#humpbacks

[sunshineonashelf]

"Humpbacks," Mary Oliver 🐋

currently reading moby dick for school and. i am having a whale relapse. this goes out to 10 year old me having a spiritual experience at the 3d whale movie at the museum of science

[crystalclaire]

excerpt from “Humpbacks” in American Primitive by Mary Oliver

[allisonchinart]

Flying in the Light | x

[hepatosaurus]

national poetry month, day 22

Humpbacks There is, all around us, this country of original fire. You know what I mean. The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something has to be holding our bodies in its rich and timeless stables or else we would fly away. * Off Stellwagen off the Cape, the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage of barnacles and joy they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it like children at play. * They sing, too. And not for any reason you can’t imagine. * Three of them rise to the surface near the bow of the boat, then dive deeply, their huge scarred flukes tipped to the air. We wait, not knowing just where it will happen; suddenly they smash through the surface, someone begins shouting for joy and you realize it is yourself as they surge upward and you see the for the first time how huge they are, as they breach, and dive, and breach again through the shining blue flowers of the split water and you see them for some unbelievable part of a moment against the sky— like nothing you’ve ever imagined— like the myth of the fifth morning galloping out of darkness, pouring heavenward, spinning; then * they crash back under those black silks and we all fall back together into that wet fire, you know what I mean. * I know a captain who has seen them playing with seaweed, swimming through the green islands, tossing the slippery branches into the air. I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever she can, and nudge it gently along the bow with her long flipper. I know several lives worth living. * Listen, whatever it is you try to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your body, its spirit longing to fly while the dead weight bones toss their dark mane and hurry back into the fields of glittering fire where everything, even the great whale, throbs with song. —Mary Oliver

[princessmontereywhalewatching]

Beautiful shot looking into the eye of a magnificent humpback 🐳

[lovertm]

x x

[chasingrainbowsforever]

~ Bright Blue ~

[jeanhm]

[m-o-p-e]

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her…. a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them, and pushed gently, thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you be so fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you.

And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude

[humpbacking]

How did I get into this weird hobby?

It all started as I was rehearsing for a Google interview. I was interested in working for Deepmind, but Google had openings in security and I thought: "Why not?" So I engaged. The Google interview process is famously challenging, but they also have great facilities for helping you bone up. A good friend of mine was one of those patient volunteers who participate in "Mock" interviews that give you feedback and advice to help you perform your best.

So I was sitting with my interviewer friend and talking about what I could diagram, at an architectural level, to demonstrate my command of building scalable infrastructure. I proposed the idea of doing Google Translate, but my friend countered with "We already have one of those" which, of course, made sense. "If you want to stand out, do something original" he suggested.

So I thought a bit more. Over lunch we had been discussing the NOAA dataset which had recently been released and studied by a small team of Google developers. They'd built a neural net which learned how to recognize various species by the sounds they make. (I had skimmed over the resulting research paper some time ago.) So I spitballed to my friend as I ate my Cobb salad. "What if I could make something that talks to animals? That would be different." My friend got uncharacteristically excited by the idea, telling me quickly about a project he'd heard of recently which was using deep learning in conjunction with the NOAA dataset to analyze the sounds made by Grey Whales, and had recently released some shocking results, namely that there was a fully consistent set of sounds that seemed to map symbolically to a complex language -- essentially, solid evidence that Grey Whales speak to each other in full sentences. This was mind-blowing to me. I hadn't heard about it at all before that day, but by the time we'd finished eating, I was already obsessed with the notion of building a translator for other species, and all the headaches and wonder that would likely come from such an endeavor.

I ended up not getting the job at Google. It's a long story, and not that interesting. But the pursuit of animal communication stayed with me. I decided to use Humpback Whales as my first species of focused inquiry simply because, as a youth, my mother had bought me a subscription to National Geographic (thanks, mom!) and when I was about 6 or 7 years old, I received in the mail the iconic issue in which a recoding of Humpback songs was included as an insert. I listened to it over and over again on a toy phonograph player I'd received for my birthday. The only other records I owned were "The Osmond Family" and "The Jackson Five" to which I listened in equal measure with Whale Songs, but my most exotic fantasies were all reflections of the wonder I experienced while listening to that Humpback recording. Humpbacks weren't as danceable, but it was clear there was a deep mystery in those resonating calls. My childhood fascination returned to me in fits and starts as I began to piece together a system that might actually tell me what was happening in those recordings.

[reasonsforhope]

"Eavesdropping on whale songs over the last six years is providing new information vital to answering questions about these giants of the ocean.

The number of whale songs detected is associated with shifting food sources, according to the California scientists—and the number of days humpbacks have been singing has nearly doubled.

When monitoring baleen whale songs in the Pacific Ocean, researchers found year-to-year variations correlated with changes in the availability of the species they forage on.

In vast oceans, monitoring populations of large marine animals can be a “major challenge” for ecologists, explained Dr. John Ryan, a biological oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California (MBARI).

Their team deployed underwater microphones called hydrophones to study and track baleen whales, which communicate over long distances through sound.

“Surprisingly, the acoustic behavior of baleen whales provides insights about which species can better adapt to changing ocean conditions,” said Dr. Ryan, a lead author of the study.

They also monitored songs from blue, fin, and humpback whales off the West Coast of the U.S. to see what the song data could reveal about the health of their ecosystem.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, showed “large” year-to-year variations in whale song detection.

“The amount of humpback whale song continually increased, with their songs being detected on 34% of days at the beginning of the study and rising to 76% of days after six years,” said Dr. Ryan.

“These increases consistently tracked improved foraging conditions for humpback whales across all study years—large increases in krill abundance, followed by large increases in anchovy abundance.

“In contrast, blue and fin whale song rose primarily during the years of increasing krill abundance.

“This distinction of humpback whales is consistent with their ability to switch between dominant prey. An analysis of skin biopsy samples confirmed that changes had occurred in the whales’ diets.”

He explained that other factors, including the local abundance of whales, may have contributed to patterns in song detections observed in some years, but changes in foraging conditions were the most consistent factor.

“Overall, the study indicates that seasonal and annual changes in the amount of baleen whale song detected may mirror shifts in the local food web.”

WHALES ON THE COMEBACK TRAIL: • Gray Whale, Extinct for Centuries in Atlantic, Is Spotted in Cape Cod • Sighting of Many Blue Whales Around Seychelles is First in Decades – ‘Phenomenal’ • Majestic Sei Whales Reappear in Argentine Waters After Nearly a Century

“The results suggest that an understanding of the relationship between whale song detection and food availability may help researchers to interpret future hydrophone data, both for scientific research and whale management efforts”, which could better protect endangered species."

-via Good News Network, March 1, 2025

[acorviart]

humpback aberration

[rayenigma]

decided to try out blockbench after blender traumatizing me and ITS SO FUN??? here's a silly humpback whale I made as a quick test and my first model! will definitely try some more, currently working on a lowpoly model of KDD ryzac (my wrist hurts)