The following excerpts and essays come from five years of studying humpback whale behavior as a grad student. All the whale approaches were conducted under federal and state research permits (fed#707-1531-00) which allowed us to get closer to the whales than is legal for the general public. That said, field work is an adventure, and I hope you enjoy the following pages and pages and pages and pages.





Oreos
Luncheon Meat
Menehunes
Never Say Never
Talkin'Trash

Oreos
February 27, 2003

Because of the sporadic and chancy nature of field research, many of us cling to admittedly silly, superstitious, pseudo-beliefs about whale behavior. Okay, I cling to some silly, superstitious, pseudo-beliefs about whale behavior.  My favorite of these beliefs is that whales are attracted to the boat when there are Oreo’s on board. I am convinced that humpbacks should be the poster children for Nabisco, though have yet to run a rigorous scientific test of this hypothesis. Recently a friend sent me a package including cookies called Newman-O’s which are an organic version of Oreo’s (and very good, you should try some).  I had some with me on the boat last Sunday and so had the opportunity to compare the effect of an oreo-imitation against the real thing.

Both boats were out on Sunday; one was devoted to the singer work that John Potter’s group is working on with us. I captained the other boat (Kohola I) with three other people on board: Alison, Charlie, and Steve- a participant from Ohio who works with computers but would choose to be Indiana Jones if he could adopt the life of any fictional character. 

The day began with what looked like a competitive group heading West. Charlie just approved  (by the feds) to drive around whales so he was behind the wheel. We were sitting on the puka (footprint) of the last dive of this group when Kohola II came through on the radio. They had just received a call from Dave Mattila who is the rescue and research coordinator for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. There was a report of an entangled whale off Olowalu and could we check it out and stay with it until the Sanctuary boat could get there. And so a great search ensued because the fishing boat who had been following the whale had lost the group and was giving us spotty information about the group composition. We and Kohola II hopped from group to group looking for a whale with a long yellow line (so the report had said) trailing from it. Miraculously Kohola II found the group. It was a mother, escort and yearling. The yearling looked like it had been lassoed and was trailing a 100-foot long yellow rope, 5/8 of an inch thick. The rope (which was probably acquired by the whale in Alaska) had been digging into the blubber layer of the whale and was barely visible when she surfaced  it was so deeply embedded in her skin. (we never did sex id the whale, but for narrative’s sake I’m calling the yearling a female). The Sanctuary boat arrived on the scene and Kohola II and our boat stayed on to act as support vessels while they attempted to disentagle this whale.

A little history: Whales can get entangled in fishing gear while on their feeding grounds. The wounds range from minimal to fatal. Entanglements are often fatal to younger animals in particular because as they grow the rope digs further and further into their skin and eventually into their body causing either disease or injury to internal organs. There are three people in the country who have standing permission to disentagle whales from fishing gear; two of them were on the Sanctuary boat. Dave Mattila spent some of his formative years in Hawaii, but most of his working life on the east coast where he and two others worked for the Center for Coastal Studies and set up the standard protocol for rescuing entangled whales.  Ed Liman also worked for the Center for Coastal Studies and is now out here helping Dave set up a disentanglement program for Hawaii.  This is Dave’s second year here (his position didn’t exist before) and while there were several reports of entangled whales last year, none were successfully located. This was the first entangled whale in Hawaii on which a rescue was attempted.

Once the Sanctuary boat arrived, both Kohola I and Kohola II spread out 100 yards to either side. We acted as support vessels, spotting the whales when they surfaced after a long dive, and tracking them closely if the Sanctuary boat was involved in changing equipment. Dave and Ed set out in a small inflatable from their main boat. They would catch hold of the dragging lines and attach floats in an effort to slow down the whale. The aim is to get close enough to the whale to be able to cut the ropes free using knives fixed to long poles. All the rescue attempts are conducted from the boat because it is usually too dangerous to approach an entangled whale underwater. This particular yearling was feistier than any other humpback they had worked with previously. She was pulling hundreds of pounds of float resistance underwater with her, and conceivably could have taken their boat under if they’d attached it to the trailing line. Finally though, they attached a sea anchor (floating anchor) and the main knot on the rope broke. She was free.  The three whales took off at an amazing pace and K1 and K2 raced to catch up and verify that all the rope was indeed gone. The yearling passed close to K2 and the staff could not see any sign of the rope, and so concluded that it had been a successful disentanglement.  We tried to stay with her, and possibly get underwater verification, but lost the pod. In the end, we considered it a success and all met up at Dick’s pool hall that night to celebrate.

