Playing music for whales isn’t a new concept. It probably goes back as far as the first humans and whales. Musicians and interspecies communicators like Jim Nollman were playing music for whales and recording it in the 1970s. The songs of the humpback whales are legend all over the world. Research has shown that humpbacks are especially attracted to sounds in the 400hz – 700hz range. This is medium – high range for a human soprano voice. “That’s doable” we surmised. So we decided to try playing a little whale music ourselves. Jude brought her didgeridoo onboard(actually it’s a PVC pipe with a beeswax mouthpiece), and Terry planned to experiment with chanting/singing .

Flashing white pectoral fins and splashing tails in the distance attracted our attention so we swung off our course towards the two humpbacks making a fuss. They dove while we were a couple of hundred metres away then popped up near us and a couple of other boats. It was an opportunity too good to miss. We started making some sounds to see what the whales would do. It was all ‘play the moment’, experimental, on the fly, while videoing and controlling the sailboat at the same time, so please forgive any weird sounds and unprofessional performance. Terry makes no pretence to being a musician; he was just trying to keep the whales interested enough to stay with us a while. And they did stay for almost 5 minutes. It seems our music put them to sleep! Or at least they appeared to be resting and listening. What do you think?

(Sorry for the wobbly video, using telephoto on a rolling boat in even little waves makes for unsteady footage).

Near Harwood Island, Tla’amin Territory, Powell River, British Columbia, Canada. August, 2018