In 2019 Terry (aka “the amphibiographer”) got a camera that can shoot 4K video. But in 2019 our 2008 computer was not fast enough to play the clips. This meant that we couldn’t actually review video or audio of the whales that Terry recorded. Further down the line we couldn’t coordinate it with my hydrophone recordings. So in 2021 we finally bought a 2019 computer that could actually play the recordings we’d made. While listening to audio files of singing whales that I had recorded in October 2019 I heard grunts, growls, belches and squeaks that didn’t sound like a song. Are these these whales practising whale solfège? are they enjoying a good meal? or are they talking? What a find! I hope you enjoy the underwater conversation as much as we did.
Category: Hydrophone
Featured
July 2022 #3 – Bubble Feeding!
“T-Rex is bubble feeding off Wilby Shoals” the voice of whale watching guide ‘Supernova’ sings cheerily over SV Blue Parrot’s VHF radio.
“Let’s go!” I turn Blue P 90°W. We’ve been floating between Quadra and Cortes Islands scanning for marine mammals.
“It’ll take us half an hour to get there. She’ll probably have stopped by then.” Terry sighs .”it would be amazing to see lunge feeding again”
“YES!” I am juiced. We’ve only seen humpback whales lunge feeding once before and that was 4 years ago in 2018 – an unforgettable experience. Here is the link to that Blog:
https://welcomingwhales.com/2018/10/24/october-2018-humpbacks-lounge-feeding/
During the half hour it takes to get there at our extreme cruising speed of 4.85 knots we try to pinpoint the exact location of the whale. Whales are big but the ocean is bigger and they easily disappear from view. “There’s a circle of boats about 200m off the point. 3 look like whale watching boats” Hawk-eye Terry reports from the bow.
“I see them – on our way” If you can’t find whales in their feeding areas during the summer it’s a good bet that somebody else has. Boats that have been lingering in one place for a while without obvious fishing gear are probably with a whale. And people fishing forget to fish when there’s a lunge feeding whale nearby!
“I see the whales! 2 just came up in the middle of those boats” I slow to an even slower crawl and inch up to the scene. “Woah!” “Right beside the Boat!” They are less than 30 meters away, in close to the shore. Wilby shoals has depths varying from a few feet to hundreds of feet. Currently Blue P’s depth sounder is reading 18 feet!. “I’ve got to move out from the shore” Jude tells Terry. The whales move too – right past us around all the boats. In the time it takes us to move 30 meters they have covered 230. We wait. 20 minutes later………
“They’re coming back this way. They may be doing a circuit”. Terry shouts. I drop the hydrophone to record any feeding burps and belches.
“They’re making that sound!” “the whining sound that herds the fish-Uhrrrrrrrrrr? I try to imitate them. “I hear the bubbles………. Now they’re coming up! Phshshsh—–BUBUBUBUBUBUBUB” It’s a fairly pitiful imitation but with the hydrophone I can hear what the whales are doing underwater and predict when they will come up. Terry gets ready with the camera but I can’t predict where they will come up. He watches the sea gulls circle and hones in when they drop towards the water just as the whales break the surface. Focusing the camera on the exact spot where Terry deduces the whales will surface is a finely tuned art, experience and a large lump of luck.
In order to record a decent signal with the hydrophone we have to be within 200m of the whales. It’s difficult with all the boats starting and stopping their motors to keep up with the whales. But we can’t begrudge anyone this awesome experience. Everyone out here is just as thrilled as we are. And there are times when the whales are close enough for a clear recording. I am over the moon “I’ve waited 7 years to record bubble feeding”. In fact both of us are over the moon. We linger longer with our lunge feeding friends as the other boats leave, the sun sets and the moon rises. Ah…this is the magic time for the best video and audio recordings. We’ll travel back by moonlight – and our running lights of course.
March 2202 #2 – Humpback Whale Concert Hall
This is a recording of humpback whales singing in a canyon whose walls bounce sound around like a concert hall. It seems that whales appreciate a venue with great acoustics too! Their operatic pyrotechnics are thrilling as they vibrate through my chilled dew-soaked body in the middle of the night floating on the Sea of Cortes. I’m back in Los Frailes this time in a different sailboat with a different captain. She’s a skipper who has been sailing her 45 ft Morgan ketch around the Sea of Cortes mostly solo for the past 4 years.