On the way in from that pod though, we came across a traveling dyad (two whales) and decided to get some regular data logged for the day. I tried to gauge their pace and matched it as we traveled west. Three minutes later they surfaced within yards of the boat. I’d love to chalk that up to tracking skill, but sometimes the whales have an interest in the boat, and close whatever distance may have existed. I put the boat in neutral and the whales stopped too. Oh boy, first rate mugging, here we go-- I’m telling you, it’s the Newman-o’s!!! I may have written about this before, but when whales get curious about a boat and get very, very close, we borrow a term from the whale watch boats and call it “mugging” as in “mugging for the camera.”

So we had these two 45-ton beasties floating next to the boat, occasionally moving into vertical head rises. Usually, I’m very cautious with encounters like these, but this day I was hanging over the side of the boat, trying to get a better look. I almost got in the water, but decided against it. We suspected it was a male-female pair with the female displaying most of the curiosity. At one point she swam past the bow (that I was perched on) and brought her pectoral fin in a sweep within inches us. I backed away from the edge of the boat, and reconsidered my assessment of the situation. She was getting a bit too bold.  I waited until they were sufficiently far away from the propeller, and put the boat into gear to move away. I had to move slowly, for fear of running into them. We had gone barely ten yards when I looked back, they were following us! Rapidly! I sped up, and so did they, bow waves coming off their rostrums.

So I gave up and went back into neutral. The same behavior ensued, with the one whale or both of them sitting under or right next to the boat. In one pass, the whale we thought was the male came to the front of the boat and performed an enormous tail swish that we interpreted as “Okay, I’ve had enough of this shit, get away from my girl.” Not wanting to tread on the ego of a male three times the size of our boat, we waited until they were again a fair distance from the prop and then motored away, this time not bothering to go slowly. I had Charlie and Steve (a participant) watching behind us, half expecting the two whales to give chase, but we escaped.
So though it is still only anecdotal evidence, I conclude that imitation Oreo’s are just as good as the real thing.

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How ridiculous is it that hundreds, if not thousands, of people are falling over themselves in their excitement to see humpback whales, or study them, each day? What is it about these gray, tubular, plankton vacuums that fascinates people so much?  Is it the same as the UFO phenomena, that people are desperately searching for other intelligent life-forms (or given the current political situations, any intelligent life forms would be nice). Is it that people have a need to be in awe of nature, and it’s easier to be in awe of big things, than in little things?  I suppose different aspects appeal to different people. 

Studying humpback whales through the lens of biology strips them of the first layer of mystery and other-ness. We seldom have the chance to sit back and let ourselves get hit by the amazing size and grace of these animals, except of course when we’re in fear of actually being hit by a whale, and then it ain’t grace we’re appreciating. But really, we’re trained to view whales as members of an energetic web, acting on the primary needs of eating and reproducing. Any view of altruistic, people-loving guardians of the oceans goes right out the window, and rightfully so. Whales can’t control their environment; they can’t afford to be altruistic. So it seems. But the beauty of science is that once you’ve stripped everything down to the most basic explanations, you’re still left with  mysteries to solve, and these are the good ones.



Yesterday we had two boats on the water.  Kohola II was with a singer, and we were still in search mode. I saw some splashing in the distance and drove over to a mom and calf, rolling and splashing around at the surface. This behavior is normal for a calf, but a little odd for an adult. Since they were relatively stationary, I slipped into the water to try and get some underwater footage and sizes. It took me a while to get close enough to see anything worthwhile because they were moving more than I thought at first, and because I was being more cautious due to their unpredictable behavior. What I did see though when I did get close, was something I had been fearing. The mom wasn’t a mom; it was a male.

Last year there were three occurrences of calves separated from their mothers. No one in the research community had come across this before, and no one knows what became of the mothers. The calves most certainly all died. We saw one taken down by tiger sharks, and the other two simply disappeared. It’s extremely sad, because a lone calf will approach and try to affiliate with any whale, and sometimes any boat in the area. They starve until they’re too thin and weak to keep up with other whales, and then they disappear. We observed one calf last year over the course of two days, but the whales it would affiliate with always ended up leaving it behind.

At a researchers meeting earlier this season, we discussed what to do about the “abandoned calf” situation, but since we hadn’t seen any yet this season, we decided to wait until we could show that last year wasn’t just an isolated period of time. Yesterday we discovered that it wasn’t.

