Humpback whales in SE Alaska create bubble nets to catch faster moving herring.
Image Credit Sean F. Hanser;

Listening to the Whales

Have you ever seen the spout of a great whale erupt from the ice-strewn waters of an Alaskan bay? Did you ever wonder about the complex and haunting songs of their communication system? Here is a unique op- portunity to join Laurance and his co-investigators at the Alaska Whale Foundation and University of California, Davis as they study the lives of humpbacks in Southeast Alaska. Using research charter vessels, we will journey to the whales in the protected inland waters of Chathum Strait and Fredrick Sound. Trips can last from one to three days, during which time we will listen to and record the whales’ communication system using hydrophones, and make observations of their behavior. In the evenings, we can enjoy barbequed salmon and refl ect on the intelligent communications of the largest of Earth’s creatures, look at the sonograms recorded during the day, and match tail fl uke images to identify the individual whales we observed.

With a background in extrasolar planet detection (including co-discoverer of two of the eight principal meth- ods for extrasolar planet detec- tion), astronomer Laurance Doyle began calculating the habitability of planets around other stars long before the discovery of the fi rst extrasolar planets. He currently applies some of these detection techniques as a member of the NASA Kepler Science Working Group, a mission which is expected to be able to fi nd the fi rst truly Earthlike planets around other stars.

Not content to understand how much an individual species can communicate, he seeks to understand how the rules of information theory can be used to intercompare many different species’ communication systems. He hopes to apply the results from animal communication studies to the search for extraterrestrial intelligent signals in the near future.

For more information on how to adopt this scientist
Please call us toll free at 1-866-616-3617 and ask for Karen Randall.