Humpbacks

*** Recovery Strategy for the North Pacific Humpback Whale in Canada (Final 2013). Note however that North Pacific Humpbacks have now been down-listed from “Threatened” to a species of “Special Concern”. This means that there will be no Action Plan nor will critical habitat be designated.

• COSEWIC report determining humpbacks as of “Special Concern”.
• Powerpoint presentation on this Recovery Strategy.
• Past (determining “threatened”): COSEWIC assessment summary.
• Past (determining “threatened”): COSEWIC full report.

*** Our Marine Education & Research Society’s work on humpback whales http://www.mersociety.org/researchhumpbacks.htm be sure to go to the blog and publications for our latest research at:

2018 Report by colleagues in SE Alaska.
Their key findings for 2018 are listed below and include: the lowest count of Humpbacks since 2002; no known surviving calves; many abnormally thin whales and the hypothesis that: "There is growing evidence that these trends reflect widespread declines in prey availability and/or quality in the greater Gulf of Alaska ecosystem associated with the unprecedented marine heatwave in the North Pacific in 2014-2016." See the report at https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/620535

Humpback whale catalogue for SE Alaska. Good background information.

Species information by the Hakai Institute “Central Coast Biodiversity” http://www.centralcoastbiodiversity.org/marine-mammals.html

See information from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

Voices of the Sea - website where you can hear the sounds of humpbacks, see the spectrogram of their sounds, see video clips and learn cool facts from scientists! Click on the humpback.

Research on incidence of vessel strike in Alaska. NEILSON, JANET L.; CHRISTINE M. GABRIELE; ALERIA S. JENSEN; KAILI JACKSON and JANICE M. STRALEY; Summary of reported whale-vessel collisions in Alaskan waters.JOURNAL OF MARINE BIOLOGY 2012: Article ID 106282. 18pp. 2012. 1.007 MB

Video of humpback whales bubble-net feeding.

Video of competition between males.

Video from The Whale Trust - includes a calf playing and a breach.

BBC footage of birds feeding on small schooling fish and then a humpback whale lunge feeding through the mass.

May 2008. From the Cascadia Research Organization.”The first report providing new abundance estimates of humpback whales in the entire North Pacific from SPLASH [Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpbacks 2004-2006] has been released. . . Findings from this report were highlighted in a recent news article in Nature and also in a press release issued by NOAA. Links to the Executive Summary or complete report are: Executive Summary only of report as HTML or as PDF; Complete SPLASH report as PDF”

BC Cetacean Sightings Network species information http://wildwhales.org/speciesid/whales/humpback-whale/ and SPLASH project information

http://www.mi.mun.ca/mi-net/fishdeve/cetacea8.htm - DFO species information page

http://www.marinemammal.org/biology/humpback-whales/ - North Pacific University's Marine Mammal Research Consortium's excellent fast facts

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-especes/species/species_humpbackWhale_e.asp - DFO page on threats to humpbacks

Juneau humpback whale catalogue - good natural history.

http://www.wildwhales.org/newsletter/nov_dec_2004.htm - history of whaling humpbacks and the aims of the SPLASH project (scroll down page) - link down Nov. 2008

BC’s Cetacean Sighting’s Network information - Click on "BC's Cetaceans" and then the image of the animal. www.wildwhales.org

Pacific Wildlife Foundation’s species information.

Background information from Jim Darling on the humpbacks of Clayoquot Sound

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0701/feature2/ - January 2007 National Geographic article on humpbacks. Note: Information is for humpbacks in general not just the Pacific population. Fantastic pictures and sounds. You can access a whole video. Go to "sights and sounds." Not a Canadian page

http://www.whalesong.net/humpbacks.htm#Howmanyhumpbackwhalesexist - Good general information including the threats to humpbacks . Not a Canadian page

Good natural history from The Whale Trust.

http://www.whales.org.au/discover/hump/index.html . Not a Canadian page

http://www.marinemammal.org/steller_sea_lion/humpback/fastfacts.php

Voices livepage.apple.comof the Sea website where you can hear the sounds of humpbacks, see the spectrogram of their sounds, see video clips and learn cool facts

DFO publication: Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises of British Columbia, Canada - http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/241969.pdf

http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/School_Programs/whales/s-humpbackwhale.html Royal British Columbia Museum's fact sheets

http://www.ukogorter.com/portfolio/cetaceanslides/index.html - great illustration, use the drop down menu under the right whale to find your animal

http://www.sfu.ca/biology/berg/whale/abcwhale.html General information from Simon Fraser University.

http://www.cascadiaresearch.org/reports/Humpback%20whale%20examination-CRC776.htm - report on the stranding of a adult female humpback off Long Beach (Washington). Images allow an appreciation of how big humpbacks are.

Scientific paper on “Geographic variation in killer whales on humpback whales in the North Pacific.”

Humpback sound samples:
Samples of song, surface active sounds and feeding sounds from The Whale Trust. Half hour recording (October 11th) from OrcaLab of humpbacks singing in Blackfish Sound, BC. Big download but so worth it
http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~ford/ - humpback vocals; Dr. John Ford's webpage
http://www.whalesong.net/ - fantastic vocals; even live vocals from Hawaii for part of the year. These whales have likely migrated from our area to Hawaii!
Vocals recorded by Kent Noolan of the Whalesong Project in Hawaii. About this recording he states "Another time I saw a large male singing while I recorded nearby. He was slowly swimming in a large circle under a mother and baby. He went in a circle perhaps 100 yards across at a rate of about 15 minutes to go around it, about 50 to 100 feet down."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/weekinreview/25revkin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin - Roger Payne recording (Bermuda 1970)
http://www.dosits.org/teacher/feature/hump1.mp3
http://www.hhmi.org/news/suzuki20060321.html - scroll half way down the page
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/gruvi/Projects/VirtualWhales/Whales/call2.au - feeding call! Simon Fraser University project.
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/gruvi/Projects/VirtualWhales/Whales/whales.aif - sounds after feeding. Simon Fraser University project.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/Sounds/HB2dec.au
http://www.dosits.org/animals/intro.htm - study how marine mammals make sound and how sound effects them.
http://www.dosits.org/gallery/marinemm/2.htm - click baleen whales and then humpback for acoustic samples