We found this calf and adult at around 9:30 am and stayed with them until 5:30 when we had to go in. What was different about this calf (who someone on the other boat named “Annie” but who we called “Sweetpea”) was that she was with a subadult (who we called “Bro” or “Brother”) who stayed with her for the entire day. She was still strong enough to keep up, though she is already scarred and thin, and sometimes would do some of the biggest breaches I’ve ever seen from a calf. At one point another male sub-adult affiliated with the group and engaged in serious competition with “Bro”. It appeared as though they were competing for access to the calf. At first the situation didn’t appear to say much for the intelligence of the whales; if they’re competing for access to a female who wouldn’t be mature for another five years even if she managed to survive the season. I got “Bro’s” final (and successful) attempt to chase the other whale away on film and it’s obvious that they were competing over ‘Sweetpea”, but why?
(a week or so later)

I spoke to some other researchers in the area and they saw Sweetpea the following day. She was first with a competitive pod, then left them and affiliated with a mom and calf who crossed paths with the competitive pod. The mother was tolerant of her presence, but then their paths crossed with another Mom-Calf-Escort (MCE) pod. Sweetpea joined this group, but the new  mother became aggressive if Sweetpea ever approached to try and nurse. She ended up associating with the escort who accepted her presence. That was the last report of her.

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Luncheon Meat
1/10/04

Team One. Week One.

Did you know that Clorox bleach can completely dissolve a piece of luncheon meat in half an hour? At least, that’s what Dave Mattila told me this afternoon. We were all gathered around learning how to process biopsy samples and were discussing the best way to clean the dart tips. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide is the preferred chemical (it’s less harmful to stainless steel) to dissolve organic material, but there isn’t much on the island, so for the moment we’re using Clorox. I’m planning to run our own experiment with sliced ham tomorrow.

Dave Mattila is the scientific coordinator for the Hawaiian Islands National Marine Sanctuary and is also organizing the Hawaiian portion of an international research project called SPLASH (Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpback whales) that our project is participating in. Those of you who received updates last season will remember him as the rescue guy who disentangled the yearling.
 
Certain days throughout the season will be devoted to obtaining photos and biopsy samples for the North Pacific-wide endeavor. I was trained in biopsy darting this summer and am one of two darters for our project. Mark (the other person trained) will spend some of this season on Kauai to collect samples there for another scientist, which leaves me as the primary person wielding the crossbow for KBMML.

Today marked our first sample collection for SPLASH (I’m currently two for two). Yesterday I careened through the aisles of Home Depot looking for a tool belt that could be used as a harness as Mark or I try to balance on the bow of the boat. Random note: did you know that you can buy the big orange traffic cones at Home Depot? I filed that away for future reference.


(top:Jordy, Kira, Andrea; bottom: Amanda, myself, Katie)

For those of you new to this update list I will review the major players. The whale project for Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Lab has seven staff members this year. Mark- Canadian, grad student, co-field coordinator, the quintessential “strong, silent type”, boat engines always work for him; myself, boat engines also usually work for me; Kira- grad student, has been my roommate for two years now, keeps a large knife under her pillow (but that has nothing to do with me being her roommate); Katie- Canadian, loves working in the field but likes to accent field work with Brie and single malt scotch (I like to join her in this endeavor); Jordy- first year staff member, Canadian, Katie’s boyfriend, first rate boat driver; Amanda- first year staff member, seems sweet and quiet at first, then she’ll let out a verbal zinger that makes you take note; and Andrea- Midwesterner! first year staff member, talked tonight about a drive-through funeral home in Pensacola that her mom took a picture of. Drs. Herman and Pack will intermittently be involved. Dr. Pack is also usually known as Adam, or ScubaSteve.

I’ve been back on Maui for a week now and have had four days on the water. Part of what I love about field work is the constant adventure and whether it’s a dinghy that isn’t where it’s supposed to be, an engine that dies, stranding you in the path of an incoming boat, or videotaping a male whale who doesn’t seem to realize his true gender, there’s always something to keep you interested.

I arrived at the airport the morning that Mark flew out. I almost asked him if there was anything I should know, but thought he would tell me anything that was important. It had been raining for almost a week straight and no one had been on the water in a while. The next day was our last day to train new staff before the first team of participants arrived. So the next morning we set off for the boat harbor. We are borrowing a whale watch boat’s dinghy because we’d been denied space at the dinghy dock for the dinghy we normally use. Jordy, Amanda and I trotted down to the slip where the dinghy was supposed to be kept, but, no dinghy. There was a small, suspicious looking rubber bottomed boat with no engine upside down on the dock, but that couldn’t be the boat, could it? Sure enough, that was the “boat”. So we located the engine, attached it to the wanna-be boat after lowering it into the water, and set off to our mooring. Just outside of the harbor the engine died for the first time. Jordy successfully restarted it. We got about ten feet farther. Then it died. Then Jordy restarted it. And we got maybe 20 yards. Then it died again. And again. And again. We were rescued by the crew of a charter catamaran who took us to our boat, Kohola II. And so started the 2004 season.

