Month: November 2019

November 2019 #4 The Pinnacles of Whalesong

Nov 6th dawns another frigid morning. While our tea kettle attempts a few tunes of its own Terry downloads video from the camera. Jude is programming her mixer/recorder while listening for whales on the hydrophone. “Terry – I hear something –  it definitely sounds like singing – not close. Let’s head out. I’ll keep the hydrophone down and keep listening. We may be able to locate them”

We head the Parrot ship SW in the direction of Vancouver Island – to The Pinnacles. That’s where, yesterday, the golden light of the setting sun backlit heart-shaped blows of 6 – 10 humpback whales. Their dark backs appeared as tiny black crescents breaking the surface 2km SW of Blue Parrot.

The Pinnacles is a rock formation which rises sharply from the ocean floor at 600ft up to 70 ft below the water’s surface. Fish like to congregate here and so do all the critters who eat them including humans.  As we motor closer Jude is listening for increasing volume of whalesong. “Sounds like we’re going in the right direction. Do you see anybody” “Nobody yet” Terry answers “Let me know when you want to stop”

During mid-day there is a break in service on the Comox-Powell River and Texada-Powell River ferries as their crews change shifts. Happily it’s break time now. The silence is heavenly. These are the clearest songs Jude has been able to record. Subtle nuances and inflections which had been obscured by boat noise on the previous recordings are now clearly audible. “You’ve got to hear this Terry! I think there are 2 whales – 1 farther away” An enraptured Jude holds out the headphones “I’m going to get the speaker so we can both listen.”  Jude plugs in the speaker and whalesong pours into the air.

We listen: The sounds are so awesome – so expressive. It’s not possible to listen without being moved – enthralled by the ranges and timbres of their voices.

They grunt, groan, whoop and whistle. There is even a knocking percussive sound. How are they making that sound?

What are they singing about? What emotions are they expressing?  Do groups of males get together to sing in unison? Are these whales singing together?  The 2 whales don’t seem to be singing the same part of the song. Are they friends? Do whales sing over each other like birds do when they are proclaiming their territory? – So many questions but mostly exhilaration and awe.

Aerial whalesong might be what attracts a curious young seal to Blue Parrot. Seal circles our ship, peering into the cockpit at us. S/he dives underwater and we hear whiskers snuffling against the hydrophone “Hey! Get off of there!” Jude yells into the water. Up comes seal but s/he doesn’t leave. S/he stays with us checking out our dinghy – looking and looking. “Maybe s/he’s a seal scientist or engineer and s/he’s calculating the logistics of how we could be hiding a humpback whale in the cockpit of our little boat!” Terry laughs. Jude holds the speaker out where seal can see it and turns it off and on to demonstrate to seal where the whalesong is coming from. Seal disappears underwater and then surfaces again.  The whalesong must be very loud underwater. And the same song is coming from our boat – probably delayed by a few seconds. It must be a profound puzzle for a curious seal.

 

Could this curious seal be the one under our boat listening to the whalesong?

Humpback Whales singing at the Pinnacles in the Salish Sea

Eventually seal departs. But the blessed reprieve from boat noise is soon blasted apart by the engines of several tugs towing heavily loaded barges northward up the Strait. The bass throbbing of those engines chugs on and on for hours.

After 2 1/2 hours the whales seem to have stopped singing. We scan the sea looking for blows or surfacing whales. “A BREACH” Terry yells as one whale launches himself out of the water 500m away. Another whale is with him but we aren’t close enough for ID. “Of course I don’t have my camera!” Terry mutters. And of course the whales swim off to the west – away from us. On these shorter days we have to head back to the anchorage before the light fades. So we do.

Tomorrow is another day.

 

November 2019 #3 Entangled!

NOTE TO READERS: All “Quotes” in this blog are approximations of conversations and are NOT the actual words that were said by any of the people quoted.

“Let’s check out the other side of Harwood” Terry suggests. The 2 frolicking humpback whales and their sealion friends have left and it’s a sunny afternoon. We’re drifting around Harwood when the VHF radio crackles with an incoming alert. “Susan, where’s your boat?” It’s a call from Nick Templeman of Campbell River Whale Safaris to Susan MacKay, local whale naturalist and sightings recorder, founder of WOWS.  “I’m with 3 whales**. I think the calf got entangled in a prawn trap line. It’s been thrashing around trying to free itself. It might be panicking.” “Is it trailing line or a buoy?” Susan radios back. “I’m out in my skiff and heading over there. Can you stay with the whales?” “Roger that” Nick replies.

