we found a mother, calf and escort in nice, clear water.

This baby turned out to be the 4th one we’ve photo ID-ed this season. I named it Saipe, which means “OK” or “alright” in Tongan, because I felt much better after finding the heat run and this baby following the three-day dry spell.

Unfortunately, however, we only had one good swim with this baby. It was a textbook-perfect swim, with the whales completely relaxed while we were in the water, but they suddenly dashed off into the blue and wouldn’t stop.

We saw another whale pop up nearby, and speculated that this may have had something to do with the whales’ sudden change in mood. The escort surfaced a couple of times by itself, floated in the water and growled in the general direction of the other whale. I didn’t get the impression that it was a neighborly greeting.

Saipe (4th ID-ed calf this season) with mother

Speaking of which, the mood of the season seems to be summed up in a single word…unsettled. Just about every whale we’ve encountered to date has been active, meaning they’re swimming all over the place, often heading straight out to sea or straight past the islands.

In a given hypothetical “average” year, there would be many more encounters with whales that don’t seem to be in a rush to get some place.

Although this itchy-fin syndrome extends to mother/ calf pairs, our pace of ID-ing mother/ calf pairs so far is on track with this point in 2008 and 2009. So even though it’s been relatively difficult to find mother/ calf pairs relaxed enough for easy encounters, there seems to be a number of babies around.

Besides, Saipe, we ID-ed two more calfs this week (Ikumi and Lahi), bringing the total count to six. We also encountered three additional calfs that we were only able to observe from above the water line, bringing the total unknown calf count to seven.

No one is sure why the whales seem so restless. For now, I’m still thinking along the lines of what I outlined last week, namely that there are may be relatively few breeding-ready females this season, meaning greater competition for the females that are present.

Many of the mothers and calfs we’ve seen have had escorts, and in two instances, we’ve seen other males confront the escorts in an attempt to dislodge him.

On our last day on the water this week, for example, we found a mother/ calf/ escort group heading slowly out to sea. First one, then another male intercepted them and challenged the escort.

After a bit of aquatic mayhem, the original escort emerged victorious and chased off the interlopers, but…here’s the interesting part…the two losers joined forces and formed a temporary alliance, trailing behind the mother/ calf/ escort at a safe distance, perhaps hoping to make another attempt.

Unidentified baby whale with mother and escort

This type of behaviour itself isn’t so unusual, but to see so many escorts accompanying mothers with babies at this stage in the season, as well as males challenging existing escorts…does seem somewhat out of the norm.

In short, I’m still going with the theory that an abundance of horny males + paucity of available females = restless population.

(Note: If you’re visiting Vava’u and would like to help with calf IDs, please see this PDF file with an explanation of the information I’m seeking.)

Quantum Entanglement
After the two whales that challenged the escort in my anecdote above lost, we followed for a while, watching the pair of frustrated males track the mother/ calf/ escort group.

At one point, we decided to leave the group, as they were heading too far out to sea.

I joked that as soon as we turned away, the whales were sure to breach. (They had breached several times through the morning when no one with a camera was looking the right way.)

Cary, one of the guys on the trip, casually placed his camera and long lens over his shoulder so that it pointed behind him, quipping that it’d be no problem for him to nail an over-the-shoulder shot of a breach without so much as looking at the whale.

At that precise millisecond, one of the whales breached directly in front of him, at the perfect shooting distance, with really good light. I kid you not.

(Insert video of me laughing uncontrollably.)

It’s as if the whale breached just to mock him.

(He deserved it.)

The incident reminded me of the concept of quantum entanglement, in which two physically distinct particles are connected to one another in an as-yet unexplainable manner such that something affecting one particle automatically affects the other, even across vast distances.

Clearly, the whale was entangled with Cary’s camera, in a “you’ll never get a photo of me breaching” sort of way.

The type of photo Cary didn’t get

Cetacean Crooners
We also found two singers, both mature adults.

I found one in almost the exact spot outside Hunga that we found the two immature singers a few weeks back when my friend Dr John Potter was here (see Part 1).

I’m starting to think there’s something to that spot, as I’ve now visually confirmed three singers in that location this season. Every time I cruise by there from now on, I’ll be keeping an eye out for additional singers.

I managed to get everyone in directly on top of the whales to see and hear the singers on both days. Both were large males, so the voices boomed and resonated sufficiently that we could hear them even on the boat. It’s quite an experience to be above a mature singer in the water, to say the least.

Big, mature humpback whale singer, in the classic head-down pose

On Friday afternoon, we again heard the haunting echoes of whale song through the hull. The crew and I scrambled to get people into the water, only to see J in the cabin…making whale sounds. Hah, hah.

To his credit, J fooled at least five experienced whale watchers. And here I was thinking J had no talent.

Dancing Queen
Perhaps the most rewarding, and the most puzzling, encounter took place on 19 August, just after our encounter with a big singer.

We found the pair just south of the main channel, doing the typical up-and-down resting behaviour…taking a few breaths every 15 minutes or so, then gliding down to the bottom to rest.

Visibility was somewhat milky, so it wasn’t easy to keep track of them, but we managed to follow the duo for most of the afternoon.

