Andrew Stevenson’s discoveries about humpback whale behavior in Bermuda make a compelling case for increased protection.

Liz Cunningham’s Ocean Hope Chronicles are dedicated to inspiring individuals who are making a difference to protect the life of the seas. 

“Within a half an hour of doing some basic research, I realized I was sitting on a gold mine.”

Documentary filmmaker and author, Andrew Stevenson was telling me how he began his work with humpback whales. It started when he was on the beach in Bermuda where he lived with his two-year-old daughter, Elsa. A humpback whale breached and landed with a loud boom.

“What’s that?” Elsa asked. 

“It’s a whale,” Stevenson answered.

“Why do they do that?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go up to the house and find out.”

Stevenson began combing through research. It was commonly thought that humpbacks in the North Atlantic migrated from breeding grounds in the south to feeding grounds in the north, a trajectory of thousands of miles across open ocean. 

But what happened in-between? Very little was known: the gold mine. Bermuda was plunk in the middle of that trajectory—a chance to explore the mysterious mid-ocean behavior of humpback whales as they passed through Bermudian waters.

“I threw myself off the deep end,” Stevenson remarked wryly as we sat on a couch in the living room of his home. He purchased underwater photography gear and with some support from the Bermudian government perched himself in the offshore waters, searching for whales during the migration season. After hundreds of hours in the water, sunburnt, wind burnt and achy from hauling heavy equipment, all his efforts had come up dry. Not one minute of footage of a whale.

Then in late April, he spotted a pod of dolphins. Why not get into the water with them? He slipped into the water with his camera. Suddenly their body language changed. They started clicking more. 

He looked down: right beneath him was a forty-five-foot long humpback. Hovering, calm, only a few feet away. “I could have touched him,” Stevenson told me.

The whale was looking upward. At him.

It was a profound encounter that lasted for two hours, and the beginning of over fifteen years of research on humpback whales. Since then Stevenson has made two award-winning documentaries (“Where the Whales Sing” and “The Secret Lives of Humpback Whales”) and authored the book Whale Song: Journeys into the Secret Lives of the North Atlantic Humpbacks and the upcoming The Whale Whisperer: Close Encounters with Humpback Whales. He has compiled an ID catalog of almost 2,000 individual humpback whales and over eighteen months of underwater recordings documenting whale song.

No one has accrued anywhere near the amount of time Stevenson has observing whales in Bermuda, roughly 4,500 hours on and in the water, let alone innumerable hours compiling research, writing and producing documentaries about whales. Specific places and creatures call to us or “find us.” The whale Stevenson encountered in 2007 did just that. A deep connection was formed and a corridor for curiosity and action unfolded, fueling a desire to help protect humpback whales.

Whales need protection where they feed and breed and in the open ocean where they are vulnerable to ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and marine noise, that mix of ear-splitting cavitation from ship propellers, sonar blasts and seismic air guns used for oil exploration which causes a pernicious array of impacts, from mass stranding to burst eardrums to the blunting of their means to communicate and locate prey using sound. 

The main protected area north of Bermuda is the Stellwagen National Marine Sanctuary Bank off the New England coast, and to the south, the Marine Mammal Sanctuary of Silver and Christmas Banks in the Dominican Republic. Other smaller protected areas dot the northern and southern regions, but more protection is sorely needed. Humpbacks in the North Atlantic migrate from not only the Dominican Republic but the Greater and Lesser Antilles, traversing north of Stellwagen Bank to the Gulf of Maine, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

What Stevenson has discovered about whales in Bermuda drives home the compelling need for increased protection in Bermuda. Originally it was thought that humpbacks only fed in the north, but Stevenson has documented them feeding in Bermudian waters. He has observed breeding behavior thought only to occur in the south, robust scuffles between male groups chasing after a female. He has recorded whales singing to each other, observed them  form herds with a coordination akin to a flock of migratory birds—swimming in a straight line north, their breath synchronous, the largest whale up front. A likely explanation is that the whales aggregate in Bermuda before going north through “the gauntlet” of the orcas. That would be especially important for the mother whales guiding their calves who are extremely vulnerable to attacks. Orcas are rarely found south of Bermuda. But north of Bermuda, they pose a substantial threat, well-documented by the serrated tooth marks on the whale’s flukes.

All the more important, then, to strengthen protections. Bermuda sits within the Sargasso Sea, an “ocean within an ocean,” edged by the clockwise gyre of large currents in the North Atlantic. The Sargasso Sea, with its biologically-rich mats of Sargassum seaweed which are a safe haven for juvenile fish and turtles, has long been known as a biodiversity hot spot and a migratory crossroads for vast numbers of species. It is a designated Mission Blue Hope Spot, one of many specific places identified as critical to the health of the oceans. The oceanographer Sylvia Earle founded  Mission Blue and pioneered the idea of Hope Spots to galvanize support for a global network of marine protected areas. The first international agreement for protecting the Sargasso Sea came in 2014, the Hamilton Direction on Collaboration for the Conservation of the Sargasso Sea.

The island life of Bermuda flourishes on top of the remnants of extinct volcanoes, part of what geologists call the Bermuda Rise, a mid-ocean basin swell that rises over 14,000 feet from the Atlantic seafloor. Above water the remnants form the islands, fringed with coral reefs and lagoons, rich with bird song and palmetto trees, peppered with resorts and vacation homes, bustling with cars and Vespas. Other remnants are below water, underwater platforms called seamounts, that look like volcanos with their tops sawed off. They too bustle with life: upwellings of nutrients at their edges prime the oceanic food chain, fueling phytoplankton blooms which attract zooplankton (tiny planktonic animals such as copepods, sea snails and krill) which attract larger fish—breams, chubs, parrotfish, snapper—and migratory species such as rays, sharks, swordfish, tuna and whales.