We have just passed the prawn traps they are talking about. We scout for escaped buoys and detached floating polypro line but don’t immediately find anything. So we head in the direction of Nick’s fast zodiac while calling him on our VHF radio. “Blue Parrot to Nick. How is the whale now?” “Looks like the 2 adults have broken off the buoy. The young one’s managed to shake off the line. I don’t see anything else on the calf. All 3 whales are looking more relaxed. I’m going to stay with them for a while longer to make sure they’re alright.” he answers. “I’ll see if I can find the broken line and buoy” Susan calls “They’re supposed to be using sinking line on prawn and crab traps so these entanglements don’t happen.”

This time the whale gets free. Susan ensures that no lines remain on the calf and finds the broken off  buoy. Later she tells us that too many people are abandoning line, traps and buoys. Susan has photographed derelict buoys all over the Salish Sea. They are a death trap to whales and other marine mammals.

Many people believe that all whales use echolocation to precisely image their surroundings. But only toothed whales have the physiology necessary to echolocate. Baleen whales like humpbacks, right whales, blue whales and grey whales do not have that ability. They may use a form of sonar to find large schools of fish and krill but fine distinctions of materials and spatial location are not available to them. Even young orca who have extremely sensitive echolocating abilities get entangled in lines and nets because they are curious, playful, and unaware of the dangers human contraptions pose to them.

It’s not difficult to change this situation and protect our marine friends from entanglement and drowning if people follow guidelines for using sinking line on prawn and crab traps. Please do it.

** The 3 whales are later identified by Nick as BCX0545 Europa / Bounty, her calf BCX Pony, and BCY Dalmatian

 

November 2019 #2 Fall Frolic

Now that the Whales are talking and singing Jude drops her hydrophone off Blue Parrot at every available opportunity.  We are floating near Grant Reefs when she hears “Orp Orp Orp – PT’CHOOOO” in the headphones. So we fire up ol’ Lazarus (our WWII Atomic 4 engine) and beetle over there to investigate. A roiling mass of intertwined flippers and fins greets us accompanied by excited Humpback bugles and sealion barks. “Terry, it’s a sealion – Humpback Frolic!”

We approach cautiously as two Humpbacks and several sealions wrestle noisily.  Flukes and flippers appear and submerge. “The sealions are doing flips over the backs of the whales!” Terry laughs “Don’t they look tiny when you see them together?”.  Splash!  Trumpet!  Orp!  “It must be a circus under the water!”

Meanwhile the tide and a breeze behind us are pushing us towards the action. “Damn!” whispers Jude “I don’t want to disturb them” Suddenly the cetacean/pinniped play pauses. The sealions crane their necks to look around. (They really do resemble bears). The 2 Whales relax and rest on the surface breathing quietly. Did we drift too close?

No – The Whales are coming over! Will they visit with us a while? They are SOOOOO BiiiiiiiiiiiiG! With a slow-motion flick of flukes one whale dives and disappears. Now the other whale lazily rolls over to reveal a curious eye watching us. Then Whale dives under Blue P’s stern. The Whales leave  smooth round “footprints” beside Blue P as they sound and dive under her hull. They surface 200m away trending NE toward the mainland shore.  The curious seabears hang around a while longer checking us out – perhaps for possible playmate material. Obviously we fail the test because they soon grow bored and swim away.

We discuss whether we might have interrupted their fun. “The Whales might have used the opportunity to get away from the seabears. Maybe they were bothering them again.” Terry says. “Wouldn’t I love to be able to mind meld and understand them telepathically” says Jude.

It takes years of dedicated observation to understand the body language and emotional reactions of species with whom we share our domestic lives like cats, dogs and farm animals. Though Whales are mammals like us they are very different in physiology and perceptions. We can only be part of the 1% of their lives that they spend at the surface of the water. What are they doing the other 99% of the time? “If only I could genetically engineer myself a pair of gills” Jude muses “I would love to live with them in their world for a while…….”

 

November 2019 #1 Whalesong!

“I’ll pump it up some more. Did you find the methylhydrate?” Terry is rummaging around in the starboard lazerette looking for a bicycle pump to pressurize the kerosene tank. The tank feeds an old Force 10 heater in Blue P’s cabin. It could take the chill off a 0°C morning. A little warmth, however stinky, would be appreciated. But the old heater won’t stay lit. The upside is that we are generating considerable body heat in efforts to get it started. Pumping up the tank and a couple of cups of hot tea get us out in the cold and under way.