With such a long encounter, I had a lot of time to observe the whales. Among the things I noted:

- The bellies of the two whales were very similar in pattern.
- One whale required two to three breath cycles for each breath cycle of the other one.
- The one that had to breath more often was curious enough to swing by and take a look at swimmers. The other whale couldn’t be bothered.
- The same whale kept nuzzling the other one when they were on the bottom, swimming around it in circles, resting under the other whale’s pectoral fin, peeking out from under the other whale, even hiding entirely under the other whale at one point.

Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in the water with humpbacks will probably reach the same conclusion I did: “It’s a calf!”

What sealed it for me was a chance encounter. Since the visibility wasn’t great, we lost track of the pair every once in a while. When that happened, I dived down a few metres to look for the whales, then surfaced directly above them so everyone else knew where they were.

On one of the recon missions, the curious whale happened to be coming up at the same time. I didn’t see the whale, and it didn’t see me, until we met at about the half-way mark, at ten metres or so.

So there we were, suspended in the water, looking at one another. I looked at the whale. It looked at me.

Time froze as we each considered the situation…then the whale went “whoopee!!!” and started to play…twisting, twirling…literally dancing in the water. When I swam around it taking photos, the whale seemed even happier, and soon followed me to the surface, checking out the other swimmers (who probably also said “whoopee!!!”).

A friendly juvenile humpback whale dancing in the water

After a few breaths, the whale went down, nudged the other whale a few times, then couldn’t resist and came back up to play with us. This happened over and over, with the other disinterested whale surfacing occasionally for air. The playful whale joined the other one each time it came up, but always kept an eye on us, and always came back to play.

It was almost a cut-and-dry “calf from last year” case.

Now here’s the thing. I thought I saw mammary slits on the other whale when it dived, which would’ve made sense had it been a mother.

But, when we checked our photos later that night, we realised that the other whale (the non-playful one) was a male…so definitely not a mom.

Two males: one detached and uninterested; one extremely playful, curious, eager to show off, and prone to nuzzling the other and treating it like its mother.

I have no clue how to characterise this unusual relationship between the two whales.

Anyone have any thoughts?

People
Once again, I was blessed with a terrific gang of fellow adventurers…all a pleasure to spend time with. This trip comprised:

J and Cary, who jointly and severally are the very definition of the term “peanut gallery”. Both are quick-witted, and have a great sense of humour and positive attitude. J is making a quick stop in Ha’apai, then heading back home. If you know J, ask him why ostriches eat babies, and call him JJ just to annoy him. Cary is on a yacht heading to Fiji, and looking to find his way to Indonesia, Thailand and other places in Southeast Asia from there.

Standing: Me, Cary, CC, Jenny, Geri. Squatting: J, Colin

Colin, who was foolish enough to join me here after already having been exposed to my nonsense in Lembeh and Bangkok earlier this year. Colin was giving all guys a bad name by making daily Skype calls back to his girlfriend. J and I managed to Skype-jack his final call and proactively “introduce” ourselves to Colin’s girlfriend, who no doubt will never let him travel with me again.

Jenny and CC from Taiwan, who had a bit of trouble getting here due to visa issues, but fortunately didn’t let it prevent them from making it to Tonga. Jenny is the primary moderator and driving force behind the FiNS communal photo sharing site on Flickr. We’ve communicated a lot online, but this is the first time we’ve met in real life. Seeing her big smile as she said: “My dream has come true!” was absolutely priceless. Plus, CC and Jenny have offered to take me out for awesome food next time I’m in Taipei. Time to book a ticket!

And last, but certainly not least, is Geri Murphy. It was a particular honour to have Geri along for the trip. For those of you who remember the glory days of Skin Diver magazine, Geri was one of the primary photographer/ writers.

I read lots(!) of her stories and looked at many of her photos, so being able to share an adventure and spend quality time with one of my heroes is a feeling that is again…priceless.

Geri and me

Geri also happens to be great friends with Carl Roessler, who has always provided me with wise counsel at crucial junctures. And Geri’s husband, Paul Tzimoulis, was one of the diving industry’s all-time greats.

Hearing stories about Paul directly from Geri is something I’ll never forget. Though she might not realise this, introducing Geri to humpback whales meant as much or more to me as it did to her.

More people just arrived today for a 10-day trip, so we’ll see what the next week-and-a-half holds in store.

Humpback Whales 2011
I’m about half-way through this season, and it’s time to commence planning for next year.

If you’re interested in joining me in 2011, please sign up for my trip newsletter and/ or drop me a message via my contact form.

Humpback Whales 2010: Part 3

Sun, Aug 15th, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures 6 Comments

It’s been another eventful week or so in Vava’u. The weather has been mostly unhelpful, with winds running at least 20 knots on most days, over 30 knots yesterday.

Despite the challenging conditions, we have had several interesting encounters with humpback whales, including two more ID-ed calfs, another mating pair, a friendly single whale, and a four-whale heat run. One of my boats also came across a whale shark in crystal-clear blue water…when I wasn’t on the boat (of course).

Lone humpback whale, probably a sexually immature male

Humpback Whale Calf IDs
Getting photo identification of mother and calf pairs has been difficult so far. The wind and sea conditions have made the task of finding and approaching whales challenging, and the whales themselves seem more active than normal…meaning they’ve been travelling at high speed more often than they’ve been settled and approachable.

