Breaching Humpback Whales!

Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Part of the reason for the gap is that Masa got a new boat, so we had some down time between saying goodbye to the old boat and getting the new one shipped over from Oahu. Masa felt pretty sad about seeing his old friend go, a boat on which he’s had many memories and taken so many amazing, award-winning shots over 10 years in Hawaii.

Once he got the new boat, though, a nice twin-engine, catamaran style Glacier Bay, we were out almost every day, testing the equipment and checking out the wildlife. We’ve been so busy out on the water, that I haven’t had much time to write it all down.

On Feb. 21, Masa, me, and Steve Drogin were out on the water for a full day of whale watching. I wrote about Steve in my blog called Steve Drogin's Party 11/30/07. He’s one of our SeaPics.com photographers, and he has many great images of sharks, rays, monk seals and more on our site.

Anyway, Steve was with us, enjoying Masa’s new boat and checking out the humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae. The whales were incredible that day, breaching all around us. It was really a photographer’s dream. Most days are not like this, as it’s not possible to predict where and when a whale will breach, so you have to be vigilant and a little lucky to t a reat shot. On this day, though, getting the money shot was like rolling over in bed. The light was great and the whales kept breaching over and over, so we could position ourselves perfectly and get the shots we wanted.

One of the great things about living in Hawaii is being able to see these amazing humpback whale breaches. If you live on the west coast of the U.S., you may be able to see blue whales, Balaenoptera musculus, or gray whales, Eschrichtius robustus, but they aren’t known for the breaches and other above water activities performed by the humpback whales.

The playful behavior of humpback whales is well known and has even been mentioned in classic American literature. Herman Melville, using the character Ishmael as his narrator in Moby-Dick, said of the humpbacks that they are "the most gamesome of species and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water than any other."

He certainly got that right. Humpbacks must think they’re dolphins, a distant relative, though they’re at least 110 times heavier. They launch themselves out of the water, nearly clearing it, and flop onto the surface, usually on their back or side, creating a minor tsunami for nearby boats. They’re also known for tail slapping, pec slapping, peduncle throws, spy hopping and other behaviors.

Here’s a quick glossary of humpback whale behaviors, with links to images of the behavior on our site:

breaching – the whale launches most of its body out of the water and crashes onto the surface. Masa call this spectacular breach an "epic breach" (this is not a scientific term!). However, 90% of the breaches we see, are those only the half of their bodies break out of the water at best. It's still quite impressive, and he call it a "lazy breach or tired breach" (again please note that these are not scientific terms of the behavior if anybody cares).

lobtailing or tail-slapping – the whale, with its body nearly vertical, facing down, slaps its tail repeatedly onto the surface of the water. This behavior creates loud sound which can travel miles in open ocean, above and underwater.

lunging (head lunge) – a shallow breach where a male lunges aggressively towards competing other male, in many case, it ends up head-butting others by doing so. In addition to the sound of the sudden water breaks, the aggressor usually creates loud and scary, whistling sound.

Sometimes it also makes a loud clapping sound by using its jaws (jaw-clapping). Other times it slaps its chin to the water surface to create a loud sound (chin-slapping).

pec-slapping – the whale, lying on its side or rolling its body, slaps its pectoral fin repeatedly against the surface of the water. It can create a similar effect to lobtailing.

peduncle throw – a powerful and quickest move where the whale thrusts its tail and lower body area (caudal peduncle) across the surface of the water, throwing up a big spray. Most of the time it happens so quickly and unexpectedly, thus, it is one of the most difficult humpback behaviors to phtoograph besides an "epic breach".

spyhopping – the whale, curious about activity above the water surface, assuming a vertical position, pokes it’s head out of the water. Humpback whale's head are covered with many lumpy, sonsory organs, called nodules, so it can sense the whale watchers!

singing - only mature male humpback whales sing by suspending his body vertically underwater about 50 t0 100 feet deep. It is known to sing the same "whale song" each season and also known to only sing at their breeding ground such as Hawaii. The singing sound is so lound and it can reach 100 miles away. If you have ever submerged yourself underwater during the whale season in Hawaii, you will most likely hear their singing. If you would like to hear such whale songs, visit Jupiter Research Foundation web site. They recorded and collected many songs at Puako Bay, Big Island where we regularly go whale watching.

