A whale of a winter (lame pun intended)

On Monday, we went out to McGregor's Point to observe humpback whales.

There is so much we don't know about humpbacks. They are mysterious, even to scientists who study them for a lifetime. Questions like why do they sing, who exactly do they sing to, how do they sing, how did they find Maui, and how did they come up with their unique feeding patterns baffle people, even with all the technology we have. And even though I (probably) won't be finding the answers to those questions anytime soon, I personally would like to learn about pod types.

Question: Which whale pod is most frequent?

Hypothesis: I think mother and calf pods are going to be the most common since the whales come here to give birth.

My first observation was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of whales that day. Most were close enough we could even see a fin or tale. There were a few challenges, though. Sometimes it was hard to tell exactly how many whales were in a pod and our weight on the clinometer was flopping around in the wind and we couldn't get an exact angle to see how far away the whales are. Overall, though, it was a sunny day out in the field and I enjoyed it.

~Using the clinometer~

When using the clinometer, you need to hold it to where the weight is hanging down, appearing to be hanging from the peephole. (See pictures above)

With a partner looking at your clinometer to record the angle you're at when looking at whales (and making sure that the wind is not interfering with your measurement) write the angle down. Once you have that information, you need to know how high you are. Check your altitude with a GPS. With all this information, you can find out how far away the whale is.

Since you are at a right angle, one angle is at default 90 degrees. Your second angle is the measurement you got from the clinometer. The last angle can be measured from adding the your first two angles and subtracting from 180.

After getting this information, use this formula (plugging in numbers)

Distance = Elevation x tan (angle of inclination)

And voila! You have your distance.