I wondered for some time if this wasn’t just a string of bad luck for me. After all, I’ve had such incredibly good fortune with whale encounters to date that it wouldn’t surprise me if I had a bit of a dry spell…the Law of Averages as applied to cetacean encounters, so to speak.

After checking around with many of my friends and other whale watch boats here however, I think it’s reasonable to state that everyone has had the same experience.

This isn’t to say there haven’t been some terrific encounters. It’s just that on the whole, such experiences seem to be more the exception than the rule…for the moment at least.

Anyway, we did manage to ID two more calfs this week, both on 9 August.

One was a relatively young baby that we named “Mali Mali”, which means “to smile” in Tongan. The calf and its mother were constantly on the go, so were difficult to approach.

Mali Mali and mother

The other was a much bigger calf, perhaps a month old or more. We named this one “Bimyo”, which means something along the lines of “strange”, “uncertain”, “difficult to ascertain”, etc. in Japanese, though I don’t think there is an exact translation in English.

The reason we named this calf “Bimyo” is because the calf presented us with a head-scratching, mind-bending conundrum.

We came across Bimyo early in the morning, east of an island named Euakafa. There were five whales in total, Bimyo plus four adults. Eventually, one of the adults left, and then another peeled off, leaving Bimyo plus two adults.

When we entered the water (with really poor visibility), we could see that one of the adults was mostly dark in colouration, while the other had a lot of white on its body.

Bimyo with two adult whales during the morning encounter

The dark whale was initially aggressive/ protective, in the classic escort fashion. It swam between the more white adult + calf and us, and it was easy to read the “This is my female!” look in the whale’s eyes. Or so I thought.

After getting a few calf ID photos, we left the whales, as the dark one seemed overly hyped-up on testosterone, perhaps from fending off the other two challengers earlier in the morning.

It wasn’t until night time that I realised that things might not have been as clear as I had assumed.

Later that same afternoon, we came across another mother/ calf/ escort group, once again in piss-poor visibility. We managed to get a few photos and see them in the water, but the encounters were fly-bys, not extended ones. The whales were completely relaxed…just not in the mood to hang around and play.

This mother was dark all over, and the escort (trailing behind and somewhat below…classic escort behaviour) had a lot of white on its body. The calf was a relatively big one.

I and everyone else assumed this was a third calf. Location, behavior and even appearance was different.

Second encounter with Bimyo, this time calf swimming with the dark whale

But…as I was keywording and captioning images that night, something nagged at me. Given that I was practically comatose from exhaustion, I wanted to finish as soon as possible and get to sleep. I tried ignoring the little voice in my head…to no avail.

I stared at the images, scrolling up and down, over and over again, until I had one of those apple-hitting-me-on-the-head moments: One of the calfs in the morning (i.e., Bimyo) was exactly the same as the calf in the late afternoon.

But…in the morning, it was riding on the nose of the whiter adult, and the dark adult was aggressive and fending off other whales and people. In the afternoon, the calf was riding on the nose of the dark whale, which was placid and mommy-like, while the whiter whale was following in a classic escort-like fashion.

It was too late to show anyone else, so I had to wait until the next morning to share this observation.

I’m not sure what was going on, but some possibilities include: (a) the dark whale is the mom and the baby is equally comfortable with either adult…mom or escort (I’ve seen babies hang out with escorts before, but never while swimming); (b) the white whale was the escort and was trying to separate the baby from the mother (dark whale) in the morning…perhaps accounting for the dark whale’s aggressiveness (I’ve seen babies separated from their mothers on several occasions), (c) both whales are females and there’s cooperative parenting taking place (unlikely, but just a thought).

If anyone has any insight or has seen something similar, please let me know!

Unfortunately, none of us were able to take upskirt photos of either of the adult whales, so we can’t determine either whale’s sex…meaning the “Who’s Your Mommy?” mystery will remain unsolved unless we happen to come across the calf again, and/ or someone else sends photos to sex the adult whale(s).

Speculation
This encounter sparked a cascade of thoughts in my mind.

It’s still quite early in the season, and having what appeared to be four male whales vying for a female with a calf at this early stage in the season is relatively unusual.

Sure…it happens, but if you were a horny male leviathan…wouldn’t you target the single females first before going for the ones requiring child support? Most of the time, this is exactly what happens.

Heat runs (i.e., male competition for mates) generally revolve around single females earlier in the season, while escorts attached to females with babies become relatively more common later in the season. This is not a set-on-stone rule, just a general pattern.

I’m going to climb far, far out on a limb here and speculate, starting with a few observations:

1. We saw what appeared to be four males vying for a female with a calf on 9 August, i.e., very early in the season.

2. We’ve seen four male/ female pairs so far, i.e., females that have already chosen mates, again, early in the season.

3. There seem to be many more young whales (as singles, as pairs, or in pairs with mature whales) than would be normally expected.

4. I counted over 60 babies in the past three seasons. Since there’s no possibility I counted every baby, there quite probably were more than 100 babies in that time.

