Modern Marine

If you love whale watching, now is prime time to head for the coast. What’s more, you can contribute to marine research at the same time.

- Sonya Schoeman

Just like you and I and all South Africans, clans of sperm whales have their own dialects. For instance, Carribean sperm whales ‘talk’ differently from sperm whales in, say, the Pacific. Sperm whales communicate with a repetition of clicks, called codas. Caribbean sperm-whale clans click to a calypso rhythm of one, two, one-two-three. It’s distinct only to them, revealed Shane Gero, a research fellow at Denmark’s Aarhus University, in a paper published in 2016.

When a new calf is born to these Caribbean whales, it’s taught the sequence. ‘This is an indication that the call is really important to all the families,’ explained Shane. ‘It’s a marker of their cultural heritage. They’re basically saying, “I’m from the eastern Caribbean.” Having these dialects means that sperm whales are socially segregated. It means that cultural identity is significant to these animals.’

It’s a revelation that social structures – so important to our own species – are also important to cetaceans. Of course, to humans standing on the shoreline, whales are wondrous enough already. We see them balloon up out of the water, knowing that what’s visible is but a fraction of the enormity concealed below the surface.

The travellers among us might envy the freedom they experience as wanderers of the blue: leaving when they choose, swimming to whichever shores attract them on far sides of the world, diving to staggering depths, seeing 3D pictures in sound of creatures and chasms and charms that we can’t even fathom.

Seeing whales is easier than ever today. To do so from a boat in False Bay, David Hurwitz of Simon’s Town Boat Company is the go-to man. He has remarkable stories to tell – such as the time killer whales breached repeatedly in the wake of his boat. ‘The experience of seeing whales is life-changing,’ says Dave.