Tag Archives: Humpback song

Did we see Humpbacks Mating?

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Aloha,
Thursday brought us some interesting whale sightings. On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise we saw more than 20 different whales, but spent most of our time paralleling a competitive pod of 7 whales that included a Cow/Calf pair. These whales used our boat a lot (which was really exciting) diving back and forth underneath us. We also saw several breaches and tail lobs from some whales a bit further away. As if all that weren’t enough, we were accompanied by a pod of Spinner Dolphins on the way back to the bay.
On our 10:00 Whale Watch we watched lots of pods of two. Most of them were just cruising at the surface heading every which way…so Captain Baker decided to head to the south. We had several close encounters with whales spouting and surfacing right behind the boat and right along side, and we got to see multiple breaches and tail lobs from different whales within about 500 yards.. After cruising along for awhile, we decided to stop the boat and drop the hydrophone. We were delighted to hear several singers (we knew a few of them pretty close by since the sounds were so loud). While we were listening, two Humpbacks started interacting with each other just about 100 yards away. One of them spy hopped several times, but what was so interesting was the way in which these two whales were interacting. The spy hopper rolled on his/her dorsal side (back) just under the surface of the water, and we could see just the tips of her curled pectoral fins. Meanwhile, the other whale appeared to be floating just on top of the first whale, They did this several times, alternating with gentle pectoral slaps and sideways fluke dives (we could see just one half of the fluke). We really wished we could have seen what was going on below the surface!
Finally, on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we spent a lot of time watching a calf breaching over and over and over again. This little guy had energy to burn as he breached more than 20 times and threw in a few tail lobs for good measure.
Mahalo and have a great weekend,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Though Humpbacks come to Hawaii primarily to have babies and make babies, and though researchers have watched them closely here since the early 1970’s, interestingly enough there are no documented observations of Humpbacks mating or calving! Those of us lucky enough to have been on today’s 10:00 Whale Watch left the boat wondering if what we were witnessing was Humpbacks mating!

New Research on the Meaning of the Humpback Song

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Question: If a Humpback breaches,  no one is there to see it, does it still make a splash?? We’ll never know since the challenging weather and surf conditions on Wednesday caused us to cancel all our cruises.
Since there’s no Whale Watch action to report, here’s some interesting new research findings instead.
No one is really sure why male Humpbacks sing their very complex songs. We know that unlike in the bird world, where male songbirds sing to attract an individual female, female Humpbacks don’t approach individual male singers.
Recently, researchers working with Dr. Louis Herman from the University of Hawaii developed a technique to accurately measure the length of singing males, and they observed that sexually immature males join sexually mature male Humpbacks in the singing. By the way, sexual maturity was determined by the length of the animal – marine biologists in both Japan and the US were able to determine that 11.2 meters (or 36′ 9″) was the length at which a male Humpback reached sexual maturity (and they based this on the weight of the whales’ testes).
Watching this interaction between the males and the lack of individual attention paid them by the females, the researchers theorized a new possible meaning for the Humpbacks’ song.
They posit that the song may actually be sung as a way to attract any passing females to the arena in which the males are swimming. If this were the case, the more voices “joining the choir”, the more likely the song would be noticed, and the more likely females would swim over to the area where potential mates are waiting. The Humpback population as a whole would benefit from songs with more voices because of the increased opportunities for males to mate with the females drawn in by the asynchronous choir. And actually, the immature males may be benefiting too – though they’d be overpowered by mature males if they even attempted to mate with females, they may be learning both the social rules of mating and the songs.
And just in case you’re curious, and you really need to know the weight of a Humpbacks’ testes at sexual maturity, please email me directly! I’d be happy to share the research findings.
Mahalo,
Claire

Trumpeting, Lunging, and Singing – Just another weekend for our Humpbacks in Hawaii