5. It’s commonly believed that there are 500 +/- whales that regularly visit Tonga during the winter season.

6. All the whale watch boats are reporting fewer whale encounters in comparison to a hypothetical “average” year.

So here’s my bit of speculation, drawing upon the statements above.

Let’s assume there are 500 whales in this group, and let’s say half of them are female, and half of those are able to mate at any given time. This (overly) simple calculation suggests a breeding-capable population of around 125 female whales at any given time.

If there were more than 100 babies in this group in the past three years, then it would be reasonable to conclude that a large proportion of the breeding-capable females have had babies in the recent past.

I know for a fact that humpback females can have babies two years in a row, but most evidence and common sense suggests that they’re relatively unlikely to do so, and more likely to wait a couple/ few seasons before having a baby.

Giving birth to a four-metre baby and raising it requires a lot of energy, so it’s perfectly reasonable for mommy whales to take a bit of time off to rest and build-up fat reserves before trying again.

So what this suggests is that there might be a relative abundance of young, sexually immature whales showing up here, with fewer females ready for mating than there were in the past few years…exactly what appears to be taking place.

If this is the case, it might help explain why we’ve seen four mated pairs already…the strongest males have already claimed the few available, single females. They’ve mated, and the females have headed back south to fatten up for birth.

It may also help to explain the cluster of males around Bimyo and mom so early in the season…there may just not be that many females around.

It may also explain my earlier encounter with the young whale vocalising non-song, song-like sounds (that I wrote about in Part 1.)

And finally, it may help explain why there seem to be fewer whales around in general…those that have mated have gone back, while the immature ones will hang out for a bit, do some stuff around Vava’u, then travel to other places to explore. The young are always restless.

I realise that I don’t have anywhere near sufficient evidence to “prove” a storyline like this, but I think it’s important to draw together strands of personal experience and collective wisdom from my friends to try to piece together what’s going on.

As the season progresses, I’ll update and amend my speculation when new information becomes available. It’s entirely possible that everything I wrote above is proven wrong. But as George E. Hale once observed: “he who would launch great ships must live in deep waters,”. I’m not afraid of the deep.

Other Highlights
Among the other highlights this week were an encounter (on 11 August) with what appeared to be another mated pair (the 4th this season), with the female once again demonstrating a penchant for hanging tail up in the water, with fluke protruding out of the water.

We’ve only come across this behaviour once before, a few years ago with a single female that might have been pregnant.

This season, we’ve now seen two different female whales (accompanied by males) doing the “tail-out-of-the-water” pose (See Part 2).

We also had a four-whale heat run on 12 August, that I first spotted travelling at super-duper high speed in the distance far offshore. They eventually came toward the islands, allowing us to follow and drop in a few times for a closer look.

High-energy, testosterone-driven heat runs are my absolute favourite whale encounters, so I hope we see more this season. If my speculation above is correct, however, there may not be too many.

One of the four heat-run whales, cruising at depth

On the same day, one of my boats had an amazing encounter with a whale shark in perfect water. I gather that there were many shrieks of joy and lots of high-fives going around. Plus a group picture when the boat got back to the dock with everyone saying “whale shark!” instead of “cheese!”.

Whale shark outside Hunga

And finally, we came across an interesting pair of whales on 14 August. The whales were on the move, so we weren’t able to get into the water with them, but we watched for an hour-and-a-half or more.

One of the two whales had the unusual habit of tail-slapping once and only once each time before the pair dived. Tail-slapping isn’t unusual, but doing it only once, continuously for an extended period of time over an extended distance, is. I’ve never seen this behaviour before.

It was the first day out on the water for the people on the boat (Colin, Cary, J, Geri, CC, Jenny), so it was entertaining watching everyone get frustrated trying to get topside photos of the tail slaps.

With repeated tail slaps (or other surface behaviour), it’s much easier to get good photos because you know where the action is happening. Since this whale executed only one slap at a time, you basically had to guess the time and place, plus get the framing correct, have the right light, and not have the boat rocked by a swell when you hit the trigger. No simple task.

Let’s just say there was an abundance of groaning and muttering, along with some good-natured shrieks of agony.

I’m not sure what the whales were, but they did appear relatively small. I think they were young whales, but since I wasn’t able to get into the water to get a closer look, it was impossible to be certain.

That’s it for now.

Humpback whale doing one and only one tail slap before diving

Serious Research Stuff

Mon, Aug 9th, 2010 | Funny Stuff, Marine Life, People, Places, Adventures, Research 2 Comments

There were two people from China who joined me for my recent humpback whale acoustics research trip in Tonga.

One of the two, Song Ye, is a former member of the Chinese national swim team, and goes by the nickname Mermaid.

In addition to being a talented swimmer, she is also a natural when it comes to cetacean acoustics research, as is clear in this video:

I was tempted to tell her that the hydrophone wasn’t effective for two-way communication, but in the end, I didn’t have the heart to spoil her fun.

Humpback Whales 2010: Part 2

Mon, Aug 9th, 2010 | Marine Life, People, Places, Adventures, Research No Comments

Singing whales weren’t the only ones we encountered during the Jocara trip.

