An intimate portrait of the first year of a baby Humpback whale’s life.

A whale calf – a humpback whale. She’s boisterous … almost carefree … yet she’s been in constant danger from the moment she was born. This is her story … the story of the first year in her life … twelve months to learn the way of whales … twelve months to learn how to survive in an underwater world ruled by cunning and ruthless predators. We follow mother and calf on their perilous journey across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to Alaska and back … a round trip of over seven thousand miles… a journey from active volcanic islands bathed in a subtropical sea to the majesty of glaciers and icebergs in icy Alaska … a journey from fire to ice.

The Hawaiian islands – a hot spot on the Earth’s surface – a place where molten rock spews from gashes in the Earth’s crust to form an island chain in the heart of the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific. Over two thousand miles from the nearest continental land mass, it’s the most isolated place on the planet. The islands are the children of Pele – Hawaii’s volcano goddess … islands born of fire … the product of seventy million years of volcanic activity … a living laboratory where plants and animals have evolved in nearly complete isolation.

The lava flows readily like red-hot treacle into the ocean. Shrouded in a fog of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, fingers of incandescent rock at a temperature of over two thousand degrees push into a scalding sea. The lava cools rapidly, solidifies, the bench of dark basalt becoming a resting
place for corals … and home to myriad sea creatures. It’s also a haven … for giants.

Each winter, up to five thousand humpback whales arrive at these islands. It’s where mothers come to give birth. She has been carrying her baby for nearly twelve months, and it’s here in these warm, enveloping waters that she drops her calf. The mother gently nudges her calf to the surface, and she takes her first breath …Scientists are watching over mother and daughter on this bright November morning, Dr Dan Salden of the Hawaii Whale Research Foundation studies the lives of these secretive animals.

As mother rests at the surface, the young calf, like children everywhere, plays relentlessly around her mum. The female calf has mostly dark flippers…… but there is another calf here. He has white flippers. He’s a newcomer too, born a week before his cousin– one week wiser, a one-week survivor in an ocean of danger. His white flippers stand out quite clearly in the blue aquamarine of the sea. These differences in patches of black and white on their flippers and flukes are the ways watching scientists will recognise these two youngsters and record their every move.

The two whales are far from alone out here. The calves are ushered away from the an area where males perform on a huge stage, the principle performers are forty-five ton humpback bulls that not only sing the loudest and longest songs on the planet, but also power through the water at twenty kilometers per hour in pursuit of female whales. We follow the two calves as they learn how to survive. The male calf listens and learns the whale songs – one day he will be a singer too. And, they meet singers, breath holders, joiners, fighters and formidable predators on their true life adventure in the whale’s underwater world.

Eventually, the time arrives when their mothers take them on their first great journey, a 5,000-kilometer -trek across the Pacific Ocean to the humpback summer feeding grounds – the Inside Passage of the Alexander Archipelago in South East Alaska. Carved by giant glaciers, Alaska’s Pacific coast is a labyrinth of fjords, bays and islands – a land born not of fire, but of ice. Twenty thousand years ago, this entire area was one great ice sheet, but just ten thousand years ago much of the ice melted leaving a maze of waterways – a shelter and food store for humpback whales.

 

Waiting on the doorstep is another scientists, Cynthia D’Vincent of the Intersea Foundation… Mother and calf will not go unnoticed … they’re now part of a Pacific-wide study to find out where humpbacks go and what they do and maybe even why they do it.

The waters are rich here, especially in summer.  Silt brought down by the glaciers continually replenishes the sea floor, and offshore breezes ensure that upwellings along this stretch of coast pull up nutrient rich waters that fuel the summer blooms of phytoplankton – the green plant plankton. Small schooling fish and shrimp-like krill feast on the plankton, which in turn are food for humpback whales – upwards of a thousand kilograms of krill per day per whale. The calves learn from their mothers how to feed as we witness the spectacular co-ordinated feeding of large groups of social whales.

The days get shorter as the seasons change.  Whales keep feeding until winter approaches, their signal to migrate to warmer waters. The whale’s food supply is diminishing. It is time for the whales to return to their home in Hawaii and mother and calf set off on their last journey together. Finally, they return to Maui, but the calf is separated from her mother by a charging male escort. The yearling is suddenly alone. Such is the way in the wild – now she must fend for herself; put to good use all that she’s learned from her mother during the past year … but she’s still a juvenile, and still as inquisitive as ever, and she finds a friend, also abandoned by its mother, he’s still ready for fun … even young adults find time to play. All round them are other whales – singers and non-singers – yearlings – escorts, hangers-on, and mothers about to give birth.

The yearling will be a mother herself one day … like any young beauty; she’ll be chased 
by the boys, courted and won over. She’s the key to a future for the humpback whales of
Hawaii and southeast Alaska – whales that travel from fire to ice and back again.

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