NPR Correspondent Alex Chadwick: Here we are in America’s paradise, Hawaii, and listening to a native Hawaiian, Charlie Maxwell, chanting an ancestral chant. (SOUND EFFECT: CHANT)

Chadwick: He’s got stories too. In the old day he says, all the whaling ships used to stop in Maui, especially at an old port town on the west side of the island. Actually, it doesn’t sound like a very enviable distinction.

Maxwell: It was called “the hellhole of the Pacific,” because there were 500 whaling ships anchored out here at one time. So, you know, if 500 whaling ships were anchored out here, there was a hell of a lot of whales to be harvested. You been to Lahaina?

Chadwick: Well, I am on my way there. Tower condos and glitzy resorts occupy the beachfront a little ways north. Lahaina bravely retains a kind of seedy authenticity, but the only whale boats left are for whale watching, and a few researchers like Dr. Lou Herman of the Kahaluu Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory.

Dr. Lou Herman: OK, we’re exiting from Lahaina Harbor now.

Chadwick: Just seven minutes out of the dock, a whale breaks the water a couple of hundred yards from our boat, breathes a great gulp of air and rolls back beneath the surface. And for the rest of the day one is usually in sight. But they haven’t always been this easy to find.

Herman: (SOUND EFFECT: WATER SPLASHING) I began in 1975 investigating a rumor that there were whales in these waters.

Chadwick: You—you mean, people couldn’t see whales back then jumping and breaching?

Herman: Well, there were very few remaining. The estimates were—in 1966 there were maybe 1,000 remaining in the entire North Pacific Ocean.

Chadwick: Probably there are 3,000 humpbacks now, possibly 4,000 or more. And this is the time to see them, December to April and the place: the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, designated a year ago.

Herman: (SOUND EFFECT: WATER SPLASHING) Frame 6. Escort coming up, fluke’s coming, 0 percent. Fluke’s coming right.

Chadwick: Lou Herman’s directing two of his research assistants who are snapping photos and shooting videos as we follow a female, her calf and several males in a channel between Maui and its sister island, Lanai.

Herman: Here’s the mom, white back’s coming up just beneath the surface, so you can see her swimming there. There she blows. Escort on the right. Mother next to the calf on the right. Fluke’s coming on 0 percent.

Unidentified Woman: Frame 2 and hold.

Chadwick: The tail sections of the whales bear individual markings. The photos are used to identify the animals. That’s how the researchers know these whales migrate to Alaska and Baja and Japan.

Herman: Twenty-five percent.

Woman: Frame 6.

Herman: White in each corner—look at the white patch on this guy. Didn’t we see that before on the right-hand side?

Chadwick: The whales are twice the size of our 20-foot (6-meter) boat and moving fast. They slash in front of us, bare inches away, seeming to bump and batter each other. After the last 20 years of research scientists no longer think of whales as gentle giants—giants still, but not so gentle, especially the males.

Herman: It’s part of the way they sort themselves out. After all, this is a very highly social situation. There’s a lot of competition between the males. You’ll see some of them with bleeding dorsal fins and bloody nodules on their head and evidence of struggle going on. They’ll butt each other with their head and lower jaws, their tails thrash at each other and there’s 40 tons of weight behind that.

Chadwick: We’re trying to record whale songs, those intricate oral signals first recorded 30 years ago. We’ve brought underwater microphones to deploy over the side of the boat. And this is what we hear: (SOUND EFFECT: WHISTLING) The whales we’re recording are far away, but then one of the grad students spots a lone whale about a mile [1.6 kilometers] off, throwing its tail flukes high in the air. (SOUND EFFECT: WHALE SONG) That’s what the singer whales do. In minutes, we’ve reached the spot where we saw it. We cut the engine and lower the microphones. We found him. (SOUND EFFECT: WHALE SONG) Researchers have been studying whale songs for decades and are still baffled. They’ve learned that all the whales in a region seem to sing the same song; that it changes from year to year; that only males sing. But why do they do it? There are theories: to attract females, to run off other males. But no one knows. Despite years of research the meaning of the songs remains an utter mystery.

Tell me what that animal’s doing right now [Said to Herman]?

Herman: It’s probably just stationary in the water column.

Chadwick: How deep is he?

Herman: Possibly 60 to 100 feet [18 to 31 meters] deep.

Chadwick: Uh-huh.

Herman: And the typical posture is with the head lower than the tail, canted at about a 45-degree angle, pectoral fin spread. In fact, I probably should go in and take a look and see if we can see him. Why don’t I do that?

Chadwick: OK.

Fins, mask, snorkel, he’s over the side and hanging suspended at the surface, peering down at the humpback 40 feet [12 meters] directly beneath us. Not a single air bubble emerges from the creature’s head. It’s not using anything like a vocal chord. It’s not using air at all, so far as anyone can tell. The song continues for about 15 minutes—several notes, the pattern evolving a little, sometimes with new elements. And finally, the whale trills off in a series of whistles. And Lou Herman kicks his way to the side of the boat and clambers back on board.

How do the whales do it? Why? Lou Herman has been studying them for almost a quarter of a century and he hasn’t got any real idea. The answer, if there is to be one, most likely lies in more patient listening and simple observation to see what happens—tricky enough with wildlife on land and always far more so in the marine world.

Herman: You get glimpses over here and you have to begin to piece together the puzzle. It is a giant jigsaw puzzle and we just got a little bit of the border done so far. So we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Chadwick: Dr. Lou Herman, founder and director of the Kahaluu Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory and president of the Dolphin Institute. For Radio Expeditions, this is Alex Chadwick, NPR News.

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