Why do they do these behaviors? The breaching behavior may have the practical use of shaking off barnacles, or it may be that the whales just like the sensation of leaving the water and crashing onto the surface...just for the fun. A whale calf can do most of the tricks except singing. When a baby goes off, usually its mom goes off, too as if she's trying to teach her baby how to do.

While we can’t interpret each behavior precisely, many of their behaviors are believed to be related to breeding and thus, most often seen while observing competitive groups. As such groups are also called "heat run" and their behavioral displays sometime get really wild and violent. Other times, though, their behavioral displays are simply spectacular and graceful.

For me, personally, this was one of my best days ever for humpback whale photography. The reason for my confidence is that Steve Drogin lent me his telephoto lens, as he was trying out another one. For the first time, I was able to use an 80-400 vibration reduction lens, which made a huge difference in the kind of shots I could get.

Normally, when I’m out on the boat with Masa, his shots are always so much better than mine as he uses longer, superior lens. At the safe distance we must maintain from the whales, his whale shots have always filled the frame and been beautifully in focus, while mine have been way too small. On this day, though, with Steve’s great lens, my shots were nearly filling the frame! The light was great, and the whales breached straight in front of us, over and over. At least on this occasion, my breaching whale shots are good enough to beat my own previous best. I still can’t compete with the world class photographers I represent at SeaPics.com, but I was really stoked to get some decent shots, as those of you who take photos for enjoyment can readily understand! Thanks, Steve, for the assist!

That’s it for now, but I’ll have another blog up soon about more humpback whale excursions. I expect you’ll see that in a week or so. And don’t forget to check out my album, or better yet, go to the SeaPics.com site for all of my pix!

Close Encounters with Wyland the Artist, Part II

After a marathon day with Wyland, the Artist, where we boated, swam and snorkeled all day, followed by an artist’s reception at Wyland Galleries in the evening, Wyland was up and ready for more the next day! Wyland is a machine!

It appeared his gallery reception had gone well, and Masa and I had a good time, too. Besides the awesome original Wyland art we received (see Wyland Part I blog 12/28/07), we had met Dean Bernal, the Dolphin Whisperer. Dean was famous for his work with dolphins in the Turks & Caicos, where he used to live. For years, I had been selling our SeaPics.com photos of him with JoJo, the sociable Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus (that’s Dean & Jojo in photo at left), and suddenly, here he was in Kona, where he now resides! What an amazing coincidence!

Dean’s story of why he no longer lives in the Turks & Caicos, and how he ended up in Kona, Hawaii is a little long and personal, so I won’t go into detail. I will say, however, that the story involves a stopover in Crete, where sirens sing to you and cure whatever ails you. Enough about that, and on to our adventures with Wyland!

It was Saturday morning, the 29th, and we still wanted to see humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, so we headed north. If you come to Big Island, Hawaii during whale season, which is December to March, you’ll usually find majority of migrated humpback whales north of the Kona airport, especially up in the Kohala Coast region. Humpback whales breed here in winter after their long migration from Alaska.

As we headed north, Wyland said he wanted to stop and check out Turtle Pinnacle, one of Kona’s better known dive sites. SeaPics.com has many photos of green sea turtles, Chelonia mydas, being cleaned by yellow tang and other reef fish, and most of them are from this spot. We have so many of these nice shots that divers visiting Kona tend to think sea turtles are always getting cleaned somewhere, waiting to be photographed. Well, the key to getting these great shots is to be at Turtle Pinnacle, a time-honored cleaning station. If you look for this anywhere else, you’ll likely be disappointed.