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Aloha,
Hope you had as nice a weekend as we did!  We ran trips all weekend, with too many details to recount, but here are some highlights,
Our Breakfast with the Whales on Friday started out pretty mellow. We saw at least 10 different Humpbacks cruising throughout this trip, and had a nice close encounter when a smaller whale decided it would be interesting to surface next to our boat and swim right alongside the hull for a moment before diving again. On Saturday’s Whales and Cocktails, we saw a lot of surface activity from lots of pods of two, and when we deployed the hydrophone, it sounded as if the singer were actually singing directly into the microphone (of course we couldn’t see the whale, so we KNOW he wasn’t that close)! On Sunday’s 10:00 Cruise, we were found by a competitive pod of 5 whales. This group was very active on the surface, pushing each other around, head lunging and trumpeting. We saw several breaches from some other whales a bit further away too. Oh, and when we dropped the hydrophone, the sounds we heard were very clear and loud (meaning there were some submerged singers close by too).
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Traditionally, the Hawaiian people did not hunt whales. It may be because they didn’t like the taste of the meat, or it may be because the spirit of the whale was so powerful…But if a toothed whale did end up on a beach (whether it died at sea and was blown ashore, or actually beached itself), only the ali’i (royalty) were allowed to possess any part of the whale. Carvings made from a whale’s tooth called “Niho Palaoa” brought mana (roughly defined as a “spiritual force”) to both the carver and the wearer of the pendant.

Humpback Season off to a Bang!

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Aloha,
Our 2012/2013 Humpback Whale Watch Season started with a bang this year, with the first sighting on the Kohala Coast on October 20th! We hardly could believe what we were seeing…not just a couple of spouts, but some breaches from these early arriving whales too. Since the end of October, we’ve been treated to lots more sightings..and last week, guests aboard our boats saw whales on most of our tours. Most of the whales were loners, and most appeared to be sub-adults in the 25-35 foot long range, which isn’t unusual for this early in the season. And on both Saturday and Sunday, we saw single whales who were swimming slowly north just spouting and sounding (we sometimes call that a “blow and go”). We’ve dropped our hydrophones a few times (before it got really windy), and not surprisingly, we weren’t able to pick up any singing. Based on what we know about the singing, as the Humpback whale population density increases around the islands, and with the arrival of the bigger males, we should start hearing the whales singing very soon.
 
Join Ocean Sports on any of our 3 whale watch tours departing daily. Call us at (808)886-6666 ext. 103 or visit HawaiiOceanSports.com for information and to reserve your adventure. Our morning whale watch tours are guaranteed — see a Humpback or you can ride again for FREE!
 
Mahalo,
Claire
 
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: According to researchers, the first whales to arrive in Hawaii each year from Alaska are sub-adults (usually males) – the teenagers of the whale world. The next arrivals are adults who are looking for mates, and the last to arrive are pregnant females.

Quiet Moms and Babies and Wanna Be Escorts

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Aloha,
We started out our last Friday of Whale Season with, as our on board naturalist Angelica, put it, “a Great Trip”! On the 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 4 Humpbacks. The first two were spotted just as we exited the Bay. They looked to be adolescents (in the 30 foot long range), and weren’t doing a whole lot besides surfacing and breathing…and then we saw spouts from Mom and Baby, so we made our way over to them. The Baby was really small…an end of the season calf, and the two of them were on 2 minute breath hold dives. We spent the remainder of our trip with this pod, watching them travel along the coast. As we headed back into the Bay, we had a bonus surprise as we all got to see a Manta Ray “flying” and somersaulting right below the ocean’s surface. On our 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, we saw 3 Humpbacks. We found a Cow/Calf pod and once in awhile we saw a third whale sort of nearby. We’re pretty sure he was an escort (or trying to be one) but we didn’t see him much so we can’t be sure. We didn’t hear any sounds when we deployed the hydrophone, so not only were there no male singers in our vicinity, but Mom and Baby were being quiet too. Some researchers have observed that females with very small calves often are quiet (not vocalizing much) presumably because they don’t want to attract the attention of those wanna-be escorts.
There’s just one weekend left of our Spectacular 2011/2012 Whale Watch Season. Don’t miss your chance to say “aloha” to our Humpbacks! Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your guaranteed adventure today! And our Guarantees never expire….
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: In 2004, a company called Whale Power was founded by Dr.Frank Fish, Dr. Phil Watts and Stephen Dewar. The company builds fan blades shaped like a Humpback’s Pectoral Fins with tubercles on the leading edge. The ironically named Dr.Fish was inspired to develop the prototype after looking at a sculpture of a Humpback, and pondering how (or if) the bumps on the front of the whale’s fins would help him move efficiently through the water. He and his partners enlisted the help of the Navy and used their wind tunnel to discover that tubercles break up air (or water flow)…and now with the whale-inspired design, Whale Power’s turbine blades are not only more efficient than smooth blades, but they never stall out violently like smooth blades do, and thus don’t damage the turbine engines. The company’s motto… “A Million Years of Field Tests”.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out the next (and last) whale report on Monday. If you have any other questions about the Humpbacks that you’d like me to answer, please email me over the weekend.
Captain Claire

