Midway: EARs Listen for Whales

Humpback Whale; picture from Wikipedia

There just might be Humpback Whales hanging around Midway during the winter.

We've known for a long time that in late fall Humpbacks travel from the Alaska area to main Hawaiian islands, especially Maui.  During their winter in Hawai`i, these whales do family things: mate, give birth and take care of little whales...and the mature males sing.

Now there's scientific evidence showing that maybe the whole Hawaiian archipelago, from the Big Island of Hawai`i all the way to Kure Atoll, is the site of one, big winter-time Humpback Whale "family reunion."  In 2006 scientists began to see more whales around the small islands, atolls and coral reefs northwest of Honolulu.  Hhhhmmmm, researchers from the Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology, the Joint Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Research, as well as NOAA's Coral Reef Ecosystem Division decided to find out more.  So, in 2008 they tuned their ears to listen for whale song.

White circles show EAR locations; see reference below for source of map

spectrogram of a Humpback Whale song; see reference below

Make that EARs, or ecological acoustic recorders.  About ten EARs were placed at various places along the island chain.  Whale songs were recorded at all locations!  The picture at the right is called a "spectrogram."  Its horizontal axis represents 30 seconds of time, and the vertical axis is the frequency, or pitch of the whale sound.  I think the spectrogram shows a lot of little blips of sound at different pitches; what do you think?

I'm  pretty sure this whale song from NOAA wasn't recorded at Midway.  The mp3 is about 13 minutes long, but maybe you'd like to listen for awhile-- _____________________________________________________________________________
reference:
Lammers, M.O., Fisher-Pool, P.I., Au, W.W.L., Meyer, C.G., Wong, K.B., Brainard, R.E. (2011) Humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae song reveals wintering activity in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 423:261-268.