Whale count spawns huge turnout

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Neither rains, nor winds nor cloudy skies were enough to dissuade hundreds of volunteer research assistants from going about their appointed duties at dozens of beaches across Hawai'i yesterday morning.

Sandi and Frank Kingery look for whales off Diamond Head Road. They said whitecaps obscured their view. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Not an ideal day for an ocean count," said Chris Brammer, coordinator of the effort for the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. "But you know, that never seems to make any difference. People are so enthusiastic about whales that they forget all about the weather."

So enthusiastic, in fact, that this year the annual whale count will be extended from one day to three, simply to accommodate the helper overflow. The Sanctuary Ocean Count began in 1996 as a public awareness campaign aimed at helping to protect Hawai'i's vital breeding, calving and nursing grounds for humpback whales.

Since then it has grown from a handful of volunteers on one island to hundreds on O'ahu, Kaua'i and the Big Island. Yesterday, 700 volunteers reported spotting more than 1,200 whales from 65 locations.

"People plan their vacations around the whale count," said Cindy Knapman, one of two site leaders at Magic Island. "They come from all over the world."

Margie Brand, for example, from South Africa, was in Honolulu on business and signed up when local executive Tin Myaing Thein told her about participating in last year's whale count.

"We just saw nine breaches," Brand said shortly after 9 a.m. "It was quite exciting."

"It's contagious," added Thein. "Last year's group at Sandy Beach was so enthusiastic we had even more this year."

Knapman described the mating migration from Alaska to the Islands as a sort of romantic leviathan Hawai'i vacation — "without the restaurants."

"See, there's nothing for whales to eat here," she explained. "Their feeding grounds are in Alaska, where it's too cold for the females to calve. So they migrate here. The males follow them thousands of miles and go six months without food in order to breed."

Humpbacks — easily recognizable by their long, wing-like flippers and the way they hunch their backs before diving — belong to a subdivision of whales known as baleen whales that have long fringed plates instead of teeth. Although their mouths are big enough to hold a Volkswagen, humpbacks live on tiny shrimp and microscopic crustaceans known as krill.

While North Pacific humpbacks were once numerous, they were hunted to near extinction by the whaling industry during the 19th century. By the mid-20th century their numbers had dropped to about 1,000 worldwide.

In 1973, the United States government took measures to protect humpbacks, making it illegal even to disturb them. By that time many countries, including the United States, had signed treaties that abolished the hunting of whales.

In addition to giving average folks a chance to observe whales, the Survey Count's nonscientific census figures are used to corroborate the findings of scientific aerial surveys that have shown endangered humpback whales increase by about 7 percent a year in Hawaiian waters. Between 2,500 and 3,000 humpback whales are thought to migrate to Hawai'i each year. The worldwide population is estimated at somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000.

For most involved in the whale count, the thrill is mainly in seeing and learning about the world's largest mammals.

"It's overcast, it's windy, the water's choppy and everybody is having a great time," said Carey Morishige, a site leader at the Blowhole. "About half of the 20 people here have never done this before.

"Lots of tourists have stopped by to talk. And we're sharing information with them, and most of them have never laid eyes on a whale. So maybe we'll be seeing some these people again — as volunteers."

The next whale count will be Feb. 23, followed by another March 30. Those interested in participating may call 397-2656.