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Humpback Whales Are Blowing \u2018Bubble Rings\u2019 at Boats. Are They Trying to Communicate?<\/p>\n
Researchers bring a SETI approach to the question of what\u2014if anything\u2014humpbacks\u2019 underwater smoke rings might be trying to \u201csay\u201d<\/p>\n
By Melissa Hobson edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n A humpback whale known as Kараул (Watchtower) produced this bubble ring in Hawaii in 2020.<\/p>\n Humpback whales are known for their extensive use of bubbles\u2014from powerful, aggressive bursts that prove their prowess during courtship to the bubble-net \u201ccurtains\u201d they produce to round up prey in a spectacle that often draws tourists from around the world.<\/p>\n Now a new study published in Marine Mammal Science explores rare instances when humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) create dramatic, doughnut-shaped vortex bubbles that look like a rolling underwater smoke ring.<\/p>\n Videos of humpback whales blowing bubble rings. Credit: Simon Hilbourne, Molly Gaughan, Karime Nicholas<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and their colleagues at other institutions\u2014including the SETI Institute, which is known for focusing on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) but is also interested in nonhuman intelligences on Earth\u2014were looking for examples of whales\u2019 general bubble behavior when they uncovered a striking video taken by videographer Dan Knaub in 1988. In the footage, a humpback called \u201cThorn\u201d blows 19 bubble structures\u2014including 11 rings\u2014over a 10-minute period.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just gobsmacked\u2014like, \u2018What the hell is going on?\u2019\u201d says Fred Sharpe, a whale biologist at U.C. Davis. \u201cFor a team that\u2019s interested in assisting astrobiologists parse unusual signals coming from deep space, it just fell real neatly into our paradigm…. It\u2019s so bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharpe and his colleagues soon found more examples on social media and from other researchers. Study co-author Jodi Frediani, a wildlife photographer who is also at U.C. Davis, even noticed a telltale circle in a photograph a friend showed during a presentation about humpback whales. With this phenomenon on her mind, she says, \u201cI went, \u2018Gee, there\u2019s a bubble ring!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For the study, the team recorded 12 events across the North and South Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans in which 11 individual humpbacks were seen blowing bubble rings. The researchers described 39 rings in total. \u201cIt\u2019s not a lot in the world of whales but enough\u2014and in multiple oceans,\u201d Frediani says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really fun paper,\u201d says Syracuse University biologist Susan E. Parks, who studies bubble-net feeding in humpbacks and wasn\u2019t involved in the new study. \u201cIt reads like a detective story that\u2019s trying to piece together information about something that\u2019s not widely studied and happens rarely.\u201d Parks hasn\u2019t observed any bubble rings herself\u2014as far as she knows, she says, \u201cI may have seen them before and never really thought anything of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite compiling so many examples of the rings, Sharpe still doesn\u2019t know what to think about their purpose. \u201cMy guess is that this is what it\u2019s going to feel like when we first make contact with aliens,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The researchers speculate that the behavior could be playful. One whale would blow a bubble ring and then swim through it or \u201cdo a spy hop right through the middle of it,\u201d Frediani says\u2014when performing such a spy hop, the whale would peep its head vertically above the surface, right through the bubble ring. Or perhaps the animals\u2019 behavior could respresent curiosity toward humans: of the 12 recorded events, nine involved whales that approached the human observers more closely before they blew rings.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need the entire human brain trust\u2019s help deciphering this. It\u2019s almost like [the whales\u2019] blowhole is a mouth, and the symbols coming out are bubbles, as opposed to sounds.\u201d \u2014Fred Sharpe University of California, Davis<\/p>\n Could the whales be trying to communicate with us? Sharpe doesn\u2019t rule this out as a possibility. He posits that the presence of humans seems to trigger bubble blowing and that humpbacks improve with practice. \u201cThis may be a species-atypical signal that\u2019s crafted for people,\u201d he says, \u201cwhales reaching out to humans … using their own parlance, their own form of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n Parks thinks it\u2019s plausible that the animals are putting on a display for humans, but she adds that it\u2019s too soon to tell with such a small sample size. \u201cThey\u2019d want a lot more [observations] before they could say with certainty,\u201d she says. Because most of the observations were made by people, this could skew the data, she notes, although there were \u201ctwo observations from planes, so we know [the whales] do produce them [bubble rings] when people aren\u2019t present, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that more researchers know to look for these bubble rings, Parks says, reported sightings may greatly increase. With more data, Sharpe and his colleagues hope to figure out what the purpose of these swirling doughnuts of air is\u2014and whether the rings could possibly contain information. \u201cWe need the entire human brain trust\u2019s help deciphering this,\u201d Sharpe says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like [the whales\u2019] blowhole is a mouth, and the symbols coming out are bubbles, as opposed to sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharpe hopes footage from the study will help people feel connected with whales and make them want to protect the animals from human threats such as ship strikes, entanglement, noise and chemical pollution, habitat loss and disruption of the food web. He says that he also wants to find a way to let the whales \u201cknow that they\u2019ve been heard.\u201d For him, trying to decipher potential messages and find a way to respond puts the team \u201cin the same place you would be if you were trying to communicate with aliens\u2014and you got a message.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Humpback Whales Are Blowing \u2018Bubble Rings\u2019 at Boats. Are They Trying to Communicate? Researchers bring a SETI approach to the question of what\u2014if anything\u2014humpbacks\u2019 underwater smoke rings might be trying to \u201csay\u201d By Melissa Hobson edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier A humpback whale known as Kараул (Watchtower) produced this bubble ring in Hawaii in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[903,906,904,907,901,905,902],"class_list":{"0":"post-9076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-blowing","9":"tag-boats","10":"tag-bubble","11":"tag-communicate","12":"tag-humpback","13":"tag-rings","14":"tag-whales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n