So I had two wonderful research assistants with me this past summer, and one of them, it was her last evening before going to fly back.
And so it’s our last evening. It’s a beautiful evening on the water. We don’t seeing any whales right off the base, we go to Cape St Lawrence which is the most northwestern point of Cape Breton Island. And around the corner, up along the highlands, there’s beautiful groups of pilot whales just kind of socializing and lazing around in the water.
And we’re watching them and of course you turn the boat off and you just drift along and they’re drifting to you and from you and you’re kind of like in a pilot whale soup, which is amazing. It’s the best way to watch them because you’re not creating noise, you’re just stopped. You’re just letting the whales do what they want.
And then all of a sudden we had these, these juveniles and sub adults come up to the edge of the boat and one by one there was three of them that were close, they turned over onto their backs and started flipper slapping all together. All three of them in tandem.
One started, and then the others. You could just see them get them on their backs and they’re like slap, slap. And this went on for like seven minutes that you had this trio of flip slapping pilot whales.
And I’ve seen singles and doubles, but this was the first time I’d seen three of them almost touching each other on their backs, flipper slapping.
And of course with flipper slapping you might say, okay, well, what’s the function of flipper slapping? It seems like it’s just amazing. A lot of pilot whales do it. It’s one of my favorite behaviours. They roll on their back, they take those long, noodly wobbly, long pectoral fins, and they just slap the water, sometimes with one fin, sometimes with two, both fins at the same time. And it’s like a moment which exudes pure joy.
Why exactly we do it, we don’t know. It’s often when they’re socializing, it’s often when they’re goofing around. So, you know, it’s hard to prove some things for fun, but that’s kind of what it feels like might be occurring. But it’s certainly one of the, I call them the gestures of the sea sometimes.
They’re very charismatic, they’re very gregarious and they like to goof around. And that’s pilot whales for you. So that was like one of my favorite memories from the summer was just this trio of flip slapping pilot whales on their backs right near the boat. Just really everyone was just hanging out. And so moments like that, of course, just amazing.
-Elizabeth
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 88 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here
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