Swimming with whales...

In the December of 1988 I had an encounter with humpback whales that would change my life. I signed up for a two week stint in Maui working as an intern for the Pacific Whale Foundation (PWF). Created in 1980 by Greg Kaufman, the Pacific Whale Foundation is a nonprofit established to “protect the ocean through science and advocacy and inspire environmental stewardship” with Humpback whales as one of their cornerstone research and support projects.

Each year, while Maui is temporarily home to many human tourists, it is also host to thousands of North Pacific Humpback whales who travel 3,000 miles over 6 - 8 weeks from the cold, nutrient rich waters around Alaska[1] to the warm waters off Maui. The Humpbacks begin arriving in small groups in November/December and stay through May. They use the waters between the islands of Maui, Molokai, and Kaho’olawe to meet, mingle, get pregnant / give birth, and care for their newborn calves. Because the waters off Maui, and along most of the migration, have a low concentration of the Humpback’s favorite foods, all the whales, even the pregnant and nursing moms, go without food for the duration of their migration. They won’t be able to feed again until they return to the waters around Alaska.

At the time of my internship PWF was engaged in a project to count the number and location of Humpback whale adults and calves visiting Maui’s waters. In particular they were looking at where in Maalaea Bay the various types of humpbacks spent their days. The reason for the survey was that a bureaucratic ‘line’ had been drawn across Maalaea Bay that regulated how close boats could get to the whales. The theory was that mothers and calves were staying on the shallower, inland, side of the line and all the other adults, mostly males, on the deeper, far side of the line. Our job was to record the number and location of whales we saw with and without calves.

During the internship, the other interns and shared a house with our two Research Associates (RAs). The RAs taught us about the fifteen foot fiberglass boats (1/3 the size of a Humpback whale) that we would be working on, the assortement of cameras we’d be using to take photo id shots of the underside of the whale’s tail flukes and underwater for other markers, how to look for, and make notes about, the whales we found, how to manage the hydrophone to record the whale’s calls, and if we were lucky, their songs, and shared stories about their research. It was a fully immersive and amazing experience. And for a kid who grew up in New York City, very different. The geckos in the house where cool, but they, and the very large bugs took a lot of getting used. The fresh caught seafood? Amazing! The days were long, exciting, and exhausting.

The timing of my trip, at the end of December, turned out to be fortuitous. Humpbacks, like most migratory animals don’t all leave for their next stop as one big group. Our first week was pretty slow, with the whales trickling in with unimpressive numbers of whales to count. The second was utterly amazing. We saw many mothers and calves and a lot of single whales. We could hardly get out of dock without seeing whales!

One morning we watched two whales doing paired breeches (when the whale hurls its body nearly all the way out of the water, turns in midair to splash down in a burst of water and sound) toward each other for over an hour. The assumption was that they were both males and that this was a form of mating display or competition. Another day, we spent time with a mother, calf, and what was refereed to as an ‘escort male’. Males will escort females, with or without calves in the hopes of being mom’s next choice for a mate. As if traveling while pregnant isn’t enough work, female Humpbacks can also get pregnant after birth. While we were taking photos of the mom and baby, our RA reminded us to keep watch for the male, he’d been ‘down’ - under the water - for a while and was due up any minute. Sure enough… the whale popped up two feet from our boat to spray its fishy smelling blow right beside us. I could almost have touched it, the whale was so close! The fact that he’d come up that close to us was also a memo for us to knock it off and move on. So we did, slowly, and carefully. The whole second week was filled with whales doing interesting stuff or just being pretty. It made sticking to our preset research routes really hard but we were good. We counted whales and then enjoyed the show.

On my last day, the RA running our boat gave me the opportunity to take underwater photos of a mother and calf we were watching. The plan was for me to snorkel toward the pair, then dive under the calf to attempt to get a photo of its belly so we might see sex specific markers for the calf. I jumped at the chance. Once in the water? I panicked at the sight of a forty ton, forty foot, whale coming at me. I actually spent a brief moment trying to “run” away before reminding myself that mom was both bigger than me and in her natural environment. If she had wanted to hurt me, she could do it without a thought. One slap of a Humpback whale’s 15’ pectoral fin can do a lot of damage to whatever it hits, and they know it - just ask the orcas. After I managed to calm down (a bit) I noticed the mom making a course adjustment. she curved a bit away from me, still moving in my direction, but no longer head on to me. As she swam past, I saw her enormous eye looking right at me.

It was like nothing I had ever experienced. Of course I can’t know what she was thinking, but her actions were clear, and looking at / into her eye was humbling. A moment or two later, the calf moved from the far side of mom’s body, under her tail stock, to swam along side mom, looking at me. If it had been a human child I would have said it was doing the toddler thing of tugging mom’s shirt and saying “Mom! Mom! What is It?”

