Although they’re referred to as songs, male humpbacks technically are humming when they create their famous underwater compositions. The recital may contain half a dozen distinct themes that they’ve learned from other males, from one year to the next. (Video limited to U.S. & Territories.)

A group of male humpback whales compete for the affection of a female. After the female leaves and the mating marathon ends, the overlooked males engage in some surprising behavior. (Video limited to U.S. & Territories.)

Follow a baby humpback whale as she travels from her birthplace in Hawaii, to feeding grounds off Alaska’s coast. Escorted by her mother, this newborn will learn many things along the way. And when the pair returns to Hawaii, this yearling will be ready to take her place in her own community of whales. Buy the DVD. This film premiered November 15, 2009.

Humpbacks travel between Hawaii and Alaska every year, guided by their internal compass. The krill-rich waters of Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago are the whales’ summer feeding grounds, an environment very different from the calving grounds they have left behind in Hawaii. Here, more than the water temperature changes, the behavior of the whales changes, as well. While fiercely competitive in the breeding season in Hawaii, fighting for mates and protecting young, the opposite is true in Alaska. Whales cooperate, working in teams to gather food in the most efficient way possible. When the summer ends and the food is gone, mother and baby will head back to Hawaii again.

The young humpback calf has only a year to learn the subtleties of whale society before she is left by her mother to continue her education on her own, learning from observation and experience. It’s an incredible journey between two strikingly different environments that reveals the true complexity of the fellowship of the whales.

NATURE’s Fellowship of the Whales premieres Sunday, November 15 at 8pm (check local listings).

Photo © 2008 (Peggy Stap / Hawaii Whale Research Foundation) under NMFS Research Permit No. 587-1767-01

The two-hundred-foot walls of ice in Glacier Bay overwhelm the senses, but they also surround the most beautiful sights Alaska has to offer — the Northern Lights, the roaming grizzly bears, and the humpback whales. The glacier itself is also creating new life — it has retreated some 70 miles up the bay, wiping the ecological slate clean, allowing new plants and animals to start again from scratch. This film originally premiered November 7, 1993.

NATURE’s Humpback Whales follows these migrating marine mammals and presents their unique singing and hunting habits.

Graceful and magnificent, humpback whales inspire awe in young and old alike. These marine mammals travel great distances to take advantage of the best breeding grounds and feeding spots. North Pacific humpbacks, for example, mate and give birth in Hawaii and then travel to Alaska each summer to feed.

These gentle giants are famous for their singing abilities — belting out seductive ballads to attract mates or to challenge other would-be suitors. But they also have other talents. Their unique hunting skill, called bubblenet feeding, involves a group of humpbacks working together to capture schools of herring. Each whale has a particular role in the process: One whale swims in a circle while blowing bubbles under a school of herring. When the bubbles rise, the school of herring can not escape and form into a tight ball in the center. Other whales vocalize — grunting or screaming — to scare the herring to the surface. The whales then rise with their mouths wide open to capture large amounts of fish.

Trek across the oceans with these astounding creatures and discover more revealing details about their wonder-filled, watery ways.

Online content for Humpback Whales was originally posted January 2000.

Just off a rocky coast, a broad whale’s tail arcs elegantly out of the ocean, hangs for an instant above the waves, then slides into the depths. The scene soon repeats itself, as the great creature again breaks the surface to take another breath, exhaling a misty spout through a blowhole atop its head, then quickly fills its lungs again.

A moment later, another whale in the group is “spyhopping,” lifting a third of its body out of the water like a periscope to get a better look around. Then it is “lobtailing,” repeatedly slapping its flukes, or tail, against the surface like blows from a giant floppy hammer. Eventually, yet another whale “breaches,” rocketing its entire 40-foot long, 30-ton body out the water, then crashing back down, filling the sea with foam and the air with thunder.

Such athletic, captivating performances have made the humpback whale a favorite sight for the thousands of people who go on whale-watching cruises each year. “It is one of the most interesting and gregarious great whales in the sea,” says Gary Lyder, a biologist who has guided whale cruises around the world. “They are very curious and will often come right up to your boat. I never get tired of watching them, and learn something new each time I see one.”

And, as NATURE’s Humpback Whales shows, the whale’s remarkable and often mysterious habits have also made it a favorite study subject for scientists. Their discoveries — from the realization that male whales sing complex songs while suspended in the depths, to the fact that feeding whales can use ingenious air bubble nets to herd fish — have helped bring about a new appreciation for this vulnerable animal, which whalers once killed by the thousands.

A humpback whale spyhops.