But you’d like to hear about whales wouldn’t you? I already made a new friend this season. His name is “Tri.”  He’s really big, pretty scarred up, and I’m not sure he knows he’s male. We found him cruising around the channel with his buddy “Slope.”  They became a fairly stationary pair and I spent forty minutes in the water taping some unusual behavior. Typical dyad (two animal group) behavior is for one whale (usually a female) to sit horizontally in the water column, coming up to breathe every twenty minutes or so, while the male sits nearby, surfacing a little more often, maybe leaving briefly, and returning to stay near the female again. Pretty boring stuff to tape, but excellent for getting sizes of the animals.

Now Tri and Slope, not so boring. The first thing I saw was Tri resting about 70-80 feet below the surface and Slope descending with his pec fins out as if to give Tri a gigantic hug. He didn’t though, he rolled and left no doubt in my mind that he was male. The two went on to spend the next twenty minutes in almost constant physical contact and were the most vocal whales I have ever witnessed. Our hydrophone on the camera can’t determine direction (or therefore which whale was producing which sound), but there were enough social sounds going back and forth to qualify as a conversation, and a newsy one at that. What were they talking about?

At each surfacing they only moved a short distance before diving again which allowed me to stay with them without leaving the water (the ultimate compliment to the diver, or the whale’s way of saying that they couldn’t give a hoot about the my presence.) After the second dive Slope wasn’t staying quite as close to Tri and I began to think that Tri was getting a little more interested in me. They were both oriented with their rostrums towards the surface and I kept trying to get out of their path to the surface, but whales are huge and there just wasn’t a way. I thought that Slope was turning and making it impossible for me to move away, but it may have been my imagination. I waved the boat over more than once, just to have it nearby.

I’ve been in the water with male pairs before and have felt very wary. Females, especially mothers, are also a little scary sometimes, but these two seemed pretty benign. After the third dive Slope left the visible area and I was left with Tri. There he was, sitting about 70 feet below me, nose pointed towards the surface, and there I was, floating quite a ways above him. By this time I’m a little concerned and I have my head mostly out of the water, monitoring my distance to the boat vs my distance to Tri. I kept trying to swim slowly towards the boat, but either there was one hell of a current, or Tri was following me. I felt like I was leading him towards the boat. At one point I felt guilty for not giving this new friendship much of a chance, but ended up opting for proximity to the boat. Eventually Tri surfaced, with Slope, very much close to me (one of those “well, there’s nothing I can do, so I’m either going to die, or get great video footage” moments) and swam a short distance away. I left the water, deciding that that was enough for one day.

Later that night when I was reviewing the tape, I discovered a series of soft, high whistles during the period when I was in the water with only Tri. I hadn’t heard them when I was in the water because I was listening to the boat and I have to wonder if he was directing those at me, or at Slope. I must appear to be about dolphin sized, and it’s the closest sound to a dolphin whistle that whales make. Makes you wonder.

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Menehunes (men-eh-HOO-nays)
1-26-04

Warning: The following is an almost whale-free update. For whales, please stay tuned for further updates. What follows is a tale of a Murphy’s law twilight zone. We’ve since emerged, but for a week we endured luck (the bad sort) that bordered on supernatural.
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Beware the menehunes. Famed for their inclination to dismantle buildings under construction, or jinx travelers passing through tunnels, these small Hawaiian tricksters possessing magical powers seem to have expanded their repertoire to include weather, boats and trailers. For though we honk the horn every time we pass through the tunnel, and have not been building any structures and forgetting to leave offerings, the only conclusion I can come to that explains the events of the past week is that someone has seriously pissed off a menehune.

On Monday morning Mark took off for a twenty-day stint in Kauai leaving me in charge of the project. On Monday evening we picked up Mike, our participant for Team 2. He’s a four-weeker, meaning he’s here with us for team 3 as well. Mike is an eighteen-year-old taking a year off before going to college and he likes to throw rocks down hills. 

