We Were Investigated and We Loved It

Aloha,

Saturday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Kawaihae Harbor was an exciting one. It began with us finding ourselves the object of interest for a lone Humpback Whale who decided to surface right next to us and check us out for more than 10 minutes. Later in the cruise the same thing happened…but this time it was a curious calf and her permissive Mom that approached us to investigate for a couple of minutes. We also saw several breaches from at least two different Humpbacks to our north, and we got to see the formation of a competitive pod (but had to leave before we could see just HOW much competing they were going to do).

Guests on our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise couldn’t decide which part of the trip was the best. Was it getting to spend time with that first Mom and calf just outside of the harbor as we left? Or was it seeing the second Mom and calf who decided to swim underneath us while we were at idle later in the cruise? Or maybe it was the double breach from two fully grown adult whales just about 50 yards off our bow followed by a couple of big head lunges? Some of us chose the parts where we got to listen to the Humpbacks singing when we deployed the hydrophone. At the end of the day, we supposed that choosing a favorite part of the trip really wasn’t all that important when all of it was so memorable.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Recently published research ties together two of my favorite topics – Humpback Whales and communication. After analyzing 8 years of Humpback songs recorded in waters off New Caldonia, and specifically plotting the frequency of particular sounds and “syllables” (including some are described as “grunts”, “descending high squeaks” and “ascending moans”) the researchers realized that the sounds Humpbacks produced while singing were organized similarly to a pattern found in human language called “Zipf’s Law”. Applied to human languages Zipf’s law demonstrates that all human languages follow the same pattern: the most common word is used twice as often as the second most common word, three times as often as the third most common word ad infinitum. This law is used to explain how infants can learn to recognize individual words – sounds are less likely to occur together if they’re part of different words and these dips in probability allow infants to discover word boundaries. So why does it matter that Humpback sound distribution patterns follow Zipf’s law? The researchers involved in this study explain that this particular organizational system makes it easier for novices to learn a “language” (helping younger Humpbacks memorize song phrases), thus supporting the theory that Humpback songs are culturally transmitted (instead of instinctual — think of a dog being born with the knowledge of how to bark). It also flips the theory that humans evolved to be good at language – instead it suggests that languages evolve to be more easily learnable – even in species other than humans.