Humpback Songs in Space

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Aloha,
Well, the wind is beginning to calm down for some parts of the island, and that’s helping us get the boats to the whales! On our 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 3 Humpbacks. 2 of them were spouting in the distance, but the 3rd was an adult that did a complete peduncle throw about 100 yards from the boat. We also got to see this whale’s flukes — black with two distinct white spots. And on the 10:00 Whale Watch, our naturalist Jonathan reports that we found 2 Humpbacks. They weren’t doing much on the surface…just spouting and sounding. But we did deploy the hydrophone and heard some pretty loud, clear and vibrant singing, which means there are still some male Humpbacks hanging out on the Kohala coast. And based on what we were hearing, they had to be fairly close to the boat. We didn’t run a Whales and Cocktails trip yesterday, so I can’t report what the Humpbacks were up to in the late afternoon.
There’s less than 3 weeks left of our fantastic 2011/2012 Whale Watching Season…don’t miss out! Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: The haunting song of the Humpback  has actually travelled beyond our oceans. In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager spacecrafts. Aboard each was a golden record with a collection of sites, sounds and greetings from Earth in 54 different human languages. These records also include greetings from Humpback whales!  And that was just the first time the whales’ song travelled beyond our planet…On  Earth Day (4/22) in 2005, a private organization called Deep Space Network broadcast a live feed from a hydrophone off the coast of Maui of the Humpbacks singing. They used a five meter parabolic dish antenna and broadcast the sounds about 18 trillion miles into deep space. So far, we haven’t gotten a response back….
Mahalo,
Captain Claire

Very, very loud singing and some competition

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Aloha,
We had an incredible Whale Watch at 10:00 on Tuesday. We saw 14 different Humpbacks, but spent considerable time watching a Mom, her baby and an escort trying to keep another huge male at bay. We saw 3 body lunges from this group, and 5 head lunges, plus 2 pectoral slaps and 4 peduncle throws. We also got to see Mom and baby up close as they swam right under us about 30 feet deep. We got to see right up their blow holes! When we deployed the hydrophone later in the trip, the songs were incredibly loud. The bass notes literally shook the boat…we could actually feel (and see) the windows vibrating. Oh — and we also saw a couple of breaches during the trip. It was a great couple of hours! On our 3:00 Whales and Cocktails, guests saw a total of 6 whales. According to our naturalist Angelica, the first whales spotted were way South of the Bay, and a good ways out to sea. We did find a pod of two whales much closer though, and spent considerable time watching them travel along the coast. They were in a 3-4 minute dive pattern, surfacing, spouting a couple of times and then sounding for those shorter dives. We got to see lots of flukes from this pair.
Join Ocean Sports for a Whale Watch and see the action for yourself. Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Biopsy samples taken from South Pacific Humpbacks show a ratio of 2.4 males for every female on the breeding grounds. A similar ratio has been observed in Hawaii. This suggests either 1). Female Humpbacks can afford to be choosy with their mating partners…or 2). Female Humpbacks are overwhelmed by aggressive males and bullied into mating.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire

Singing and Dancing

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Aloha,
We’ve always kind of assumed that Humpbacks don’t mind the rain — after all, they do live in a wet world… and our Tuesday Whale Watches confirmed that. We began the day with a 10:00 Whale Watch from Anaeho’omalu. Guests saw 7 Humpbacks, including 2 pods of Cow/Calf/Escort. One of the escorts breached really close to the boat. We also saw quite a bit of tail lobbing and heard some great singing when we deployed the hydrophone. On our 3:00 Whales and Cocktails cruise, our guests who braved the on-again, off-again drizzly conditions saw 11 different whales. We weren’t sure if the highlight of the trip was watching a whale breach 100 feet from the boat…TWICE, the 25 minutes we were mugged by a sub-adult male, the pectoral slaps we saw, the loud singing we heard from our hydrophone, or the weirdly beautiful vertical twisting diving “dance” our mugging-whale performed three times as he passed by the boat and decided to return to us. If the whales’ interest in our boats today was at all caused by the weather, we say “Bring on the rain”!
Join Ocean Sports for an exciting Whale Watch Adventure. Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or vist www.hawaiioceansports.com for reservations today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback Whale Calf weighs betweeen 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies average 4%-5% of their Mom’s weight.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire