A fascination with these magnificent mammals of the sea is a huge first step in getting people to care for them.

UH graduate student Alison Stimpert counts on that for her ultimate goal.... conservation.

"I got involved with marine mammals and just kind of stuck with it because I find that they're really good ambassadors for geting the conservation message out," says Stimpert.

Stimpert studies the language of the humpback whales. Not the SONGS, but the SOCIAL sounds.

"Humpbacks are very famous for the songs that they make and they're very long complex patterns of sounds. But they also make a lot of social sounds, which tend to be shorter, and kind of bursts of sounds, grunts and things and they're used a lot in competitive groups when the males are competing for access to females," says Stimpert.


To record the sounds, Stimpert uses suction cup tags equipped with a recorder. She has federal and state permits that allow her to get within 30 feet of the whales to place the temporary tags on the whale's back. Here's a sample ...Listen for the grunts amidst the song.

Some fascinating discoveries...Stimpert says humpbacks have a certain "call" for a feeding behavior in Alaska that they don't use here. So there may be a distinct Hawai'i language. But the main concern....

"We're concerned about the rising levels of noise in the ocean so if we can figure out how the whales are using the sounds then we might be better able to understand how noise might affect them," she says.

And so her work is not done, but neither is the fascination with these giants of the sea.

Monthly lectures at the Bishop Museum's whale exhibit will be held through September.