Whale Wonderland

AOOOOOOOOOOBLLLLLLEEEEEEEEOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

What? You don't understand me?

...

Humph. Apparently you don't speak humpback whale. And that's a bloomin' shame, considering how amazing these animals are. They are some of the largest living creatures in the world, weighing up to 50 tons and growing up to 52 feet long. They make one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom, swimming from Alaska to Hawaii and back every year. Despite their size, whales are quite difficult to study, and we really don't know that much about them. For this reason, any we can safely conduct on them is valuable.

For this particular unit in science class, I opted to study whether there would be more competing male humpback whale pods earlier or later in the season. I hypothesized that we would see more later in the season, since by then more females would have arrived and given birth, rendering themselves eligible for mating once again.

This lab requires the counting of humpbacks during two different times in the whale season; early and late. We recently set out on our "early" adventure, clipboards in hand, eager to spot a whale or two. Fortunately, the weather treated us well on this particular day (apparently, it had grown tired of continually forcing us to postpone our excursion). Unfortunately, whale activity was down. We did manage to catch glimpses of a few single whales, and some of us saw the splash as a particularly large whale breached and smashed back down. No one in our class saw any competing male pods though. Oh well. I suppose this means that if we see a single competing male pod on our next trip, my hypothesis will *technically* be proven correct. I'll need to make sure and account for all possible errors though (and there are many).

AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHUUUUUUUAAAAA

(Aloha in whale)

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Shown here is a student using a clinometer to estimate how far a certain whale is from shore. You do this by using the following steps;

1. Find your elevation using a GPS.
2. Wait for a whale.
3. Once a whale appears, look through the tube on the clinometer (as if it were a telescope) until you spot him. The student shown above is in the process of finding the whale.
4. Have a partner read the angle shown on the clinometer while you hold the whale (or, if he submerges, the spot he was in) firmly in your sights.
5. Plug all your variables into the following equation using a scientific calculator.

Elevation x Tangent of (Angle) = Dista

nce From Shore

6. This will give you the whale's approximate distance from shore. Make sure to write it down!

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YAAAAAAAAAAAA SCIENCE!

~ Adam