Mark Healey, casually swimming with whales. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
One of the most wonderful things about spearfishing, free diving, or generally just being in the ocean — especially in places like Hawaii and Mexico — are the sounds of the whales.
Depending on the season, the humpback whales’ mournful calls can travel thousands of miles, full of complexity. They’re thought to be used in mating displays or as a way of showing dominance. Interestingly, they’re thought to be structured in similar manner to human language. In the case of the sperm whale, AI recently developed a sort of phonetic alphabet that could be the closest we’ve ever come to actually cracking the communication barrier.
Mark Healey, a man who spends much of his time either in or on the water, is familiar with the sounds of the humpback whale. In his most recent video, he chucked a GoPro in the water in the middle of the Ka Iwi Channel and heard “the loudest, most insane humpback whale singing” he’s ever heard.
