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Humpback Whale

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Mammals

                 iHumpback Whale
   Size comparison against an average human
   Size comparison against an average human

                             Conservation status

   Vulnerable (VU)
            Scientific classification

   Kingdom:  Animalia
   Phylum:   Chordata
   Class:    Mammalia
   Subclass: Eutheria
   Order:    Cetacea
   Suborder: Mysticeti
   Family:   Balaenoptiidae
   Genus:    Megaptera
             Gray, 1846
   Species:  M. novaeangliae

                                Binomial name

   Megaptera novaeangliae
   (Borowski, 1781)
   Humpback Whale range
   Humpback Whale range

   The Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, is a mammal which belongs
   to the baleen whale suborder. It is a large whale: an adult usually
   ranges between 12–16 m (40–50 ft) long and weighs approximately 36,000
   kg (79,000 pounds), or 36 tonnes (40 short tons); females, on average,
   are larger than males. It is well known for its breaching (leaping out
   of the water), its unusually long front fins, and its complex whale
   song. The Humpback Whale lives in oceans and seas around the world, and
   is regularly sought out by whale-watchers.

Feeding

   The species feeds only in summer and lives off fat reserves during
   winter. It is an energetic feeder, taking krill and small schooling
   fish, such as herring, capelin and sand lance. It will hunt fish by
   direct attack or by stunning them by hitting the water with its
   flippers or flukes.
   A pair of Humpback Whales feeding by lunging.
   Enlarge
   A pair of Humpback Whales feeding by lunging.

   Its most inventive feeding technique is called bubble net fishing. A
   group of whales will blow bubbles while swimming to create a visual
   barrier against fish, while one or more whales in the group make
   vocalizations that drive the fish against the wall. The bubble wall is
   then closed, encircling the fish, which are confined in an ever-tighter
   area. The whales then suddenly swim upwards and through the bubble net,
   mouths agape, swallowing thousands of fish in one gulp. This technique
   can involve a ring of bubbles up to 30 m (100 ft) in diameter and the
   cooperation of a dozen animals at once. It is perhaps the most
   spectacular act of cooperation among marine mammals.

   Humpback Whales are preyed upon by orcas. The result of these attacks
   is generally nothing more serious than some scarring of the skin.
   However, it is likely that young calves are sometimes killed.

Whale song

   Humpback song schematic

   Alongside its aerial acrobatics, the Humpback Whale is well known for
   its long and complex "song". As cetaceans have no vocal chords, whales
   generate their songs by forcing air through their massive nasal
   cavities. Humpbacks repeat patterns of low notes that vary in amplitude
   and frequency in consistent patterns over a period of hours or even
   days. Scientists are still unsure what whalesong is meant to
   communicate. Only male Humpbacks sing, so it was at first assumed that
   the songs were solely for courting. While the primary purpose of
   whalesong may be to attract females, it's almost certain that whalesong
   serves myriad purposes. Also interesting is the fact that a whale's
   unique song slowly evolves over a period of years —never returning to
   the same sequence of notes even after decades.

   During the feeding season, Humpback Whales make altogether different
   vocalizations used to scare fish into their bubble nets.

Population and distribution

   The Humpback Whale is found in all the major oceans, in a wide band
   running from the Antarctic ice edge to 65° N latitude. It is a
   migratory species, spending its summers in cooler, high-latitude
   waters, but mating and calving in tropical and sub-tropical waters.
   Annual migrations of up to 25,000 km (16,000 statute miles) are
   typical, making it one of the best-travelled of any mammalian species.
   An exception to this rule is a population in the Arabian Sea, which
   remains in these tropical waters year-round. The species is not found
   in the eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea or the Arctic Ocean.

   Internationally this species is considered vulnerable. Specific
   countries are creating action plans to protect this whale; for example
   in the UK the Humpback Whale has been designated as a priority species
   under that nation's Biodiversity Action Plan, generating a specific set
   of actions to conserve this species.

Whaling

   A diving Humpback shows off its namesake hump.
   Enlarge
   A diving Humpback shows off its namesake hump.

   The first recorded Humpback kill was made in 1608 off Nantucket.
   Opportunistic killing of the species is likely to have occurred long
   before then, and certainly continued with increasing pace in the
   following centuries. By the eighteenth century, the commercial value of
   Humpback Whales had been realized, and they became a common prey of
   whalers for many years.

   By the 19th century, many nations (in particular, the United States),
   were hunting the creature heavily in the Atlantic Ocean — and to a
   lesser extent in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. However, it was the
   introduction of the explosive harpoon in the late nineteenth century
   that allowed whalers to accelerate their take. This, coupled with the
   opening-up of the Antarctic seas in 1904, led to a sharp decline in
   whale numbers amongst all populations.

   It is estimated that during the 20th century at least 200,000 Humpbacks
   were taken, reducing the global population by over 90%. To prevent
   species extinction, a general moratorium on the hunting of Humpbacks
   was introduced in 1966 and is still in force today. In his book
   Humpback Whales (1996), Phil Clapham, a scientist at the Smithsonian
   Institute, says "this wanton destruction of some of the earth's most
   magnificent creatures [is] one of the greatest of our many
   environmental crimes".

   By the time the International Whaling Commission members agreed on a
   moratorium on Humpback hunting in 1966, the whales had become
   sufficiently scarce as not to be worthwhile hunting commercially. At
   this time, 250,000 were recorded killed. However, the true toll is
   likely to be significantly higher. It is now known that the Soviet
   Union was deliberately under-recording its kills; the total Soviet
   Humpback kill was reported at 2,710 whereas the true number is now
   believed to be 48,000.

   As of 2004, hunting of Humpback Whales is restricted to a few animals
   each year off the Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
   The take is not believed to threaten the local population.