To be upfront, it’s been a relatively slow start to the season. There are certainly whales here. I’ve seen them every day I’ve been out on the water. But qualitatively, there don’t seem to be as many interactive whales (i.e., ones you can spend quality time with) as normal for this time of year.

Over the past week and a half, I know there were two mother and calf pairs in the area. We saw one in the water, but were unable to get in with the other. There certainly might be more, but I haven’t heard any credible reports.

Usually by now, there should be more, though there have been other years with relatively few babies early on, such as in 2007, but quite a few later in the season.

When you get right down to it, there’s really no way of knowing how things will play out until the end of the season.

Working the ropes on Jocara

Besides the mothers and babies, there seem to be a lot of young whales here, say between one to five years of age or so, i.e., sexually immature whales. The first two singers we recorded are good examples, and we’ve sighted many others either playing alone, or travelling in pairs.

Other boats have reported large heat runs, and I know of encounters with at least three separate mating pairs of whales.

As I alluded to above, it’s far too early in the season to generalise about how things are going, but if I can indulge in a bit of speculation…

Over the past three years, I’ve ID-ed over 60 calfs. Since there’s no way I saw all the babies, I think it’s reasonable to assume there were well over 100 calfs in this group of whales over the past three years.

This number would suggest that a significant proportion of the breeding females in this humpback whale group have had babies in the recent past. Females that have just had babies are relatively less likely to have them again right away (though I’ve ID-ed two moms here that had babies two years in a row in 2008 and 2009).

Not all the young would have survived, but the number of babies could help explain the seemingly high number of young whales we’ve seen so far. Other explanations, of course, could be that the young whales arrived earlier than the others, the older ones are busy elsewhere, or I’m just imagining things.

I’ve also sensed in the past that high-baby years seem to run somewhat countercyclical with seasons with a relatively high number of heat runs and mating pairs. This seems to makes sense, since females with babies are relativley less likely to be engaging in courtship/ mating (though it does happen), while females without babies are relatively more likely to do so.

So…one of the things that will be of interest to me as the season progresses is to see how the baby count goes versus the relative frequency of heat runs and mating pair encounters.

Ongo
On 6 August, the last day that we were out on the water, I made my first calf ID for the season. It was a relatively new calf, perhaps in the two- to three-week old range, and absolutely adorable.

The visibility was poor, and the mother was skittish, so I wasn’t able to take any prize-winning photos, but I was able to get a good enough look to ID the baby.

Both mommy and baby are nearly all black, with the baby having small white patches just behind both eyes. The mother has an easily recognisable pattern on the ventral surface of her fluke…mostly black, with white areas toward the the upper corners on both sides. In short…it’s easy to ID this pair again.

I decided to name the baby Ongo, in honour of my close friend and mentor here who passed away just days after I left Tonga last year. For the community as a whole…it’s difficult to overestimate the importance Ongo had on establishing the whale watch industry here. For me personally…Ongo taught me just about everything I know about humpback whale behaviour. To top it off, he was a terrific person.

Ongo. 1st ID-ed calf of 2010 season.

Mating Pairs
On 4 August, we came across three whales travelling together. After watching a while, I guessed that they were a mating pair with a third wheel who couldn’t or wouldn’t take the hint to get lost.

Perhaps it was the tail end of a heat run, or a lone male interloper that hoped to interrupt a lovey-dovey pair that had already decided on one another.

Over the course of an hour or two, we watched the whales’ ups and downs until the third was finally chased away, doing a big, violent tail splash as it left, an obvious sign of frustration.

The pair then settled down to spend quality time with one another. It was late in the day by then, so we left them to get down to business.

The next day, we swam with another mating pair in roughly the same area as we had left the first pair the previous day. Based on the whales’ behaviour and my memory of the fluke patterns, I initially thought it might be the same pair. I didn’t have in-water photos from the previous day for comparison, but Gina and Frederick had video, so they were able to compare the whales later in the evening.

As it turned out, they were not the same whales. In a way, it was a letdown, as it would’ve been nice to have seen the same whales again (it’s happened to me before), but in another way, it’s better, because that means more mating pairs, which is good for the humpback population!

One of the most intriguing aspects of this second pair was the behaviour of the female. The two whales were clearly in resting mode. The female’s preferred resting position was to float with her fluke at the surface, flopped over so the ventral surface was flat (or nearly flat) on the water.

Female humpback whale hanging in the water with fluke flopped over at the surface

I’ve seen other humpbacks stick their flukes/ caudal regions out of the water for a while, but this female was single-minded. After every dive, the pair would surface and the female would take up the exact same position…just hanging out with her tail in the air. The male rested just below her.

Difficult to know why she kept doing this, but I can only speculate that it must have felt good.

Surface view of the female humpback whale’s fluke

At the end of our encounter, the male swam up and allowed several of us to swim alongside for quite some distance as the pair cruised at the surface.

When the whales finally dived, I took a few photos, only noticing what should have been obvious after I reviewed the images:

No doubt about what’s on his mind

People
It was an unusual week for me. After so many seasons here, I have somewhat of a fixed pattern of doing things. This past week+ broke the pattern (different boat, different procedures, different focus out on the water, new gadgets, new software to wrangle), which made things difficult in a way, but also highly rewarding.

