Original subtitles

When I began studying humpback whales almost 50 years ago,

there was very little funding for such research.

I'd like to thank the Pacific Life Foundation for their unparalleled generosity

in supporting the conservation of humpback whales

and other marine mammals.

Enabling a better future is what Pacific Life does,

and their support of a healthy ocean benefits all of us,

whales as well as people.

Our planet holds a kind of parallel universe.

A place of wonder where giants roam free.

For thousands of years, we could only wonder about humpback whales.

Now, by exploring their world,

we're getting surprising glimpses into their lives.

A 40-ton adult appears weightless in its ocean home.

Though longer than a school bus, these 50-foot giants are nimble.

With a wingspan greater than most Learjets,

humpbacks are magnificent acrobats.

Often seen in shallow waters,

these mammals occasionally dive to a depth of 1,000 feet.

Each bump on their heads contains a single stiff hair,

which may help them sense their environment.

Today, we celebrate them...

but it wasn't always so.

Whales were hunted for hundreds of years and rendered into oil to light our cities.

When whalers developed exploding harpoons,

these giants had no chance.

We nearly wiped humpback whales off the face of the planet.

Then, during the Cold War, a U.S. Navy observer,

recording the hum of Soviet submarines,

heard something mysterious.

The otherworldly calls of humpback whales.

Humpbacks string their songs together

in a continuous river of sound.

The music of the deep.

In the 1970s, when these recordings were studied

by scientists Roger Payne and Scott McVay,

they recognized that the seemingly random noises

were actually precise rhythmic patterns of sound, or "songs."

When record albums were released,

the humpbacks' songs changed millions of hearts.

People from many nations joined together

to support a ban on killing whales.

The song of the humpback

helped us to begin to understand, finally,

that whales are magnificent, complex beings

worthy of protection, worthy of life.

This was our turning point.

The South Pacific.

The humpback population here was hard-hit by whaling.

In Tonga, there were only about 50 mature females left.

In 1978, when the king of Tonga banned the killing of whales,

the humpbacks here slowly began to recover, one calf at a time.

Today in Tonga, there are about 2,000 humpbacks,

a fraction of what once was, but it's a start.

The humpback resurgence has now sparked a whale-watching boom here.

The increased tourism has raised the standard of living

for the local people, like Ali Takau.

My grandfather was a whaler.

He hunted humpbacks to feed our family.

Instead of killing humpbacks, Ali works hard to save them.

The future of our humpbacks depends on these children.

I tell the kids about the whaling days,

so we never have that kind of killing again.

My job is taking tourists and scientists

out to see the humpbacks.

Now these magnificent whales have begun to recover.

Each calf is critical to Tonga's fragile resurgence.

After a full year of pregnancy,

mothers give birth to a single 14-foot baby.

What's it like to be a newborn humpback,

floating in a vast blue world,

where your only landmark is a mountain of mother?

Humpbacks share these idyllic waters

with a whole community of marine life.

The remora fish come along for the ride.

Even when the mother sleeps,

the newborns don't stray far from mother's milk.

But after a few weeks, the calves get bolder,

and they take off on their own.

They're so curious.

And they've got so much energy.

These newborns learn by copying their mothers.

In their first year, they double in size.

Once they get the hang of it,

There's no stopping them.

Each calf stays with its mother

only about one year to learn about the world.

How to migrate thousands of miles.

What to eat and how to find it.

Who to trust and who to fear.

Whalers like my grandfather once targeted mothers and calves,

because they move so slowly.

I always loved my grandfather,

but he didn't understand the need to stop killing whales.

The killing stopped here in Tonga, but not everywhere.

Three nations... Japan, Norway and Iceland...

Still allow commercial and scientific whaling.

Today, fewer people kill whales on purpose,

but we now kill them without even knowing it.

When a ship collides with a whale,

the impact is often fatal.

And the number of ships on the world's oceans has doubled

in the last 12 years.

There is something we can do about these fatal collisions.

One solution is to slow down ships,

or reroute them to avoid the migratory pathways of whales.

Here in Tonga, mothers go for months

with almost nothing to eat.

To find food, the humpback whales in Tonga head south

to the frigid, bountiful waters of Antarctica.

Many humpbacks in the North Pacific Ocean migrate to Alaska.