Actually we aren’t back in Los Frailes yet. It was our destination but that afternoon the boat’s diesel engine overheated and capitane Vicki shut her down immediately. We spend the day troubleshooting; replacing hoses, tightening screws and listening to every sound. As night creeps in Vicki declares work done for the day to be continued next morning. So we’re floating on the calm seas off the East Cape of Baja California Sur. Good time to drop the hydrophone. Whale voices rise up and envelope us. We are enthralled and calmed. “I’m turning in” Vicki heads down to the aft cabin. I find myself on night watch soaked, exhausted and in love with the undulating stars in the black sky.
Just above the eastern horizon Venus is bright. Orange Mars attends her on one side and dimmer Scorpio on the other. As I watch 2 shiny yellow spots emerge from the sea. They swell into horns and then become a bright bowl floating on the the water. It’s the crescent moon rising out of the ocean! The whales’ songs fade with the starlight as dawn brightens the sky.
When Vicki wakes up we discover that the engine shutdown was caused by flotsam and jetsam clogging up the raw water intake. It’s no big deal and a common problem.
After clearing the intake and hoses and tightening up the water maker belt which was making disturbing noises we get underway again and make it to Frailes to anchor and snooze. In the morning I take the kayak to paddle a surf landing on the beach and freedive along the NW shore. The constant wind and waves stir up the sandy bottom. Visibility is about 5 meters in the silty water. However it’s fun to follow a herd of parrot fish around in the surging surf.
We spend a couple of days in Frailes recovering our energy. scanning for whales and listening for whalesong. We see a few whales but not the busy nursery of Moms and calves that I had hoped to encounter. “let’s retrace our track to where we heard the whales and find them again” I suggest. We motor out along our track for a few hours but don’t hear anything. “I want to head back” Vicki says. I would like to stay and give it more time but it takes a lot of patience to be with whales. Mostly it’s long stretches of waiting. So we start to head north in the late afternoon. There’s a little bit of breeze. “I’m gonna raise up the main” Vicki says as she unties Rhiannon’s yellow sail cover. “I’ll leave the hydrophone down while we’re sailing” I say. We rig it off the stern and hear whalesong through my speaker. “I think it’s getting louder” I shout ” Is that a whale that just breached off our beam about 400meters?” We are sailing along Cabo Pulmo a couple of miles offshore as the sound amplifies. We zone out to healing sounds of whales singing and ocean waves washing over the hydrophone cable.
It sounds like the ocean is breathing.
October 2020 Halloween Reveries with Whales
These are the sounds we were hearing on Halloween night. Terry and I anchored off Savary Island in our little old sailboat Blue Parrot. A lovely end-of-October eve on the Salish Sea filled our senses. I dropped my 2 hydrophones over opposite sides of the boat about 4 metres deep into 8 metres of water. We were watching the full moon rise through ribbons of cloud over the mainland mountains. Mars rose orange in the East. Brilliant Jupiter appeared over Vancouver Island in the South with smaller, dimmer Saturn a little further Southeast. Silver moonlight lit the sky. Below, a calm silky ocean shimmered, where the occasional belch of a seal or cry of a gull drifted across the water. Moonight revealed the mainland contours on one side of the Strait and Vancouver Island on the other as far as we could see. Blooms of neon purple, green, red, indigo, yellow and white flowered over both shores chased by muted boombiddy-booms as adults and children around the Salish Sea gathered to enjoy the Halloween fireworks displays.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to this whale who was quite far away – probably 6 – 8 km. You can hear the sea splashing against the hull. The odd creaks and knocks are the boat rudder knocking and the crackles are shrimp talking on the bottom under the boat! One whale is singing all the notes – the very high squeaks and the low growls. He is practising his song for performing in Mexico or Hawaii. The song becomes more complex and developed in December before the whales leave on their southern migration.