Besides the whale-related stuff I described above, I spent time with terrific people, who may not have participated in my usual gung-ho whale photography trips.

Without exception, they were terrific(!), and I am delighted to be able to call them friends (not sure if the feeling is mutual of course).

One of the best discoveries from my first few days in Vava’u was the new Chinese restaurant, Golden Lily. One of the most difficult things for me about extended travel is being away from Asian food. I’m perfectly adaptable and can get along just about anywhere, but I can’t help but crave for Asian food every once in a while. This place solves the problem!

The food is…let’s just say awesome. Richard and Song Ye, my two guests from China, and two of their friends who were also in Vava’u, approved of the food, so I suspect I’ll find myself here a lot:

Final feast for the inaugural acoustics research trip

More people start arriving today, and we hit the water again tomorrow. Can’t wait to see what the whales choose to share next!

Cast of characters for my inaugural Humpback Acoustics Adventure:

John fiddling with gadgets

Casper giving me a ride to the dock

Christy surveying the seas ahead

Ali looking cool on the aft deck of Jocara

Frederick imitating The Thinker

Gina, not posing at all. Nope. Not posing.

Richard, Song Ye (aka Mermaid) and their two friends from Beijing

Humpback Whales 2010: Part 1

Sun, Aug 8th, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures, Research 3 Comments

At the beginning of August each year, I find myself struggling with the same dilemma…how to describe the events and experiences of my first week or so in Tonga.

On the one hand, I’m so exhausted and have so much to get done that I want to write as little as possible, but on the other hand, so much has happened that I feel compelled to share everything, even though I know I can never cover it all. There’s just too much.

Usually, as is the case right now, a strong(!!!) cup(s) of coffee is what tips the balance and unfreezes my brain.

Morning cup of coffee at the Aquarium

A Bit of Background
The main reason I arrived in Tonga a little bit earlier than usual this season was to kick-off a joint project with my friend Dr. John Potter to study sound, specifically the melodies produced by humpback whale singers.

By way of background, humpback whales make a lot of different sounds, most of which we have probably never heard.

Sound seems to be as vital to humpback society as vision is to ours. (I realise that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. To be more accurate, I should have compared sound to light…but bear with me.)

If you think about it, this makes complete sense. It’s difficult to see over any significant distance underwater, since water is much denser than air and also contains more suspended stuff to interfere with vision. Sound, however, can travel farther and faster underwater than it does on land.

In this context, humpback whales depend on sound for much of their communication, including the use of what most people know as whale song. A few general points about humpback whale song:

- The term “song” in relation to humpback whales refers a consistent, repetitive series of sounds produced by a whale over a period of time, with the same sound sequences being reproduced by other whales in the relevant group of whales (in other words, not a random string of sounds that’s never made in a similar manner again).
- You can hear a whale singing from several kilometres away.
- No one knows what is being communicated in song.
- We also don’t understand if/ how messages are encoded in song.
- Only males appear to sing.
- Whale songs are unique to each group of whales and evolve over time.
- Whales are widely known to sing in their wintering grounds (like Tonga), but they also do so during migration and in their summer feeding grounds.
- There’s almost certainly much more we don’t even know we don’t know.

John trying to look astute

In addition to these general points, there is a commonly accepted understanding that all the males of a particular group of whales sing the same song at any given time.

A few years ago, however, I heard a whale making sounds that made me stop and think: “Whoa, wait a minute, that’s not the same song!”

I didn’t have a hydrophone with me, so I couldn’t make a recording, which, of course, meant it was impossible to share what I had heard. The best I could do was to use an analogy: If listening to normal whale song in Tonga is like listening to Mozart, what I heard that day was more like a Chuck Berry riff. It was that different.

With no explanation for what I had heard, I began to listen more carefully to whale sounds in following years. On several occasions, I heard what I thought were singers vocalising in a way that didn’t match the other whales.

I conveyed this information to Dr. John Potter. One thing led to another, and eventually, we conceived a joint project to study humpback whale song in Tonga. (Note: The previous few sentences just glossed over four years or so of discussion, relocation of a yacht, arranging of specialised equipment, and innumberable insults traded over email and Skype.)

That, in short, is how we ended up on John’s yacht Jocara on 29 July 2010, armed with a high-tech 4-channel hydrophone array, recording equipment, and lots of cameras…on a mission to find singers around Vava’u.

As with all new projects, there was a bit of futzing around to figure out what exactly we needed to do, how we needed to do it, and what we would do with whatever we managed to get done.

Along the way, we faced a few challenges, including inclement weather, a broken engine, and one instance in which we nearly snapped John’s expensive hydrophone array in half.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, little annoyances and minor crises that command your immediate attention at any given time are never the things that matter. We dealt with them each in turn and kept our minds focused on our goal…learning a lot in the process.

The Goal
I think it fair to say that a lot of people have studied or are studying whale song. Some have done so in Tonga.

So the natural question to ask is…what makes our project different?

I can think of three things.

First, John and I want to combine audio and visual data in order to get a more complete understanding of what’s going on. Simply recording song, for instance, means you don’t get the benefit of seeing what the whale is doing.

Is it in the classic head-down pose? If not, what position is it in? How big is it? Is it moving? Is it interacting with another whale(s)?