Another frigid Autumn morning of no wind. At least old Lazarus (our ceaselessly ressucitated WWII Atomic 4 engine) starts easily. We’re off. Terry is scanning the horizon for whales “A blow! Inside Grant Reefs, south end.” Wow! Whales in the morning! That’ll wake you up fast! “Why don’t you drop the hydrophone to listen and I’ll shut down the motor?”

“I think I hear them Yes! There’s some low burbles – and higher squeaking – Woah! that was LOUD! A long high note – a growl” Jude does a bad imitation of a whale growl and hands Terry the headphones. He pulls them over his ears. The thrilling, haunting sound of whalesong floats through the hydrophone line from deep underwater.

“YES!” A huge grin spreads along his face.  Jude is leaning over the toe rail holding the hydrophone cable off Blue Parrot’s hull “I’m trying to keep the cable from knocking against the hull. It’s vibrating and making that low throbbing bass rumble” Blue P is still moving. Sailboats have a great deal of momentum once they’re in motion. A 5 knot NW breeze is pushing us SE. Movement of water over the cable causes the cable to vibrate. Finally the breeze calms and Blue Parrot slows enough for a clearer sound.

“Of course now I can hear the Comox ferry” Jude sighs “I hear 2 whales – there’s a singer close to us and 1  farther away – at least one. I don’t know where” We watch for the whales to surface to breathe but no blows are visible anywhere “Where are they? We saw that blow at 2:15 and now it’s 3:30. Can they stay down that long when they’re singing?”

The whales sing. We can hear repeated phrases and the range of vocalizations soar from deep grunts to mid-range groans to whoops, screeches and whistles. There are also percussive knocks or clicks. And those are only the sounds in the range that humans are capable of hearing! There could be subsonic and supersonic vocalizations that we humans would never pick up. Researchers can use spectral analysis software to get a visual representation of these sounds.

“Let’s send the recordings to Jim Darling. I can ask him if the whales are singing the same song in Hawaii” Jude enthuses “I want to know if some of our whales are wintering there.” Jim is a bioacoustician who co-founded Whale Trust. He’s based in Hawaii and Tofino, migrating between the 2 locations much like a migrating whale.  “It would be great to know which individual whales winter in Hawaii and feed here in the summer.” “And we should go to Hawaii to meet them there.” Terry adds. It is our dream to freedive in warm, clear water when the whales are singing, feeling all our bones resonating with their music.

After about 1 1/2 hours the singing becomes sparser and the sun is setting. “We’d better head over to Blubber Bay tonight. We can drop the hydrophone there and hear if they’re singing closer to Rebecca Rocks or even Texada.” So we head off under motor and jib. As we round Harwood Pt. we see several humpbacks splashing around Revecca Rocks. Are these our singers?

Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.

A little information from  https://dosits.org/animals/sound-production/how-do-marine-mammals-produce-sounds/

HOW DO WHALES SING? Unlike humans, whales don’t have to exhale to produce sound.  Whales don’t have vocal cords either. Like humans,  humpback whales have a larynx. Instead of vocal cords they have a thick, u-shaped, ridge of tissue. This ‘u-fold’ serves the same purpose as our vocal cords. Adjacent to their larynx is a large inflatable pouch called the laryngeal sac. When Humpback whales contract muscles in their throat and chest, air flows between the lungs and the laryngeal sac. Alternating expansion and contraction of the lungs and sac drives air across the u-fold, causing it to vibrate and produce sound. The  vibrations vibrate through the whale’s body into the surrounding water. Changes in the laryngeal sac shape may alter the frequency and/or loudness of sounds produced.

Schematic diagram displaying a potential mechanism for sound production in baleen whales. Baleen whales contract muscles in the throat and chest, causing air to flow between the lungs and the laryngeal sac (pink tissue in the diagram). Alternating expansion and contraction of the lungs and sac drives air across a u-shaped ridge of tissue, the u-fold (yellow), causing it to vibrate and produce sound. Vibrations from the laryngeal sac (green lines) may propagate through the ventral throat pleats into the surrounding water as sound waves. Note: the respiratory tract of the whale is shown red, digestive tract in blue, and associate cartilage in white. Image credit: Dr. Joy Reidenberg. Adapted from Joy S. Reidenberg and Jeffrey T. Laitman. 2007. Discovery of a low frequency sound source in Mysticeti (baleen whales): Anatomical establishment of a vocal fold homolog. The Anatomical Record. Volume 290, Issue 6, pages 745–759.