Word: humpback
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...monk seal, the hoary bat and the predacious caterpillar. (There are no snakes on the islands.) Maui's waters teem with more than 700 species of fish, perhaps 20% of which are to be found only in Hawaii. The island's most faithful visitor is the humpback whale, the sportive, 40-ton leviathan that returns each whiter to the Lahaina roadstead to play and calve -and enthrall the onlooker...
...mammal research program, found that in the right whale, "Low frequency sounds occurred in similar stanzas lasting 11 to 14 minutes...These phonetic components...were so orderly that listeners could predict the appearance of the next type of signal." Carl Sagan noticed that the same phenomenon occurs in the humpback whale who is known to sing "songs" that are up to 30 minutes long, and then to repeat them a little later "phoneme for phoneme." He asks, "Is it possible that the intelligence of Cetaceans is channeled into the equivalent of epic poetry, history and elaborate codes of social interaction...
Deep Voices (Capitol). All whales make sounds, but humpback whales sing songs in regularly recurring cycles that last anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour. During the past two years, Animal Behaviorist Roger Payne and his wife Katy recorded this music of the deep and produced Songs of the Humpback Whale, which sold more than 100,000 LPs. Their second whale record contains the only recorded sounds of the elusive blue whale, as well as the latest hit by a herd of humpbacks-which, the Paynes have discovered, change their song each year. To the accompaniment of lapping...
...below the surface, continue to move east, the damage will be held to a minimum. But shifting winds could still bring the oil ashore, fouling beaches and causing massive ecological damage. The spill has already driven hundreds of sea birds ashore, bedraggled and helpless. The oil could also threaten humpback whales, which migrate through the affected area, and imperil the already endangered gray seals that winter off Nantucket. But of greatest concern is the threat to the Massachusetts fishing industry, which employs some 30,000 men and has been slowly coming back after a long period of economic depression...
...waters. Of the 87 species still extant, the biggest is the blue whale, whose tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant. Most highly developed is Orcinus orca, the "killer whale," which may be the only higher animal on earth that knows no fear. Then there is the humpback whale, renowned for its intricate but remarkably precise "songs," and the river dolphins that navigate far inland during floods, remembering underwater topography so well that they never get trapped by the receding waters...