I finally remembered the camera, and manage to take a picture of two, but caught mostly water. Oops. Back on the boat, the RA and other interns confirmed what I experienced. Mom had indeed changed directions, course correcting to avoid bumping into the unknown object in her way.

The whole experience was amazing, awe inspiring, and transformative. Having stared into the eye of a Humpback mother and calf I will never again be able to think of whales as anything other than sentient beings.

Whale Facts 

What is a whale? The simplest answer is: whales are a subset of the group known as ‘marine mammals’ all of which live in or near water and rely on it for their well being. They are marine ‘mammals’ because they breathe air, give birth to live young, produce milk to feed their babies, and have hair on their bodies, yes, even the ones who look so smooth you’d think there couldn’t be hair anywhere. Marine mammals also include: seals, sea lions, walruses, sea otters, dugongs, manatees, and Polar bears.

More specifically whales, dolphins (including Orcas), and porpoises are cetaceans and are defined as marine mammals who live in salt or brackish water, have a torpedo-like body shape, are carnivores, and have tails that are horizontally shaped to allow them an up and down motion for propulsion.

Recommendations

This month’s recommendation has to include: “Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home” aka “the one with the whales”. The timing of the film, nine years after the ban on commercial whaling finally got some teeth, and almost twenty years after the publication of Humpback whale songs, helped boost public awareness and love for Humpback whales. It’s also a whole lot of fun. Given that I am a life long Trek fan and the film came out so soon after my trip to Maui, it had a big impact on my path to Humpback and cetacean love :) If you’ve never watched Star Trek I think this will still be fun, but it might be handy to have Wikipedia available to understand some of the more show specific references. And for a very nerdy review check out Holo Deck Diva’s rewatch of the film.

For a comprehensive look at all the cetaceans we currently know about I have to recommend: “Handbook of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises of the World” by Mark Carwardine. This is a beautifully illustrated book with clear language and enough facts to make any whale-geek happy. As much as I love having easy access to information on line, I still find myself pulling out book this, picking a species and reading through pages of notes, maps, diagrams and photographs.

Spotlight

As a kid in the 1970s I was enraptured with the stories and films of Jacques Cousteau and a National Geographic picture book about underwater archaeology. There was a problem though. The majority of people shown doing the work of oceanography and marine biology were men, specifically white men. As my interest in whales and the ocean grew, I started looking for the women of all colors who are today’s marine biologist.

Currently women make up about 34% of positions in STEM fields, and a little more, at 39% , in marine biology. Black women make up less than half those numbers. And the number of women With the funding and support to study marine mammals is even smaller. But woman are in the field and have been making great strides, so I want to know they are. The Spotlight section will be be about the women who are out in the world, exploring the ocean, and helping us keep them and their inhabitants thriving.

This month’s Spotlight is one of the first modern women we know of in marine biology, Dr. Roger Arliner Young.

Born in 1899 Dr. Young attended Howard University, first as a music student and discovering zoology through classes she took with prominent Black zoologist Ernest Everett Just. In 1924, prior to getting her Masters in Zoology from the University of Chicago, Young became the first African American woman to have sole credit for an article published in the journal ‘Science’ in the field of marine Biology. In 1940 she achieved her PhD and became the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in zoology.

In addition to teaching classes at Howard, and assisting Dr. Just with his research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Young served for a time as the Acting head of Howard’s Zoology department.

In 2005 Dr. Young was honored, along with several other pioneering African American Women, with “House Concurrent Resolution 96, a resolution to recognize the significant contributions of African American women to the U.S. scientific community.”

Additionally, the Roger Arliner Young (RAY) Conservation Diversity Fellowship was created in her name to support people of color, and to create greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the fields of environmental conservation and clean energy. 

And Glitter

I’ve been playing with glitter so long that it feels like it’s always been with me and in a sense it has. The idea of decorating spaces, tools, toys, and our bodies with shiny things has been around as long as humans have been making art. Some prehistoric cave painters used crushed hematite in their work, while powdered mica has been used in art and make up across cultures for centuries. Powdered mica is still a common ingredient in eye shadows and face powders to make them sparkle.

Glitter as we know it today is attributed to American Henry Ruschmann who, in 1934 made, and patented, the first commercial glitter. His glitter was made from polyester film, initially for use in cosmetics and then later blooming into the tool of choice for many types of crafts.

As always, thank you for joining me on the wonderful adventure that is whales and writing. If you have questions or topics you would like to know more about, please let me know.

Kate



[1] There are several populations of Humpbacks who feed in the waters around Alaska. The Hawaiian group which travels to Hawaii, the West coast group which travels along the western coast of North America to feed in Mexico, and a third group which migrates to the waters off Japan.