Today, however, the endangered humpback is protected by law and populations have rebounded to nearly 20,000 worldwide, about 20 percent of prior numbers. Humpback Whales gives viewers a front-row seat to the spectacle of this recovery, traveling from the frigid waters of Alaska and Antarctica to the tropical Pacific isles of Fiji and Tonga to reveal the whale’s complex underwater society — a world of both tenderness and aggression. Rare underwater footage documents both: the gentle bond between mother and calf, the fierce rivalry and sparring among males. Diving photographers also capture some of the humpback’s most remarkable habits, from its submerged concerts to the stunning feeding sessions in which a whale can trap hundreds of herring within a curtain of bubbles, then swallow the entire school in a single gulping lunge.

The humpback earned its common name from its swimming style, in which its arched, or humped, back lifts out of the water. But to many scientists, the humpback’s flukes are a far more interesting part of the whale’s body. That’s because each whale has uniquely shaped and colored tail fins that can be used to identify specific whales. “Fluke patterns are like fingerprints,” notes Lyder. “No two whales are alike.”

Each whale’s fluke patterns are unique. Indeed, researchers have compiled thousands of photographs of the dark gray-and-white humpback flukes over the years, creating massive catalogs that allow scientists to name and number each whale, tracking their movements around the ocean. Sometimes, the whales are given light-hearted names, such as Lace or Dappled, that reflect their markings. Other times, the names reflect the realities of life at sea: Tidbit, for instance, had a chunk of tail flesh missing from a killer whale attack, while Lopsided probably lost one side of its tail to a ship’s propeller.

Each whale’s fluke patterns are unique.

As Humpback Whales shows, researchers are also using newer technologies to study humpbacks. Using specially modified crossbows and rifles, they fire customized darts at the whales to collect tiny bits of flesh, which are then used to genetically fingerprint the animals. The genetic information allows researchers not only to identify specific animals, but also to work out family relationships. The genetic data has allowed researchers to conclude, for instance, that the world’s three major humpback populations — North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Southern Oceans — rarely interbreed.

Such information could be key to protecting humpbacks and ensuring their survival. But it may shed little light on the behaviors, from lobtailing to singing, that captivate many who come to know the whales. While many researchers agree that the whales are using both their bodies and voices to communicate, there is little consensus on exactly what each behavior means. Some say lobtailing, for instance, is a warning or threat, while others believe it is more of a welcoming gesture. “We know the whales are saying something,” says Lyder. “The question, however, is what it is.”

In the late 1960s, whale biologist Roger Payne and several colleagues did something a little unusual, and it paid off with spectacular results. The researchers dumped a microphone into the sea, hoping to listen in on the underwater conversations that Payne believed whales were having. But “some people weren’t sure we were going to hear anything — they said it was just a waste of time,” Payne recalled to a journalist at the time.

It worked better than anyone had imagined, however, capturing a remarkable array of creaks, groans, and moans produced by humpback and other whales. Recordings of the whale songs were soon selling out at music stores, and people around the world were debating the meaning of the haunting melodies. The discovery earned the humpback a new nickname: “Songster of the Sea.”

Humpback whales are underwater crooners

Today, scientists know more than ever about the song of the humpback. They know, for instance, that while both male and female humpbacks can produce sounds, only the males appear to produce organized songs with distinct themes and melodies, almost always on breeding grounds. As NATURE’s Humpback Whales shows, the males often sing while suspended deep below the surface, their long front flippers jutting rigidly from their sides. The songs can last up to 20 minutes, and can be heard more than 20 miles away. The male may repeat the same song dozens of times over several hours, and whales in the same geographic area sing in very similar “dialects.” Song patterns can change gradually over time, so that new songs emerge every few years.

Researchers still aren’t sure exactly how the whales produce the sounds. Whales don’t have vocal cords, so they probably sing by circulating air through the tubes and chambers of their respiratory system. But no air escapes during the concerts — and their mouths don’t move.

Scientists are also unsure about what the songs mean. Originally, observers believed they were a mating call, used to advertise the male’s availability to passing females. This idea was reinforced when divers observed other whales approaching the singers.

More recently, however, some researchers have come to believe that the singing humpbacks are actually issuing threats, not singing love songs. In part, that idea arose because scientists discovered that many of the whales approaching singers were other males, and the meeting would often end in a tussle. “It looks like the singing whale is telling the other males who is the boss,” says Gary Lyder, a whale biologist and whale watching guide.

Another recent theory is that the singing whales are simply finding out who is in the neighborhood, using the songs as a form of sonar for tracking nearby whales. But many scientists are skeptical of the idea, in part because the whales only seem to sing on breeding grounds.

Researchers may never be able to know for certain what the songs mean. But they continue to pore over recordings and replay the whale’s greatest hits. And in the meantime, the virtuoso whale singers continue to hit their high notes, serenading an unseen audience deep in the blue-black sea, returning again and again to the stage for haunting encores.