It was Magic – perfect for a Halloween reverie accompanied by the haunting music coming through from the hydrophones. was this music the eerie wails of long departed souls? or aliens trying to communicate with receptive earthlings? No. The ghoulish notes in my headphones were the eerie wails of eerie WHALES – Whales who are very much alive on planet Earth right now. This is the music of humpback whales you are hearing. They’re practising their song here in the Salish Sea of BC before they begin their long migration to Mexico or Hawaii or even Japan. Once they have perfected their song, which slowly changes every year, they will perform it in the warm waters of their southern destinations.
No human knows why humpback whales sing or what the whales are singing about. Only the males sing and a singing male will attract other males who will often join in the song. In the 5 years we’ve been listening underwater for vocalizing humpback whales in the Salish Sea, the end of October and beginning of November are the only times we’ve heard any vocalizing at all. It’s another whale mystery that, along with so many whale mysteries, only adds to the awe that 2 tiny, curious humans feel when in the presence of these majestic beings.
Undoubtedly whale biologists feel it too, even while they conduct precise, tightly structured investigations and analyze the data. Whales are so much like us. Mothers feed, care for, teach and protect their babies. Whales often hunt and feed together with every whale having a prescribed job. They socialize and play with friends. Male Humpbacks sing and compose complicated songs. Whales from different areas have different languages, cultures and food preferences. They communicate vocally and with body language. But here is where we begin to differ. Aside from the obvious differences of size and body shape whales and humans have evolved very different physiologies in order to thrive on land or in the sea. We both have 2 eyes and 2 ears but what whales see and hear both underwater and above the water is very different from what humans see and hear. We humans do not have nostrils on top of our heads or mouths that gape open to our bellies while consuming more than 1 ton of fish per day.
Here is the biggest mystery of all in my humble opinion: Whales and dolphins are conscious breathers. They have to be awake in order to breathe. But, like every other mammal, they must sleep and dream. So they have evolved a clever work-around to allow them to sleep and breathe simultaneously. All dolphins and whales sleep with only 1/2 of their brain at a time. One hemisphere is off in dreamland while the other is monitoring the immediate environment and initiating breathing in realtime. Have you ever woken in the middle of the night and hovered in that half asleep/half awake horizon where dream characters populate your consciousness but you are also aware that you are in bed? or that the click you are hearing is your digital clock? or that you might have to pee? Is that how whales experience their sleeptime? I wonder what kind of consciousness that produces in whales?
And here is the real kicker. Humans have been learning about our planet from other animals and plants forever. We also use their special gifts to help us thrive in the environments we share. We use a dog’s sense of smell and hearing to help us hunt. We use the hawk’s eyes to scan the landscape. We tune in to the alarms of birds to notify us of predators in the forest. Plants, trees and fungi transform minerals and vitamins in soil and water into compounds that our cells can use to keep us healthy.
So why sit here in front of your screen googling for information on the internet when you can be outside letting your dog take you for a walk through a park or forest? Have you sat with your cat on the porch or balcony or slightly opened window of an apartment? Can you observe what she’s observing? Lots of folks can watch flowers, or fish, or listen to birds for hours. Try it. The world you’ll discover is the world that goes on around us 24/7, mostly unnoticed by humans.
As the dominant large animal species on Earth today we get lost in our own human stories. We root out ways we are different from each other while we are surrounded by beings who are more different from us than any human is from any other human. And what a cornucopia of differences there is – so many ways of perceiving the universe, more than we can ever know. So many stories to explore. Find someone to share your adventures and stories with. You will be constantly amazed as well as amused – and healthier and happier in the bargain.
July 2020 #6 – Raza and Harlequin the Humpback Acrobats
It’s morning in Burdwood Bay and we’re up and away before the tide drops too low. “Let’s head NE again.” I suggest “we can sail to the Penns and check for blows as we go.” I unfurl the jib and we manage a short sail before the breeze completely dies (typical) as we reach the Penn Islands.