There is something to be said for the insight that a world is only as healthy as its food chain. Seamounts rank high among biological hotspots that prime oceanic food webs and a substantial concentration of the whale behavior Stevenson has observed is on the Challenger Bank seamount, just southwest of the islands, about 180 feet below the surface.

“What I would just love to see is for Challenger Bank to be off limits for private and commercial whale watching for six weeks in the prime migration season,” Stevenson told me. That six-week period, when the whales feed, mingle and re-group, runs from mid-March through the end of April. It’s the most important period, Stevenson told me, because the whales have been starving down south, they are hungry to feed by the time they get to Bermuda and very likely are gathering to form protective convoys to journey on northward. “The fishermen can still fish on the edges, where the whales are often seen feeding,” Stevenson explained. “The whales are not particularly disturbed by the fishermen there. It is the top of Challenger Bank, the platform, that is important for singing and aggregating.”

So, what protections would be needed? Currently there is a 10,000 dollar fine for harassing a whale—chasing them or approaching them too close. But the penalty needs to be enforced. The most important thing, Stevenson said, is for whale-watching boats to follow internationally recognized guidelines. When boats come too close, the whale’s diving, feeding, and social patterns are disrupted. The guidelines specify that one boat cannot approach within 100 meters of a whale. If there is a boat within 100 meters, all the other boats have to stay 300 meters away from the whale.

“Challenger Bank is the hot spot for humpback whales,” Stevenson explained. “If I can’t find whales anywhere else, I’ll end up on the crown of it and I will just sit there for hours. Eventually, I will find whales.” But ultimately, Stevenson stressed, we need to protect all Bermudian waters, not just Challenger Bank. He added that whales are often seen off of the South Shore of Bermuda, which is easily accessed by whale-watching boats.

As I chatted with Stevenson he recounted more behaviors he had observed—skittish groups of juvenile females with older females he called grandmothers who perhaps no longer go down south to breed. Whales diving for almost fifty minutes, when conventional wisdom has it that they dive for under twenty minutes. Mother whales with very young calves in December and early January when it would be too early for them to have migrated from the south, broaching the question, Have whales given birth in Bermuda? Whales rolling like “labradors on a carpet” in shallow sand beds, presumably to get rid of lice in the folds of their jaws, their mouths filled with water to expand the accordion-like pleats that run from their jaws to their bellies. 

Stevenson’s descriptions are laced with a sense of continued mystery, of how much we still don’t know about humpback whales, and a knowing regard for their innate majesty and grace. He recounted seeing an emaciated mother with a “chubby” calf over a year old. Normally a mother would part with a calf when it’s six months old. But the calf had severe entanglement scars from lacerations where fishing gear had gouged through its skin, Stevenson explained, his voice softening. “The mother had stayed with it to continue nursing it.”

The need to strengthen protections in Bermuda, especially on Challenger Bank, sets in relief the need for more international coordination to protect species—chains of protected areas which work in tandem with each other. To protect a migratory species you need to ask, What is the shape of their home? For migratory species the shape of home stretches across vast swathes of the planet. To protect them we need to protect the corridors of their journeys.

Stevenson’s story fits into a bigger story about hope for humpback whales. His efforts are part of the larger fabric of efforts that reversed the trajectory of humpback whales toward extinction. Our planetary future is becoming more uncertain by the day, but we have stories to guide us: the story of humpback whales shows us how potent grassroots action can be and that there can be turnarounds, even at the horrific brink of extinction. 

The efforts on behalf of humpback whales, who virtually became the poster child of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, were key to their listing under the Endangered Species Acts in the 1970s in the United States and the moratorium on hunting humpback whales in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission. Before that moratorium, humpback whale populations had been reduced to five percent of preindustrial levels: for every twenty whales that once existed there were only one. That slide towards extinction was halted and humpback whale populations are now recovering, a slow, but significant growth in population. 

Refusal to accept destruction can be fiercely powerful. Action, catalytic. In the alchemy of the two, hope was forged for humpback whales, an amalgam of individual efforts that begs to differ with the cynicism and resignation that is so tempting in chaotic times. The humpback whales that exist today are thanks to all the people who refused to accept that they would be hunted to extinction. As artist and conservationist Barbara Putnam once pointed out to me about the dignity of mother whales escorting their calves north, despite all the dangers they faced, “Surely, the bravery of these mammals can and must be matched by our own.”

Speaking with Stevenson I was struck by the joyful fascination with whales he exuded and his sense of purpose. It was a reminder that many people who work on behalf of other living creatures and habitats feel that despite the fact that they are offering the gift of their attention and effort, an even greater gift has come to them in return.

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About The Author

Liz Cunningham is the author of the award-winning Ocean Country: One Woman’s Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Seas, with a foreword by Carl Safina. Her mission is to be a voice for the life of the seas and the people who are working to save it, to inspire and empower others to join these efforts and forge a sustainable future. She writes about ocean conservation and the traits we need to be effective stewards of our seas and our planet, among them courage, the power of the passion for rescue, and our capacity to work together to implement solutions. Learn more about her work at http://www.lizcunningham.net 

Related Links

• Andrew Stevenson’s Web site with more information about whales in Bermuda and links to his books and documentaries.
• Mission Blue’s Hope Spots—an interactive map with information about the global network of protected areas.
• Allied Whale, a recognized leader in the development of techniques used by whale biologists.
• The Sargasso Sea Commission’s Web site with educational and scientific resources.

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