If you’ve been following my ramblings in recent months, it’s probably obvious that I’ve been spending an increasing proportion of my time with large cetaceans. My schedule for next year is no exception, with 12 to 13 weeks or so planned for sitting on a boat staring at the ocean hoping something will show up whale photography.

For those of you who are crazy enough to contemplate joining me on one of these adventures, I’ve set out basic trip descriptions below.

If you read on, you’ll no doubt notice that many of the trips are already booked. This is because I keep a list of people who contact me in advance, and I do my best to get in touch with anyone who’s expressed interest before announcing trips on my blog. I also send out an e-newsletter in advance of posting to this site.

If you’d like to get a heads-up for future trips, please contact me via my contact form, or sign up for my trip newsletter.

Please let me know if you’re interested, even if the itinerary you’re keen on is full, as I keep a wait list for each of the trips. Life happens sometimes, and people who’ve signed up end up needing to change their plans.

Blue Whales, Sperm Whales in Sri Lanka
Dates: March/ April 2012
Availability: Fully booked

This trip requires someone who is accustomed to less-than-ideal circumstances, can deal with frustration, and can accept the possibility of being totally and utterly skunked.

Sounds like fun, no?

To be a good fit for this adventure, you need to be very, very experienced in the water, be easy-going and cooperative, and have a stable, mature personality.

On the upside, there is the prospect of seeing scenes like the images below, as well as other potential surprises:

Sperm whale swimming upside-down to check me out with sonar

Blue whales(!) swimming in blue water

Minke Whales in Australia
Dates: 28 June to 7 July
Availability: One spot available
Location: Fly into/ out of Cairns, transfer to Port Douglas
Accommodation: Liveaboard trip

Minke whales have been on my to-do list for a long time. As far as baleen whales go, they’re relatively small, running six to ten metres in length. They’re inquisitive…as in, they’ll come right up to boats and people in the water given the right mood. They’re also reasonably easy to find…if you get the timing and location right.

For these reasons, I’ve planned a trip Down Under to spend some quality time with the minkes that congregate at the Great Barrier Reef.

We’re heading over during absolute peak minke whale season.

The plan is to get on a boat in Port Douglas on 28 June, cruise overnight to minke central and sit there until we leave on 6 July to head back. That’s eight full days with minkes, only minkes, and just minkes.

We’ll be in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, so we’ll be following the well-established guidelines for in-water interactions with the small cetaceans, letting the whales dictate the pace and proximity of interactions.

I specifically picked the timing for this trip based on advice from my friends John Rumney, who is one of the leading authorities on minkes Down Under, and Julia Sumerling, who has many years of minke experience under her belt from working as the video/ photo pro on Mike Ball’s boat.

To cut to the chase, our trip will be during peak, peak minke time.

For whatever reason, the minkes show up like clockwork at this time, and more importantly, they demonstrate the greatest level of interest in people around this period.

Incidentally, the minkes in this area are a subspecies known as dwarf minke whales, which were first described in 1986. From what I gather, there is still no population estimate for this subspecies, and no consensus on the taxonomy for minke whales in general.

For more information about the dwarf minkes, please see the excellent summary prepared by the CRC Reef Research Centre (PDF file).

Minkes are inquisitive, and some will approach really close.

Humpbacks Whales in Alaska
Dates: 22 to 31 July
Availability: Fully booked
Location: Trip begins and ends at Juneau, Alaska
Accommodation: Liveaboard

This is the Megaptera Mania! trip I’m running with Jon Cornforth.

I’m really excited about heading to Alaska for the first time. I’m not so keen on the fact that it’ll be colder than I normally like, but bubble-net feeding and dramatic, mountainous terrain in the background will hopefully make it worthwhile, and also worth a repeat visit in 2013.

Humpback whales bubble-feeding at sunset in Alaska

Humpback whale breaching in Alaska

Humpback Whales in Tonga
As soon as we wrap up in Alaska, I’ll be heading over to Tonga for my annual stay, and to continue my calf count project. After the record number of baby whales I ID-ed this year, I can’t wait to see what happens in 2012!