The water was kind of rough, but we stopped at Turtle Pinnacle for Wyland to work his magic and find some sea turtles. Strangely, though, it didn’t happen. We searched for sea turtles for about 45 minutes, but never found any. Hmm, it seemed the Wyland magic was wearing off!

We continued north, convinced we’d see some long-snouted spinner dolphins, Stenella longirostris, around the airport. Nada. We wondered where all the marine life had gone.

As we searched the area, we stumbled upon a huge fishing net drifting in the ocean. The net was so large, we couldn’t even attempt to retrieve it. Like an iceberg, the tip of it was at the surface, and the rest of it hung down, down, down, fading into the blue.

A drifting net like this is certainly a danger to marine life. On the other hand, it’s also a refuge for thousands of other species. There were countless fish using this net as a floating reef, as were the sea plants and tiny crustaceans attached to it. When small fish and inverts gather, big fish follows. Any decent size, floating objects are great fishing spot! Usually you can expect big games like yellowfin
tunas, Thunnus albacares, wahoo, Pacific kingfish or ono, Acanthocybium solandri, and dolphinfish, dorado or mahi mahi, Coryphaena hippurus, as well as off shore sharks like oceanic whitetip sharks, Carcharhinus longimanus.

Masa dropped a jig to see what's down there, and his lure was immediately hit by a fish! He caught a rainbow runners, Elagatis bipinnulatus. Rainbow runner is one of jack or trevally speceis and belongs to the Family Carangidae. Masa said it is underrated but the fish is very tasty when prepared correctly. Everytime he dropped a jig, he caught one. All sizes are pretty big for rainbow runners. After we saved some for our dinner, Masa & Wyland decided to get in the water and see what was really happening down there around the net. After a dive, Masa came back to the surface and excitedly said there were hundreds of rainbow runners, Elagatis bipinnulatus, and whitespotted filefish, Cantherhines dumerilii, and mahi mahi near the surface, and then, deep under all the fish there were a dozen wahoo hanging around. Wyland videotaped and Masa photographed those shooling fish (see Masa's picture - Wyland and hundreds of fish). Wyland said he got some great footage and we may see it in his music DVDs!

After Wyland got back in the boat, I spotted a breaching humpback whale in a distance. Wyland was eager to go see if we could get some photos of it, but Masa was thinking he wanted to stay a bit longer in the water and photograph the net. To Masa, finding this size of floating net and the amount of marine life around this humongous net was very rare and significant event, and he must document that thoroughly as a marine wildlife photographer. It's certainly one of the greatest opportunity of this kind of subject.

Wyland suggested we leave Masa at the net, check out the whales, and then come back for Masa later. Strangely, Masa was not eager to go along with this plan. It seems being left drifting with a net in the middle of the ocean was not Masa’s idea of a good way to spend the day. I admit, I could see the logic in his reasoning. Wyland promised we’d quickly return to the net and Masa, but we thought it better to all depart together to look for the whales, which is what we did.

Well, the Wyland magic was definitely on hiatus, as we didn’t saw a humpback whale the rest of the day. After looking long and hard, we decided to go back to the floating net and do some fishing. But now that net was playing hard-to-find. We went up and down the coast, looking for it. It’s a really good thing we didn’t leave Masa out there, drifting with the net, as we might never have found him again!

After half an hour or more, finally, we spotted it and this time, Masa put out a couple of trolling gears and caught a mahi mahi right away. When you catch a mahi mahi, it’s common to leave the first one on the hook for a while, as strangely, the other mahi mahi will congregate around it. This happened in textbook fashion, and within minutes we had our second mahi mahi. We caught two more mahi mahi and packed it in for the day.

We headed south to try Turtle Pinnacle one more time at Wyland's request. Masa free-dived over the pinnucle and confirmed there were no turtles. Despite Masa's scouting report, Wyland decided to go for scuba diving, so we let him go solo. While Wyland was diving, we swam and snorkeled around there for at least an hour, but never did see a turtle. Too bad for Wyland; at least we live here, so we’ll see the turtles another day!