Humpbacks Singing New Songs

Aloha,
We only ran one Whale Watch on Tuesday and that was at 10:00 on Alala out of Kawaihae. We travelled up the coast and then down the coast and we never did see a whale. That doesn’t mean they’re gone…just means there are fewer of them around the island, and that we didn’t connect. Since our morning trips are guaranteed, we called that trip a “fluke” and all of our guests are invited back again on a Whale Watch for Free! This time of year, we often see Mom’s and Calves (they’re the last to leave…Mom will stay here till she knows her calf is big enough and strong enough to begin the swim back to Alaska) and whales that still want to mate. So the end of our Whale Watch season each year can be really exciting. Cute calves and desperation (due to lack of mating opportunities) can make for some really exciting encounters for us!
Join Ocean Sports on a Whale Watch before the season ends. Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: To our untrained ears, the sounds we hear from our Hydrophones sound pretty random, though we have noticed the lack of certain phrases this year that we heard fairly often last year (most notably, a phrase that sounded like “whoop,Whoop, WHOOP, WHOOP WHOOP“). According to a paper published in the journal Current Biology, it turns out that our ears aren’t so untrained after all. Researchers have documented that the Humpback songs in the South Pacific are actually changing really quickly. Over the last decade, completely new song themes are appearing within a season. The researchers compared the radical evolution of the Humpbacks’ songs to human musical composition, suggesting that the themes are so novel, it’s as if whole new human musical genres were appearing that no one had ever heard just a few years ago.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire

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