   Starting in 2007 Japan is planning to kill 50 Humpback Whales per year
   under its JARPA-II research program.
   Some suspect that slapping flippers helps Humpbacks forage for food by
   startling fish.
   Enlarge
   Some suspect that slapping flippers helps Humpbacks forage for food by
   startling fish.

Whale-watching

   Humpback Whales are generally curious about objects in their
   environment. They will often approach and circle boats. Whilst this
   inquisitiveness was akin to suicide when the vessel was a whaling ship,
   it has become an attraction of whale watching tourism in many locations
   around the world since the 1990s.

   Whale-watching locations include the Pacific coast off Oregon,
   Washington, Vancouver, Hawaii and Alaska, the Bay of Biscay to the west
   of France, Byron Bay north of Sydney, Hervey Bay north of Brisbane, the
   coasts of New England and Newfoundland, New Zealand, the Tongan
   islands, the northern St. Lawrence River and the Snaefellsnes peninsula
   in the west of Iceland. The species is popular because it breaches
   regularly and spectacularly, and displays a range of other social
   behaviours.

   As with other cetacean species, however, a mother whale will generally
   be extremely protective of her infant, and will seek to place herself
   between any boat and the calf before moving quickly away from the
   vessel. Whale-watching operators are asked to avoid stressing the
   mother unduly.

   An albino Humpback Whale that travels up and down the east coast of
   Australia has become famous in the local media there, on account of its
   extremely rare all-white appearance. The whale, born in 1990, is called
   Migaloo (the Aboriginal word for "white lad"). Many years of
   speculation about the whale's gender were resolved in June 2004, when
   it found a mate for the first time, and was proven indisputably male.
   Because of the intense interest, environmentalists feared that the
   whale was becoming distressed by the number of boats following the
   creature each day. In response, the Queensland government ordered the
   maintenance of a 500-metre exclusion zone around the whale.

Research

   A breaching whale.
   Enlarge
   A breaching whale.

   Although much was known about the size, shape, and composition of
   Humpback Whales due to whaling, the migratory patterns and social
   interactions of the species were not well known until the problem was
   analysed by R. Chittleborough and W. H. Dawbin in two separate studies
   in the 1960s. Roger Payne and Scott McVey studied the species in 1971.

   Their analysis of the whale song led to worldwide media interest in the
   species, and left an impression in the public mind that whales were a
   highly intelligent species, a contributing factor to the anti-whaling
   stance of many countries. Some scientists (see Mercado) have
   hypothesized that the song may serve an echolocative function.

   Scientists realised that the varying patterns on the Humpback's tail
   fluke were sufficient to identify an individual. Such unique
   identification is not possible in other species (except some groupings
   of orcas, notably in the Pacific Northwest), and so the Humpback has
   become one of the most-studied whale species. A study using data from
   1973 to 1998 on whales in the North Atlantic gave researchers detailed
   information on gestation times, growth rates, and calving periods — as
   well as allowing accurate population predictions by simulating the
   mark-release-recapture technique. A photographic catalogue of all known
   whales in the North Atlantic was developed over this period and is
   today maintained by Wheelock College ( here). Similar photographic
   identification projects have subsequently begun in the North Pacific,
   specifically by SPLASH (Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance
   and Status of Humpbacks), as well as in other areas around the world.

Humphrey

   Probably the most famous Humpback Whale is Humphrey the whale, who was
   rescued twice by The Marine Mammal Centre and other concerned groups.
   The first rescue was in 1985, when he swam into San Francisco Bay and
   then up the Sacramento River. Five years later, Humphrey returned and
   became stuck on a mudflat in San Francisco Bay immediately north of
   Sierra Point below the view of onlookers from the upper floors of the
   Dakin Building. He was pulled off the mudflat with a large cargo net
   and the help of a Coast Guard boat. Both times he was successfully
   guided back to the Pacific Ocean using a "sound net" in which people in
   a flotilla of boats made unpleasant noises behind the whale by banging
   on steel pipes, a Japanese fishing technique known as "oikami." At the
   same time, the attractive sounds of Humpback Whales preparing to feed
   were broadcast from a boat headed towards the open ocean. Since leaving
   the San Francisco Bay in 1990 Humphrey has been seen only once, at the
   Farallon Islands in 1991.

In popular culture

   In Moby-Dick, a novel where the chief whale protagonist is a Sperm
   Whale, Herman Melville describes the Humpback Whale as "the most
   gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and
   white water than any other of them".

   The extinction of Humpback Whales was a plot element of the film Star
   Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In the film, an alien space probe arrives at
   23rd century Earth and attempts to contact the whales, which are
   discovered to have been an intelligent species. However, since the
   whales became extinct in the 21st century (according to Spock), the
   probe's attempts at communication fail; increasingly stronger efforts
   by the probe to make contact prove destructive to Earth. In order to
   prevent this, the crew of the Enterprise uses a stolen Klingon starship
   to travel back in time to the 20th century and obtain a breeding pair
   of Humpbacks to communicate with the probe and forestall the Earth's
   destruction. In the novelization of this movie, the Chekov character
   refers to the humpback whale by the Russian term "vessyl kit",
   apparently meaning "merry whale"- an indirect tribute to Melville's
   description.

   Judy Collins' 1970 album Whales and Nightingales featured a recording
   of the traditional song "Farewell To Tarwathie", on which Collins sang
   to the accompaniment of a recording of a humpback whale.

   In Disney's Fantasia 2000, a segment featuring a pod of frolicking
   Humpback Whales in an unusual 'aerial' setting, and within icebergs is
   set to Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome.

   In Disney/Pixars Finding Nemo, a humpback whale guides Marlin and Dory
   to Sydney, Australia.

   A breaching Humpback Whale serves as the logo for the Pacific Life
   insurance company.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_Whale"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
