Sometimes looking for whales can feel a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack – the animals might be some of the biggest in the world, but the ocean is certainly a lot larger! We’re often asked just how we go about tracking down these fantastic animals in such an expanse of water, so here’s an insight into our tricks of the trade…

Keep the noise down!

One of the biggest myths in whale tracking is that we use SONAR to find them under the water. While this works well for submarine navigation, it’s certainly not the best approach when wildlife watching! SONAR stands for “sound navigation and ranging”, and works by sending sound waves out into the water and listening for the echoes as they bounce off submerged objects. This allows SONAR-equipped vessels to build a pretty accurate picture of the underwater world around them, and can even be used to find particular points of interest like shipwrecks.

SONAR technology operates in the same way as (and indeed is based on) echolocation – a method evolved and employed by animals to find their food. Bats remain perhaps the best-known echolocating species out there, but it is also critically important for many cetacean species, including orca, who may also use it to navigate. In addition to this, both killer whales and humpback whales use sound to communicate, both directly through vocalisations and indirectly through the noise created by breaching or tail slapping. Unfortunately, SONAR is much louder than these noises, so whales struggle to cope with it in their vicinity.

As well as being incredibly loud and capable of drowning out the whales’ sounds, SONAR can cause them intense distress and injury. Sound also travels much further in water than on land, so impacts can be felt for many miles. There have been cases of cetaceans being disorientated into beaching themselves, surfacing too quickly and developing decompression sickness (‘the bends’), and even developing inner ear injuries from such loud noises. If you don’t like the idea of a very loud noise in your ear blaring until it bleeds, then you can understand why we don’t want to do the same to the whales!

Tagged, tracked, and traced?

Tagging and tracking whales is a common and crucial way of researching them. When you’re dealing with an animal that can travel huge distances in an environment that can’t be easily monitored, tagging is a great way to make sure you keep as close tabs on them as possible. This works exceptionally well on land, for example with wildlife in the African bush, who might wear collars that transmit their locations to researchers or wildlife guides. Unfortunately for us, it’s a bit more complicated in the water!

Wildlife collars on land animals work so well because of their longevity and non-invasive nature. While the animals do have to be anesthetised for the collars to be fitted, once on, they can last for many years and can be worn consistently without interfering with their day to day lives. The process for anesthetisation is also fairly straightforward – a dart shot from a distance, a quick installation, and constant veterinary monitoring throughout.

In the water, things are not that simple; tags can either be bolted to the whale like a piercing, which is done while the whale is conscious and can cause distress, or attached via suction cups to their skin, which is rarely able to remain on the whale for longer than a couple of days. In addition, attachment needs to be done either using a long pole maneuvered from a boat (which is very dangerous and stressful for the whale) or dropped from a drone (which requires a huge amount of special training and is often unsuccessful), so presents a great many challenges.

Finally, tags such as these operate via GPS, which is not able to transmit through the water. Therefore, positioning data is only available when the whale surfaces for a breath… which can take up to 45 minutes for humpbacks! Given how much whales can move around in this time, it would be easy to lose track of them if we relied on tagging alone, and they’d be out of our range before we knew it!

Cooperation is key

While the whales might not be tagged or tracked via technology on their bodies, we do have one secret weapon up our sleeves – the Pacific Wildlife Watching Association. Founded in 1994, the PWWA brings together all of the whale watching companies in the area, allowing for us to all cooperate together to ensure that everyone has the best chance possible of seeing whales. Through the designation of a private radio channel for PWWA whale watching vessels, captains of our boats are able to communicate with each other not just about where the whales are, but about where they’re going, so we can stay one step ahead.

The rise of social media has also aided our efforts, with PWWA managing private social media groups where local whale watching companies can share their recent sightings, both from shore and from land. As app-building technology has advanced, they have also introduced a private app that allows us to log our real-time sightings – including data such as behaviour, direction of travel, number of individuals, and identities if known – so we know what’s going on out on the water all day, every day.

There she blows!

While this all sounds like a lot of information, the reality is very stripped back. When looking for whales, we haven’t changed our approach in hundreds of years – we look for the blow, or the fin, and we follow it! The support of the PWWA has modernised our communication methods and improved our chances of finding the whales overall, but without keeping our eyes on the water for that big breathy blow, we’d be lost in the search to begin with!

When you join us on a whale watching tour, as with any company, part of the fun is in the journey. We’re fortunate that we have such a beautiful coastline to search along, and the thrill of finding the whales will always make it worth the while!