Conversely, just taking photos makes it impossible to associate sound with an image. This is the problem I’ve faced to date. I can get great photos of singers, for instance, but it’s difficult for me to convey what I heard.

By combining audio recordings with visuals (photos, video where possible), we hope to associate all possible data.

Second, we are looking specifically for possible correlations in audio and visual data. What does this mean?

Recall that earlier, I noted that no one really knows what information is being communicated by song or how it’s being encoded.

John has a theory, which he explains this way: Think of a karoake bar. Let’s say 10 people all sing the same song. Same notes, same words, same everything.

Even with all the song parameters kept constant, however, none of the renditions will sound the same.

In other words, there is information encoded in how the song is sung and presented.

If you can’t see the actual people singing the song, you would probably draw different conclusions, for instance, about two people, one whose voice is weak and crackly, the other whose voice is a deep, soothing baritone.

Drawing the analogy to whales, one possibility might be that the valuable information in the song is not the song itself, but the singing of the song. In other words, it might be possible to learn something about the singer by listening to the quality of the song, as opposed to the notes and phrases in the song. (I don’t know if I’m using technically accurate terms, but you get the point.)

So by associating visual and audio data, we’re trying to figure out a way to test this possibility.

To put it simply: Is there, for example, a difference in the way a young whale and an old grizzly bull sing? If so, can we figure out what the difference is and determine its significance? Can we then “read” certain information about a singer just by listening?

Third, we’re going to be open-book. Much of academic work is done behind closed doors, in a black box so to speak. There are some good reasons for this, but there are also drawbacks.

I’m sure there are people who would disagree with me, but I believe that given the efficient communication technology we have now, sharing of information is the best way forward.

My humpback whale calf ID project, for instance, has been completely open-book, and it’s produced wonderful results. I’ve made lots of friends, received valuable help from other people, and this year, I’ve already had a few people come up to me in Vava’u to tell me they will do their best to send me information.

One major criticism of an open-book approach is that the quality of data/ input can suffer if contributions come from an “uneducated” public. My view…that’s complete garbage.

Weeding out suspect information is easy enough, and the peer review process hasn’t even come close to preventing fraud in science publications.

Plus, for this endeavour, I have John, who will be rigorous in examining data and drawing conclusions. And in the event we make a mistake, I’d rather have someone point it out quickly than continue working on something that’s wrong.

Ok, enough preamble.

Snap, Crackle, Pop
Somewhat of an aside, but one of the first things we recorded was the sound of snapping shrimp.

If you’re a diver, you may have come across these tiny crustaceans, characterised by having one claw much larger than the other, and the top pincer on the large claw disproportionately bigger than the lower pincer.

These shrimp snap their large claws shut from time-to-time, producing a loud snapping sound:

I already knew that they live all over the world on every coral reef, but what I didn’t realise is how many there are, or how much noise they collectively make.

Nor did I realise that it’s not the snapping of their claws that makes the sound. Since John loves(!) talking and being in front of the camera, I’ll let him elaborate:

No one knows why the shrimp snap their claws to produce this loud sound, though we mused that it “must having something to do with food or sex” (doesn’t everything, after all?).

Whale Song
Over the eight days we spent on the water, we were able to record three singers.

The first was a really young, small whale. In fact, we were all fooled, and initially thought it was a calf.

I was able to locate the whale in reasonably shallow water and get a good look, so I’m confident that it was no more than 10 metres in length. I was also able to take several nice photos of the singer:

The smallest singer I’ve ever seen, perhaps 9 to 10 metres in length.

Piecing together bits and pieces from other boats, here is the narrative of about four hours in the life of this particular singer:

- The young whale hooked up with another whale near the main entrance to the Vava’u island group. It’s possible they were completely separate before the first boat sighted them joining, or they may have been travelling together and were only temporarily apart.
- After a brief interval, the whale began to sang, and the other whale was not in sight. The people in the first boat were unable to find the whale underwater, but listened to the song in the water, and also watched this whale surface over several cycles, with the other whale appearing from time-to-time.
- The first boat passed the whales to a second boat, and the second boat observed the whales continuing this behaviour. With the whales disappearing for 20-30 minutes at a time, the boat was also unable to locate the whales underwater and left the area.
- We had been watching the boat and whales from a distance, and moved in after the second boat left. The whales disappeared for about 30 minutes. Just as we were about to give up, the singer surfaced together with the other whale and both swam leisurely down the coast of Hunga (one of the main islands).
- The whales were in no hurry, slowing down on occasion and looping back a couple of times. We followed past the Hunga anchorage. The water south of the anchorage gets a bit rough, so I thought we should try getting in to take a look.
- Just as we got ready, the whales disappeared again for an extended period.
- Eventually, I got into the water and heard a singer. I thought it was quite far away, but as it turned out, I was quite close. It took a few up-and-down cycles for me to find the whale, but when I did, I noticed something.
- Even when I was directly above the young whale, I didn’t feel any reverberation in my body. There was no “booming” effect. If you’ve ever been in the water next to a mature singer, you know there’s usually a big booming bass that makes your abdomen jiggle.
- Just before getting into the water, I noticed a whale swimming south along the coast. I thought it was an entirely different whale from the pair we had been following, but later, it sounded as if there might be a second singer nearby (we have yet to listen to the recordings carefully to double check). It may have been the “partner” whale that we had seen travelling together with the singer.