We float around scanning the scene but don’t find any whales. Terry notices a whale watching boat speeding out of Whale Passage towards Calm Channel. “Hey! I think they’ve stopped. They’ve probably found a whale” he says “Let’s go over there. I’ll get my camera” I fire up the engine. We head over and start to line up beside the whale watch boat when the 2 whales begin to jump. “They’re coming our way Terry” I yell “I’ll have to get out of the way!”
“A breach! Another breach! A double breach! They’re too close! I need my wide angle lens!” Terry yells. ” Shit! I can’t get them both in the frame. I’m just guessing where they’re going to come up. I focus on this whale and that whale breaches. I don’t know where to point the camera!” I find the wide angle lens sitting in the cockpit and run to the bow to hand it to Terry. Then I run back to the tiller to steer the boat away from the whales who are getting closer. “Why is there always wind when we’re with the whales?” I opine. Blue P skims over the waves past the boats on the other side of the whales. Meanwhile the pair begin to fin slap. They execute a few more breath-taking breaches which we miss because Blue Parrot has sailed away from the action.
This is a perpetual problem with the Parrot ship. She’s a sailboat and the wind moves her even without sails up. And she has a lot of inertia when she’s moving unlike a runabout which will simply stop when you kill the motor. Add to that the joy of an engine with no true reverse. She’s not the easiest vessel to control. With lots of other boats around and whales close to us all my attention has to be on the helm. This means I don’t have time to get my hydrophone into the water to record any possible vocalizing between the whales. I also have a skookum stereo mic onboard but all this takes about 5 minutes to set up. We really need a larger boat with a dedicated skipper to be in charge of it. (This will not be news to anyone who’s been following these blogs.)
“Terry, I’m going to have to turn the boat with the wind. You’ll have to move to the other side.” Poor Ter. It’s hard enough to find a place on Blue P to shoot video that’s not obstructed by shrouds, stays, mast, boom, life lines or other hardware blocking the camara’s view. Then there’s all the buttons and wheels on the GH5 which all have different functions depending on the various positions of each one. It’s too easy to hit one accidentally and shut off something or turn on something else you didn’t intend to turn on – or turn record off altogether – especially if you’re 6’4″ and have big hands. And that’s even before you have to decide which lens to use – telephoto or wide angle? Whales don’t stay in one place for long. And, if there’s more than one which whale is going to jump? It’s hard to fit a bunch of whales into one frame. After pondering on that controlling a tender sailboat seems easy in comparison.
Meanwhile Terry observes something on the back of one of the whales “Are those propellor marks?” he asks. He’s peering through the camera. As the whales settle down Blue P drifts over to one of the whale watching boats. The skipper is Nick. He’s an expert guide who has been on the water for years and can identify most of the humpbacks and orcas individually. “The one with the propellor wounds on her back is Raza” Nick tells us. Later we learn that the other whale may be Harlequin.
Meanwhile half a dozen recreational boaters who have gathered to watch the show disperse into the channel. “Let’s try anchoring in Von Donnop tonight – we’re already here” Terry suggests. “It’s Saturday night – do you think there’ll be space?” I ask “There’s lots of anchoring space all through there ” Terry responds. “OK, but I need a swim first. I’m so hot. I’m going to head into the calmer water and jump off the bubble boat.”
40 minutes later I finally exit the chop of crisscrossing currents to find calmer water. Since the evening wind will probably come up again soon I jump into the ocean for quick frigid dip “EEEEEE!”. I haul out to let Terry have a turn. Terry perches on the edge of the bubble boat gingerly splashing his too HOT skin and ruminating on whether he’s up to getting in when “Hey Ter, there’s 2 whales coming up the channel. They’re headed this way – maybe 150 meters.”
PLOP! He’s in like Flynn! – no hesitation – splashing his long arms like fins to attract the whales. “Take a photo of me with the whales” Terry yells moistly. I drop into the cabin and grab the camera – but the whales aren’t cooperating. They just keep on truckin’ past us up the channel. Oh well. We amuse ourselves shooting video of Terry fin slapping and being a whale in the water with the magnificent mountains as backdrop.
Then the wind comes up and it’s a wild ride into Von Donnop with the wind on our heels.