My schedule for Tonga is still evolving, but here’s how it looks at this time:

Trip 1: 21 to 28 August. This is the second part of the Megaptera Mania! trip. Fully booked.
Trip 2: 29 August to 06 September. Two spots available.
Trip 3: 08 to 17 September. Fully booked.
Trip 4: 25 September to 3 October. Four spots available.

Tahafa, calf #14 of the 2011 season, with mommy

Fluke of a humpback whale singer

A confluence of circumstances has kept me from posting anything since I hunkered down and cranked out my calf count summary at the end of October.

I’ve answered approximately three million emails (give or take a handful); I’ve caught up on current events (given the way things are going, I kinda wish I hadn’t); I’ve finally rid my site of hacks that were doing all sorts of funky things (in the worst possible connotation of the word funky); I’ve had a bunch of meetings (both physical and virtual); I’ve helped judge a photo contest; I’ve hit the gym and gotten back into decent shape; I’ve organised most of my trips for next year; I’ve read a pile of research papers about cetaceans and other marine life; I’ve managed to sleep at least a few hours a night; and I’ve even gotten some work done. Whew.

By way of proof that I’ve actually been working, here is a video of sperm whales that Smithsonian Magazine posted recently to complement an article about these amazing animals in the December 2011 issue, titled Call of the Leviathan:

The footage is from recent trips I took to Dominica and Ogasawara to photograph sperm whales. I can’t take credit for the excellent editing though. Brendan, the photo editor at Smithsonian Magazine, did a bang-up job of making my footage look decent. (Thank you Brendan!)

And this is a link to an interview I did with Radio Australia recently about the humpback whales in Tonga. It’s short, but important.

Here’s the audio in case you can’t access the link:

There were suggestions by another person in an earlier interview that humpback whales use their pectoral fins to stroke swimmers in the water, sometimes even lifting swimmers en masse into the air out of exuberance. Poppycock.

I’m the first to admit that being in the water with humpbacks can be a magical, almost mystical, experience, but there’s no good that can come of people visiting Tonga and expecting to be stroked by whales. None whatsoever.

Bruce Hill, the presenter of Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat program, was kind enough to give me an opportunity to set more realistic, and safe, expectations for anyone who might be contemplating a trip to Tonga. (Thanks Bruce!)

Anyway, I’m back at the helm, and I’ll be posting more from now on, including information about upcoming trips.

To get back into the swing of things, here is one of my favourite humpback whale fluke photos. It was a stormy day back in 2005, and it’s the only time I’ve ever seen two adult humpbacks tandem tail-slapping. Their slaps weren’t in sync, plus the seas were rocky, so it took quite a few tries to nail the right timing and composition.

Humpback whales tandem tail-slapping in Tonga

If you happen to read Italian, here is a link to a PDF file of a pictorial on sperm whales that appeared in Focus Magazine Italy‘s summer issue: Focus Magazine Sperm Whale Feature, Summer 2011 (350kB).

Sperm whale feature in Focus Magazine Italy, Summer 2011

It’s the first time I’ve worked with this publication. I have to say that they are a truly friendly and professional team that made the process of working long-distance a pleasant experience.

If you’re reading this, it probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you, but whales are not fish. They’re mammals, and they need to breathe air, just like us.

Yeah…I know. It’s something that should be obvious, but it’s amazing how often otherwise well-educated people ask me about what it’s like to swim with “such a big fish”. I guess it’s just a symptom of how little humanity collectively understands about the ocean. Sigh.

Anyway, here’s a photograph of a very relaxed sperm whale coming up for a breath of fresh air after diving down to forage for food:

Sperm whale surfacing from the deep to take a breath of air

If you look carefully, you can just make out the whitish area around the jaw of another sperm whale behind this beautiful female. The pair came up together, chilled out for a bit, then headed back down to the deep blue.

If you ever come across a sperm whale or two at the surface, take some time to look around. These whales often synchronise their dives and surface intervals, so when you see one, there’s a reasonable chance that are there more within visual range.

A few people have written me to ask how I know if a sperm whale is female or male.

In general, family units of sperm whales comprise mature females together with juvenile and baby whales. According to everything I’ve read about sperm whales, such family units tend to be found in temperate and tropical regions.