It took a few more days to find another singer we could locate and record. Again, it was a small one, not more than 10 metres long. (For reference, big bulls can be 15 metres or more).

The second young singer we recorded. It was too deep to get a better photo.

This one was even more intriguing than the first.

Again, we were outside Hunga. As soon as I got into the water, I had the feeling that: “It’s not the same song!”

Once John put the hydrophone array in, he confirmed my gut instinct. It wasn’t the same.

But that’s not all…after a few up-and-down cycles, the whale started to sing what sounded like the proper song. In other words, it changed.

Please bear in mind that everything I’m writing is subject to spending quality time listening to and studying the audio recordings, but our initial guess is that the first two whales we recorded were sexually immature, and might just be practicing, or as John puts it “kicking the can around” (John is from the UK so struggles with English).

At the very least, the second whale seems to have vindicated my “They don’t all sing the same song!” observation to some degree.

The one qualification, however, is that the initial series of sounds from the second whale probably doesn’t qualify as “song” per se, at least not according to the definition I set out above.

If the whale were indeed just practicing, it could’ve just been a series of random sounds…testing the vocal chords, so to speak, perhaps like an opera singer warming up before a performance.

If our observation turns out to be correct, it may help explain why immature male whales make the long, arduous trek from Antarctica to Tonga (and other wintering grounds). They might be here to learn the ropes and figure out such things and how, where and when to sing.

One other point of interest about this whale…it may also have been travelling with another young whale (like the first one was). We saw another small whale surface nearby a couple of times, though we didn’t observe them together at any point.

Question: Has anyone ever come across any other information referring to young humpback whales on wintering grounds making continuous sounds that seem like song at first blush, but aren’t actually the song of the season?

Finally, on our last day on the water, we recorded a much larger singer, probably full-grown. I didn’t get a photo, because it was a travelling singer (swimming about 300m during each singing cycle), but I did get a good look at the whale as it descended.

Also, when I was positioned above the whale, I felt the booming bass in my abdomen, a stark contrast to the sound from the smaller singers.

What Does This Mean?
Clearly, John and I have a lot of follow-up work to do. We have to listen to the recordings carefully, and John has to conjure up some of his acoustic voodoo to produce nice graphs to examine.

This will take time, but at this juncture, I think it’s fair to make these statements:

- Immature whales sing on the wintering grounds.
- Immature whales also make continuous song-like sounds that seem not to be actual song, perhaps practicing.
- There appears to be a qualitative difference in the sound level produced by immature whales and mature ones.
- We’ve only scraped the tip of the iceberg.

Hydrophone Array

I’m delighted with this outcome.

With limited time, equipment and budget, John and I were able to correlate visual and audio data for three whales. We managed to gather initial support for John’s hypothesis that young whales come to Tonga to practice/ learn, and also back up my previous observations that not all the “songs” being sung here are the same.

And best of all, we have lots of ideas about how to carry this project forward.

Over the coming months, I envision working with John to assemble the data into a user-friendly format (i.e., something even I can comprehend) and posting the information online. Given my travel schedule and John’s full-time job, it’ll take a few months, but we’ll definitely get it done. Stay tuned!

I still have more I want to write about the non-singer whale encounters we had, but given how long this post is already, it’s probably better for me to put the remaining stuff into a separate post.

Note: If you visit Vava’u and come across a singer, it would be great if you can jot down and send me the date, GPS position, and approximate size of singer. An in-water photo would be great too if possible. Audio recordings could be useful as well, if you happen to have a decent hydrophone.

Singer

Mon, Aug 2nd, 2010 | Marine Life, Places, Adventures, Research 3 Comments

It’s been an eventful first few days this season on the water in Tonga. I’ll write more when the charter aboard Jocara is finished, but for now, here’s a preview image of the first humpback whale singer we’ve successfully tracked and recorded this season:

humpback whale singer

Tracking humpback whale singers isn’t easy. As I explained to my fellow adventurers, in most instances you need to “out-stubborn” the whale.

Sound travels about 4.5x as rapidly in the water as it does on land, and it spreads in all directions, so it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific singer’s location, even when you know it’s close.

Add to that complications such as limited visibility underwater, the possibility that the whale might be too deep to see, varying ambient light conditions, the effect of thermoclines, etc., and you can probably imagine why spotting singers isn’t the simplest of tasks.

In any case, it took perhaps two hours, give or take, plus a lot of swimming to track this one down.

Of note, it is by far the smallest singer I’ve ever come across. In fact, the fluke was so small that I initially thought it might be a baby whale. I’d estimate the body length to be between nine and 10 metres.

The whale’s song wasn’t particularly strong. Even when I was directly above it, with the whale between 15 to 20 metres below, the whale’s song didn’t reverberate in my body like a full-grown whale’s song would normally do.

We recorded over 40 minutes of audio using John’s high-tech hydrophone array, so we have the whale on 4 channels at 24-bit, 96kHz.

We’re heading out on the water again soon. More later.