The song of the whale

From the depths of the sea, the plaintive sound echoed across the silent waters. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, a steady sort of whine that ended in sharp notes. The sound bounced from nearby Pamoctan island and filled the air as we listened intently while our small boat swayed gently on the glassy ocean. On that quiet Sunday morning, the song of the whale hummed in our ears like the music of the spheres. Just a week earlier, we would not have dreamt of experiencing such a sublime moment as our outrigger boat tossed and turned violently in the waves of the Babuyan channel. Together with another writer from Manila, I had volunteered to join researcher Jo Marie Acebes in monitoring the status of humpback whales in far-off Camiguin island in the northern Philippines for two weeks. It was the middle of March, but the northeast monsoon winds had not yet abated and we were glad to reach our destination after four hours – wet, tired, and nauseated. We remained at the mercy of the unpredictable weather on our first week of whale-watching, managing to finish an entire day’s work only once or twice. Humpback whales may be as large as ten-wheeler trucks, reaching up to 30 tons in weight and 45 feet in length. But the wind-whipped waves and grey skies, along with the blustery winds battering our boat, made it hard to spot their fins or tell-tale spouts in the stormy sea. Often, we had to turn back after just a brief encounter with the enormous mammals. Our persistence was rewarded on that first Sunday out at sea, the unseen whale allowing us to record its song faintly on the hydrophone, one of the research instruments on the boat. Good fortune seemed to be on our side that day. In the afternoon, we espied a lone male that Jom instinctively guessed was the singer, and she was right. As we approached, the whale dived into the water and began singing again, right under our boat! This time, the song could be heard loud and clear both on the hydrophone and on the surface of the water. We talked in whispers to better appreciate the various yelps, grunts, and squeaks that the whale was emitting at various intervals. The memory is as vivid today as it was two years ago. Listening to the song of the humpback whale was one of the highlights of the survey I joined in March 2007, and as I watched the video taken by the Born to be Wild team (see below) last summer, I was transported back to those two weeks of whale watching adventure in one of the most remote places in the country. Marine conservationist Arnel Yaptinchay made the first documented sighting of the whale in Fuga island in 1999. The following year, World Wildlife Fund-Philippines started a whale monitoring survey in the Babuyan islands, which also include Calayan, Dalupiri, and Babuyan Claro. Camiguin, not to be confused with an island of the same name in the southern Philippines, is part of the island chain. While there are many species of whales in the world, the humpbacks have aroused a lot of curiosity as they are the only ones that are known to sing, making distinct sounds that have intrigued scientists for decades. In one study, researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia reported that they had deciphered clear meanings from some of the sounds: purring signified a male was trying his luck with a desirable female, high frequency screams were associated with disagreements especially when males competed as escorts for females during migration, while wops were commonly heard when mothers were together with their young and could indicate a contact call between them. Humpback whale sightings in the Babuyan islands are particularly interesting as the area is the only known breeding ground of the species in the Philippines. This means that mothers and calves can be seen regularly, sometimes with a male escort. Two days before we heard the singing whale, our research team had fun observing the breaching antics of a baby whale, if one can call a two-ton animal a baby. Trying to lift its massive body out of the water repeatedly, the calf sometimes succeeded in making a full breach, but more often, it simply made a huge splash on the surface, generating squeals of delight from our small group as we watched from our outrigger boat at a safe distance. If you’ve seen one of those shows in Ocean Park in Hong Kong or Sea World in San Diego, or even on one of the nature documentaries on television, you may be familiar with the sight of killer whales lifting their massive bodies out of the water and splashing back into the pool, an action known as breaching. The amusing behavior of the humpback whales in the wild, however, would put any amusement park display to shame. Aside from breaching, easily the highlight of any whale-watching experience, we observed various actions that Acebes helpfully interpreted for the volunteers, and which we instantly looked up in the reference books when we got back to our research station. A whale rising up vertically with just its head visible above the water was doing a spy-hop, while another hitting its tail in the water was making a lobtail. There were flipper slaps, when the whale turned sideways and yes, just kept slapping the water with its long flippers. A head lunge meant just that – the whale’s huge head jutting out of the water diagonally in an almost mean gesture. On our last day at sea, the whales went motor-boating, dragging their bodies along the surface horizontally just like, you guessed it, a motorboat. And then of course, there were the telltale blows from the holes on top of the whales’ heads that easily got us all excited, as they signaled the mammals’ presence in the surrounding waters. Towards the end of our stay, we came face to face with a scene that seemed to come straight out of a National Geographic documentary. Hundreds of Fraser’s dolphins and melon-headed whales were jumping in and out of the sea, forming an almost endless line as I panned the video camera along the water’s surface. “Blow!" came a shout from the bow a few minutes later, signifying the sighting of a humpback whale. At first, we thought there was only one, and then there was a frenzy of shouting as we realized there were two whales, their grunts getting louder as we drew near. At this point in the survey, our initial group of three had been joined by four whale-watchers, and it was all we could do to keep the boat steady amid the excitement. The shouts and good-natured curses increased when the biologists on the team realized that the pair near the boat was mating, and we were getting dangerously close to the action. As if this wasn’t enough, another group of three whales surfaced at the other end of the boat, and there were momentary jitters when we realized we were surrounded. Fortunately, we managed to move away safely and record what we could, nervous fingers and all, despite the divided attention and non-stop cheering on the boat. A former staffmember of WWF-Philippines, Acebes says more than 100 individual humpback whales have been recorded in the Babuyan islands since the monitoring project began. When the group’s funding ran out, she continued the annual surveys as an independent researcher, with support from various conservation groups and volunteers. Identification is done by taking photographs of the whale’s fluke, or tail, which serves as its fingerprint; no two whales have the same pattern. She said some of the records have matched individuals that have also been spotted in Japan and Russia, indicating that the humpback whales in the Babuyan islands are part of the western North Pacific population. Residents have reported that whales could be seen as early as November and as late as May. The tourist map for the Cagayan Valley features the humpback whales as one of the region’s attractions, but due to bad weather during the northeast (amihan) and southwest (habagat) monsoon seasons, it is only during the calm summer months when research and visitor activities are feasible. The animals represent a big potential for the northern coastline, as this is the only area where humpback whales have been seen in the Philippines. According to Acebes, the southernmost sighting of humpbacks in the country so far is Palanan in Isabela province. Bad weather may prevent the influx of hordes of whale watchers, but there are other threats that have raised some concern among conservationists. One of these is the illegal blasting of the ship wrecks around Camiguin island for the salvaging of scrap iron. In a paper presented at a scientific conference in Denmark, Acebes noted that about five kilograms of dynamite are used for each explosion. Indeed, I remembered that during my stay, there was only one day when we failed to spot a single whale; the night before, Acebes had been jolted late in the night by blasts that were so powerful the house where we were staying was shaken by the impact. I asked her then if the blasts could have driven off the whales. “It’s possible," she said. During the recent visit of the Born to be Wild team, producer Pia Faustino reports that the number of sightings has been decreasing in recent years. (Listen to audio clip above) One of the possible reasons is the blasting, but there are also other threats to the whales such as the unabated dynamite fishing in parts of the island municipality, as well as long-line and drift-net fishing by Taiwanese vessels. Looking back, I’d like to think the song of the humpback whale could be its way of communicating its presence to humans, making us aware that some of our activities pose some danger to their existence. Even though we may not see them all the time, they are out there, and we need to share the planet with them. – GMANews.TV Note: A shorter version of this story first appeared in Mabuhay magazine