When little boy sperm whales get bigger and become young men, they leave these groups and travel to colder climates (north in the northern hemisphere, south in the southern), where they presumably go to eat a lot, hang out with the other boys, and get ready to return at some point to seek out mate(s).

By the time male sperm whales return to lower latitudes for reproduction, they’re big. Absolutely humongous. Think of it this way:

Mature bull sperm whale: female or immature sperm whale
=
Sumo wrestler: figure skater

So from a practical point of view, when you see a big boy, there’s no mistake.

It’s also possible to differentiate by “looking under the skirt”, so to speak, as pictured below:

See the whale’s mammary glands adjacent to the genital slit?

You can see two small mammary slits adjacent to the larger genital slit. Boy whales don’t have those.

This is a pattern common to many (perhaps all?) cetaceans. Dolphins and humpback whales I’ve been in the water with, for example, have a similar morphology, making it easy to identify a given whale’s sex…provided that they’re not shy, of course.

To balance out the sperm whale poop photo I posted the other day, here’s a pretty photo of a sperm whale:

Adult female sperm whale swimming upside-down to check me out with sonar

This is an adult female, one of several in a family unit that I came across foraging for food. When I took this photo, she had just swum underneath and past me, turned upside down.

Sperm whales seem to adopt this belly-up position a lot when they’re checking things out at the surface. I’m guessing that the flip-flopped orientation provides them with an optimal sonar image, which makes sense if they hunt “looking down”, so to speak, with their sonar when they dive deep in search of a meal.

It’s difficult to tell from this jpg, but the whale has her (very small) eyes closed. She had her eyes open until she was quite close to me. I’m not sure if this has any significance or not…but it’s cute.

Sometimes when you gotta go, you just gotta go:

This is the biggest dump I’ve ever seen from a sperm whale.

I wonder if the makers of Imodium would consider using this image for an advertising campaign?

A package from Ogasawara arrived for me while I was in the UK, and I finally had time to open it a little while ago.

Inside were the trio of smiling sperm whales below, which will go nicely with the spectacular sperm whale carving I got from Ogasawara last year:

A trio of hand-carved sperm whales, crafted in Ogasawara

…and also this lovely humpback whale, which I named Poto, in honour of a wonderful baby whale we had the privilege of encountering toward the end of my stay in the Tonga this season.

Beautiful carving of a humpback whale, sent to me from Ogasawara

Poto was the 19th calf we ID-ed in Tonga.

Yes…I know I’m way behind on putting together my calf summary for Tonga this season. Please bear with me. After I get back from Ambon, I should be staying put for a while, so I’ll have a bit of time to catch my breath and catch up with the calf ID project.

Late last night, while browsing for books to download and take with me to Ambon, I had the crazy, some would say insane, notion that I might try reading Moby Dick again (I’ve tried and failed at least a dozen times).

When I typed “Moby Dick” into my chosen online bookstore, this is what I saw:

What’s wrong with this image?

Any way you look at it, this is a well-mannered humpback whale enjoying a frisky frolic in the sun. And here I was thinking for so many years that Moby was an all-white sperm whale with a bad attitude and a penchant for torturing semi-deranged seamen.

Amazon.com had more than one Kindle edition of Melville’s masterpiece available, at least two of which featured the same species shuffle.

So…I guess this means that Amazon’s mistake wasn’t just a fluke (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the horrible pun).

…and this one?

In contrast to my normal “Me At Work” posts…when I usually post photographs of me looking dorky while taking photographs…here’s a snapshot of me looking dorky standing next to my photograph of four sperm whales that was selected as the winner of the Underwater Category in the 2010 Veolia Environment Photographer of the Year contest:

Me standing next to my image of four sperm whales
at the London Natural History Museum

I met a lot of wonderful people while I was in London, including a gentleman from Belgium named Michel Demeuse and his son Frédéric, whose beautiful image of delicate mushrooms was the winner of the In Praise of Plants category. Michel was kind enough to forward this photograph to me.

During the course of dinner conversation, I realised that I had indirectly worked with Michel about 15 years ago…during the dark, grim days when I had to wear a suit (and shoes even!) every day. What a small world it is.