#whaleposting

Top five times whales looked tuff facing the front.

#5. Imposing. Kubrick stare tilt. Very tuff.

#4. Smug. Challenging. Dominant. I'd say that whale is tuff.

#3. He knows you're looking, and he's looking back. Tuff.

#2. The speed. The power. The intention. He'll kick your ass. That's seriously tuff.

#1. Tuffest whale of all time. Squared up. Ready for anything. Commands the whole sea with his astounding presence.

Look, i just really like whales okay

Was listening to golden brown while drawing this... Now the song is ringing in my head like crazy

I draw whales when i pluck my lips

hi!! i am now also excited because i absolutely love excuses to talk about whales and especially the ones i work with—

i worked on a whale watch boat for two years (and hopefully, if all goes well, i'll get to work on another for even longer) and one of my primary responsibilities there was data collection! that means logging location, encounter times, species, behaviors, and, most relevantly, photographing and identifying the individual whales involved.

as i said in that post, humpbacks are identified by the coloration and markings on the underside of their tails. no two are the same! as an example here are two pretty clearly different tails, belonging to whales named "mogul" (left) and "valley" (right). notice the stark difference in color, the unique overall shapes of the tails in comparison to each other, the big nicks on the trailing edge of valley's, all those little details written in black on the white tail and in white on the black tail...

those markings can end up in shapes that our silly little ape brains recognize, and that's both a convenient point to recognize them by and the source of many of their names.

for example: "3.14" on the left (yes, "pi" was taken) has a marking on his left fluke that looks a lot like the pi symbol. the tail of "scorpio," right, has a blobby, upside down little scorpion—you, uh, need to use your imagination for some of these, it's like seeing shapes in clouds, but it makes for much easier memorization!

"joy"...

(public use photo by mitch doucet on happywhale; i have yet to photograph joy myself)

....yeah. he comes with a label and all. very helpful of him.

humpbacks can also be identified by their dorsal fins!

(in order: draco, gondolier, ventisca, decimal)

i've picked some especially distinct ones here for demonstration purposes, but generally they're not quite as precise and reliable as the tails. but when you lack a fluke shot, sharpening your eye for recognizing dorsal fins is a valuable skill to have!

you may also be wondering how we see them enough to recognize them like we do. these whales demonstrate remarkable site fidelity and, despite migrating thousands of miles to their breeding grounds every year, they are extremely loyal to their feeding grounds and always return to this very same area—the gulf of maine—year after year. some of these whales have been known and spotted consistently for nearly 50 years! some 3,000+ humpbacks in this population have been named and catalogued since studies began and they are all documented in one big catalogue that researchers can use to identify their sightings by. there's one whale i've seen 20+ times by now....

but anyway, stopping here for now because i feel! uh! a bit pretentious, almost! but thank you for the ask!

(Turns the ship around and pretends he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Is still not sure if he'd had a vision or if something has actually happened.)

How it's going onboard the ship currently:

Or is it? I'm willing to risk it. I did risk it years ago and oh well, I have been "avoiding eye contact from nine to five" with Certain Individual ever since. But I could do it again to test the theory a little.

And I'm doing it a tiny bit out of spite towards Bildad and Peleg's "Christian boat" nonsense. How do you like the actual Christians onboard now? If you only knew.. maybe it's for the best than they don't. Even one third of what's actually happening would send them to an early grave due to a heart attack. Therefore they must know.

Besides Steelkit said "Fuck the Captain" and all I can say is "Can't you see that I'm trying"?? I'm trying; help me God!