Dr. Fred Sharpe has been studying the behaviors

of humpback whales here for the past 25 summers.

Most of the time, humpback whales in Alaska feed on krill.

These small, shrimp-like crustaceans thrive here,

in waters enriched by upwelling currents and glacial nutrients.

The tiny krill might be harder to catch

if humpback whales had teeth, but they don't.

About three hours away, about three hours away.

Instead of teeth, humpback whales have baleen.

It's a kind of strainer that hangs from the roof of their mouth.

It lets the water through, but allows them

to trap these tasty morsels, like the fish and the krill.

When we're trying to locate big feeding pods,

it's almost like you're coming home to family.

Fred has studied these particular whales for so long...

Bubbles! Bubbles!

That he can often tell who's vocalizing just by listening.

We know who is who,

because each of these whales has a really distinctive tail fluke.

They're kind of like a fingerprint.

No two are exactly alike.

So... I run the prints.

This is Melancholy.

I've really come to know him over the past 20 years,

from studying his behaviors and even sketching him.

I often see Melancholy with another male, who we call Vulture.

Many whales feed individually,

but Melancholy and his crew have learned a really cool strategy.

They can capture more fish by working together as a team.

When we hear the feeding calls and see the whales group together,

we know we're in for quite a show.

What happens next is one of the most incredible

and complex animal behaviors ever observed.

It's called "group bubble-net feeding."

The first step is always the synchronized dive.

Some of the whales dive deep

underneath the school of herring

to drive them up towards the surface.

With their long pectoral flippers,

they can outmaneuver fast-moving prey.

The bubble specialist blows a stream of bubbles,

forming a spiraling wall of air

that acts like a net to keep the fish from getting away.

The designated vocalizer begins to make almost deafening sounds...

Scaring the fish up towards the surface.

The humpback mouth expands so wide,

they could swallow a small car.

They can eat up to a ton of food in a single day.

That's like 8,000 hamburgers.

Well, as it starts to get cold up here in the fall,

Melancholy, Vulture and all the other whales begin to leave.

They'll travel thousands of miles down to their warm-water breeding areas

like Costa Rica, Mexico and Hawaii.

Some humpbacks migrate 5,000 miles one way every year...

One of the longest known migrations of any mammal.

There are 15 distinct populations of humpback whales,

located in all the oceans of the world.

They feed in polar and subpolar regions,

and breed and give birth in the Tropics.

Each winter, the Hawaiian Islands host

the largest gathering of humpbacks in the North Pacific.

Thousands of whales.

Humpbacks may live up to 80 years or more.

They seem as curious about us as we are about them.

Other whales and dolphins vocalize,

but humpbacks make a greater variety of sounds

than any other whale...

including grunts...

groans...

thwops...

snorts...

and barks.

When humpbacks leap, or breach,

they make it look easy.

No other whale leaps so high so often.

We're not exactly sure why they do it,

but we're glad they do.

On a quiet morning in Hawaii, you can hear hundreds of humpbacks

in their hidden world below, all singing at once.

A reminder of how their songs began changing our hearts so many years ago.

Today, Dr. Jim Darling lowers the hydrophone into the water,

just as he did decades ago when Roger Payne first invited him here

to record humpback whales.

For scientists like Jim, finding singers isn't easy,

but there are clues.

When whales dive, they leave a slick spot on the surface...

what researchers call a footprint.

Sometimes when Jim looks down through the footprint, he spots a singer.

All the singers in Hawaii start each breeding season singing the same song.

Incredibly, when one singer changes his song,

they all adopt those same changes.

By comparing the latest song against previous versions,

Jim can pinpoint exactly what has changed.

Jim's colleague, Dr. Meagan Jones,

helps him search for those changes in the song.

Two years ago, Jim recorded a song with a really distinctive phrase.

That's really different.

We started calling it "chuckles" because it made us laugh.

But this year, the chuckles are starting to disappear.

After years of study, scientists were surprised to discover

the singers were all males.

While the males are busy singing, what are the females up to?

Dr. Meagan Jones studies the behavior of female humpbacks.

It's not easy, because they spend 90% of their time underwater,

out of sight.

So she catches only glimpses.

One of the most important questions I'm trying to answer

is how females choose their mates.

No one has ever observed mating between humpbacks.

But we often see a male and female pair resting together.

