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Large Whale Tail

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“Here’s one of the whales off Maui engaging in this tail-slapping behavior. You can just see the head of this other whale off to the right. Several times we encountered two whales and sometimes more than that, sometimes five or six at a time....[Whale researcher] Jim Darling has a theory that the [humpback] song is a kind of a male display. He's persuaded by the fact that when the male is singing, occasionally another whale will approach, and almost invariably, it’s another male.”

— Alex Chadwick


Photograph by Carolyn Jensen