Day 3. Lots of whales.

Well, we were back at it. After a drought yesterday (i.e., seeing whales but not finding any productive singers) we had a pretty decent day today, recording from 2 singers (our humpback singers). We found two singers pretty early on in the a.m., but both of these lone males (all singers are males) were joined (by "joiners") and while we were initially observing them. This put a quick stop to their singing patterns and our subsequent ability to work with them. After a few hours of chasing down false alarms, not finding successful animals, seeing quite a few humpback competitive pods and surveying quite a bit of the Maui-Molokai-Lanai waters, we found ourselves off Lanai and a great singer. Tammy and Aran could see it from the kayak. And Marc, Max and Anke (a new PhD student with Marc Lammers) got some great recordings from the Coho (our trusty vessel).

Marc spotting whales from the Coho. Note his headphones. We frequently deploy and listen to a hydrophone to tell how close we are to singers. 

The second whale of the day we were interrupted by a mom and calf swimming by. The calf was frequently breaching. We managed to get a few good pics of it. But this seemed to disturb our singer enough to stop singing and seemingly join this duo. But we managed to get a good amount of data. 

Calf breaching next to the mom fluking.