Just before and just after,

we see males fighting over the females.

The battle-scarred male escort is actually on guard,

watching and listening for his rivals.

When intruders show up, he tries to fight them off.

20 males pursuing just one female.

We think the males are vying for the prime spot, closest to the female.

The escort will use all kinds of tactics to defend his position.

He streams bubbles.

He lunges...

charges...

and even collides with other males.

Is the female leading these males?

Or is she being chased?

We're not sure...

but we think she wants to mate as soon as possible

so she can return to Alaska and resume eating.

For whales, bigger mothers often make better mothers.

She needs to be in the best physical condition

when she gives birth the following year.

This chase lasted four grueling hours.

We think the competition may allow the female

the opportunity to select the fittest mate.

One day, just as the other male rivals swam away,

the male and female pair stayed around

and circled our boat for well over an hour.

At first, we thought the female was swimming upside down

and using the boat to discourage the male.

But as we watched the pair circle and dance around each other and us,

it became clear that at least in this case, the female was following him

as much as the male was following her.

Was this courtship?

Was she trying to attract him?

This is what we think may be happening, but until we see mating,

we can just never be sure.

For me, these are the best kind of days,

when new observations lead to new questions.

When Meagan is out studying whales,

she sometimes runs into the real dangers they face, like loose, floating debris.

...major threat to the animals.

More than half of these humpback whales bear scars

from being tangled up in ropes and fishing nets.

This humpback whale population is growing,

but we think worldwide

the humpback population may be only 40% of what it was

before whaling began.

Some of the most serious problems facing whales

have no immediate solution.

But when individual whales get entangled,

some of them can be saved by rescue teams,

like the one here in Hawaii.

Joe, let's see if we can get underway in five.

GPS coordinates set.

Most rescues start with a phone call from a boater.

Reporting entangled whales is one important way to help humpbacks.

Looking for your position.

The team caught up to the entangled whale in just under an hour.

This young, energetic humpback whale

was trailing more than 200 feet of line and buoys behind it.

Each entanglement is different, so team leader Ed Lyman

has to keep adjusting his strategy.

Keep an eye out. We don't want to lose it.

If this young whale is not set free by Ed's team,

he could die from infection, starvation

or even drowning.

A key tool is their grapple.

That's how they hook onto the trailing gear

and then pull themselves close enough to cut the whale free.

We attach a transmitter to help track the whale, in case we lose it,

and buoys to keep it from diving deep.

Even with extensive training,

it's dangerous for Ed and Joe to get so close

to a huge animal under stress.

We work entirely from boats.

People have been killed jumping in the water to cut whales free.

Let's be careful here!

If we hear signs of stress, like a trumpeting blow, we back off.

Our pole cam gives us an underwater view

and helps us see what's going on.

We need to get this gear off.

These wounds are... are bad.

These young ones, they're unpredictable.

Our whale makes a sudden U-turn and snags his gear on a nearby boat,

so we race back to cut the boat free.

You got it? Okay, good. Next side.

As soon as we cut that line, he takes right off.

Even dragging all those buoys, the whale is just pulling us too fast.

We actually got what the old-time whalers call a Nantucket sleigh ride.

Let me help you.

- Still running hard. - Yeah.

We attach a sea anchor to slow it down.

Okay, knife is out.

You're doing good.

Okay, here, I'm right beside you.

Finally, the whale slows down enough to give Ed a clean angle.

So he moves in for the cut.

Perfect. Right there.

And... here comes.

Okay!

- Okay. - Oh, nice slice!

It all went their way today, but it doesn't always work out.

Even Ed's heroic team can't save every whale.

But you and I can help reduce the number of entangled humpbacks.

Encourage the use of whale-safe gear,

and keep debris out of the ocean.

I'm in awe of humpback whales.

For centuries, men in boats brought them pain and death.

It brings us such joy to flip that around and bring them life instead.

It took hundreds of years for people all across the world to wake up

and hear the song of the humpbacks.

In the early days, humpbacks were known as our guardians.

Now it's our turn.

Future generations of scientists have their work cut out for them.

Each new insight scientists gain into these remarkable whales

helps us protect them against the growing threats they face.

Oceans cover 71% of our planet,

and humpbacks roam them all.

Just one look in their eye will tell you

we have much more to learn about their world.

And to think, we nearly missed that chance.