Whale language

Memorial Day 2019 here in the temperate jungle was an incredibly beautiful one with sunny skies, calm winds and seas, and temperatures in the 70s.  The weather just can't get any better than it was, it was a gift without doubt.  I was able to get the last half of my work day on Sunday off to be able to do an overnight kayak trip with Andrea which has been too rare because of our conflicting work schedules.  She had been on Prince of Wales Island since Friday to run a half marathon in the 20th anniversary of the Prince of Wales Marathon.  This was her seventh time running a half marathon on POW and was her 40 something half marathon all together.  She was tired and worn out from running and from spending the weekend in a cabin shared with 8 other Wrangell people there to either run or cheer on the runners but was eager to get out on the water and to spend the night on the beach in a tent.  Her willpower, endurance, and love of being outside especially in a sea kayak put us in the right place at the right time to have two of the most incredible experiences we have ever had in nature.  Thank you Andrea for being you!

We loaded our kayaks and gear into my boat and headed west from Wrangell for about 30 minutes to Roosevelt Harbor on Zarembo Island where we planned to paddle south along the Zarembo shoreline in Stikine Strait until we found a suitable beach on which to camp for the night.  We paddled leisurely for about 2 hours until we decided to stop for the night so we could relax in the remaining sunlight and enjoy the scenery and the peace of being away from town.  It was less than 2 hours after we had gotten settled in that the excitement began!

As I sat in my camp chair enjoying some pinot noir from a titanium cup, I thought I heard the sound that I am always hoping to hear when I am on or near the ocean - the sound of a whale breathing.  It sounded pretty far away but we kept hearing it at regular intervals so I began to scan the water with binoculars hoping to spot the whale.  It can take some patience especially when they are far off since by the time the sound reaches your ear, the whale may be back under the water or at least mostly back under the water.  We began to hear more breath sounds in different spots which didn't sound like humpback whale breaths so I began to get excited that we might be hearing killer whales!  (I'll call them orcas from here until the end of this post for lazy typing reasons)  I finally caught a brief glimpse of one of the breathers in my binoculars and yes, orcas!  I began to spot others and figured there were at least 6 of them, 2 males and 4 females.  They seemed to be heading in our direction so we started to get pretty excited and began to get ready to launch the kayaks to go out closer to them.


We didn't have to paddle far from shore before we realized that we were directly in the path of the oncoming orcas, an exciting, exhilarating, scary, and intimidating feeling.  Despite all of the statistical evidence that wild orcas do not attack humans, it was difficult to not feel small, weak and helpless as these beings neared.  There were no good photo opportunities really as they were either a little too far away or were moving a little too quickly to get any worthwhile photos but I did get something even more interesting.

This video was taken more for the audio so there is nothing interesting to watch really, I was more interested in capturing the language of these orcas as they travelled by.  The variety of sounds that they made was amazing and being able to listen to their communication as we sat in kayaks in the fading sunlight made this experience more intimate and humbling.

In some of the audio clips you can hear the steady continuous clicking of their sonar.  Occasionally these clicks got louder and faster making us wonder if they were "looking" at us.  I just can't describe what it felt like being there as these orcas travelled passed us as we bobbed in what felt like the flimsiest and most inadequate of vessels.

I hope that was interesting.  Personally, I'm pretty fascinated with this but just wish I knew what they were saying to each other.  What information were they passing?  What information were they collecting with those clicks?
That was how our Sunday evening ended as the orcas swam by and around the point and the hydrophone fell silent.
Monday morning dawned in a similarly spectacular fashion as the sound of  more whale breathing found us as we laid in the tent in the early morning light.  It didn't sound very close but then after a few minutes the next breath we heard was very close to the shoreline not far from us causing us to sit up quickly and start scrambling for camera gear and tent zippers.  The whale was swimming away from us not far from the rocky shore, not the best scenario for whale watching from the kayak as a whale's casual swimming speed is still a challenge to keep pace with in a kayak especially when the kayaker is also hoping to get some photos.  We chose to make some coffee and listen to the fading sound of the intermittent whale breathing rather than engage in a fruitless pursuit.  A cup of coffee on a wilderness beach while the sun climbs higher in the sky and the Three Sisters mountains look down on us from the other side of the strait is such a wonderful thing!
As the coffee began to push away the last remnants of the previous night's slumber, another distant sound came to my ear and made me search for my binoculars to be ready should they become necessary.  Before I traded coffee cup for binoculars, I saw what all whale nerds like myself hope to see when looking for whales - the silvery spray of a huge splash made by a distant breaching whale!

The splash we saw was too far away to have been the first whale we saw swimming away from us so I finally traded coffee for binoculars to keep an eye on this second whale to find out in which direction this second whale was travelling.  After a few leaps, the second whale began swimming in our direction very close to the shoreline just like the first one.  It was better than a mile away from us which gave us enough time to still enjoy that morning cup while gathering up cameras and paddling gear and giving me a chance to get our two kayaks down to the waterline.  Soon enough we heard the sound of whale breathing getting closer just on the other side of the closest point to us and then...…

The whale was still breaching at regular intervals as it travelled toward us and the first whale we saw that morning seemed to have joined it in its travels.  Andrea even got a video clip with her phone of this whale breaching while she was in the tent.  Whale watching from a tent seems to me to be an opportunity provided by very few places on the earth.  Andrea chose to stay on the beach and take photos while I let my excitement take over and paddled strongly directly toward the whales.

Not long after this dive, this whale breached again not very far from me bringing me back to the reality of what I was doing and tempering my headlong rush.  Watching a breaching whale rise out of the sea is an incredible sight with potentially deadly consequences should the overexuberant whale nerd approach to closely in his fragile boat so I kept what I felt was a safe distance and pulled out my camera.

I won't even try to describe what this was like bobbing in the kayak.  

When I captain whale watching tours, I get asked often "Why do they breach?"  The science/biologist answer is that it helps them rid themselves of the barnacles and other marine growth that will grow on a large slow moving surface and it could be some sort of communication to other nearby whales.  Unfortunately, science doesn't allow enough room for explanations such as joy.  I think these leaps could be literal jumping for joy moments occasionally especially on a beautiful morning like this one was.  I wasn't able to keep pace with the travelling whales while also trying to be ready with the camera, so as they passed the point in the near distance I floated motionlessly for awhile to soak in the experience I had just had before heading back to camp.

This was one of the shortest and most leisurely kayak trips Andrea and I have done together but it is the most memorable, maybe my most memorable of Memorial Day memories.

One last whale tidbit that came from other whale trips that I have wanted to share for awhile now, the following audio clip is from encounters with humpback whales as they are bubble feeding.  This is the song that they make as they use sound and a ring of bubbles to corral a school of feed fish such as herring into a more condensed, easily swallowed ball of food.  Bubble feeding is one of those things that is always incredible to see.  The coordination that it takes for a group of whales to pull it off is a mystery to me.  How do they decide who makes the bubble net?  Is the bubble netter also the singer?  How do they decide which one of them will be where in the group?  This behavior is highly coordinated as I have seen up to 12 whales all participating in bubble feeding groups and it always looks successful and orderly.