After training on Tuesday morning we were supposed to have our half-day on the water, but when we started up K2 (Kohola II, the boat) the engine didn’t sound quite right.  It wasn’t awful, so we set out, but the water was rough due to high winds and I wasn’t comfortable taking a questionable engine out in bad water, so we turned around and had a day at the house fluke matching.  The next day the engine still didn’t sound good and after talking to Mark I learned that the engine hadn’t sounded good when he moored the boat after maintenance on Saturday and suggested I check the gaps in the spark plugs. Each engine has a specific size spark plug and each plug has a specific gap that needs to be adjusted so it, well, sparks.  So I checked the gaps, and they were fine, but the engine still wasn’t. We checked all the connections, and even went back to the old plugs, but no dice. Called the mechanic and he told me to rev the engine out of gear and see if that fixed the problem. That was when we discovered a different problem. Now a week wiser I know that there is a limit to how much you should rev an engine when it’s out of gear, but there was no harm done. However the original problem was still evident and I wasn’t comfortable with the possibility of doing more harm by running the boat, so we decided to pull it and bring it in for service.

The trailer was at the house and the ramp is about a five minute’s drive from the harbor so I sent Jordy to fetch the trailer and drove the boat over to the Mala ramp. Mike came with me so he could at least have five minutes of water time. Day two and he hadn’t seen a whale in the wild yet.

The trailer strap (that bears all the tension when you’re pulling a boat) had snapped the previous Saturday when the staff were doing boat maintenance. Fortunately Jordy had changed the strap the night before, but it had yet to be tried. There was a considerable current at Mala that day and it was difficult to position the boat correctly for it to be drawn up on the trailer. We had two people up to their waists in the water to push the boat into place but with one particularly bad wave the boat turned diagonally against the wooden bunks that support a boat on a trailer. A loud noise like a crack sounded and Jordy’s face just fell, and he swore. The wooden bunk (ten foot long 2x6) had just snapped in half.

Deep breath. Backed up the boat which fortunately hadn’t been harmed by the bunk and took it back to the mooring in Lahaina while most of the staff pulled the trailer, and sent someone to pick me up in Lahaina. When we got back to Mala to investigate the trailer it was glaringly obvious that the wood had been rotted through. Jordy was able to pull the plank off the metal brackets with his hands and it just came away. Oh the joys of an underfunded project.

So we put in a call to Adam who seemed to believe that we could fix the trailer that day and pull the boat and bring it to the mechanic in Wailuku and get it back that same day. Some people are realistic; Adam is not.

We made some calls and determined the best plan was the buy the required materials and bring them and the trailer into our mechanic so he could rebuild the trailer. We were replacing both bunks because they were both rotten. The brackets that held the bunks in place were so corroded that we couldn’t remove them from the trailer itself to bring them in separately.

An hour later we were at Home Depot looking for treated 10-foot 2x6’s, indoor/outdoor carpeting and a staple gun. We checked out and were returning to the van when I discovered that I couldn’t find the keys. I had been on the phone when I left the van and had either locked them in the van, or dropped them in the gigantic store- somewhere. Despite the obvious logic of carrying a purse, and the fact that I own several of them, I always manage to wander around with two cell phones (my own and the project’s), my wallet, the whale project wallet, and a sunglasses case and not enough pockets while my purses sit in a closet.

A growing sense of dread was beginning to make me nauseous as I considered the consequences of having gotten the van and broken trailer to the parking lot of Home Depot in Kahului when it really needed to get to Wailuku and the rest of the staff was in Lahaina and it was nearing 5 pm. The keys had indeed been locked in the van (by yours truly) but luckily we hadn’t locked the back window and we were able to get the doors open. Whew!!

When we pulled into the mechanic’s (No Ka Oi Marine, “No Ka Oi” means “the best”) they looked at the trailer and whistled. “It’s worse than we thought” they said, and laughed in that “I can’t believe you carry a boat on this” sort-of-way. “Call us tomorrow around 2pm.”

So now we had a broken boat, a broken trailer, and a participant who still hadn’t seen a whale. I made a call to Dan Gubitz who is a friend who’s boat we sometimes use and he agreed to try to cancel a meeting so he could take us on the water. But then he called at 7pm to notify me that the boat hadn’t been DOCARE’d yet. Damn. Each research vessel needs to be investigated by an official from the Department of Conservation and something or other. It’s basically a safety check but you could lose your permit for not having the boat checked out prior to use. So we activated Plan B.

Plan B consisted of giving a lecture on coral reef critters that night and taking the whole crew snorkeling the next morning. You know, whales, coral, they’re both in the ocean, there’s a connection… Our project motto is “Relentless flexibility” and we were able to put that into effect last week more often than we wished.

The van brakes had never been checked prior to the start of the season and van still needed to be safety-ed so after snorkeling I called some places to see if I could bring the van in. At 2 pm I called the boat mechanic and they hadn’t even looked at the trailer yet, so we weren’t getting it back that day. I needed a Plan C for the next day. We hadn’t been running our shore station because the tripod had been left in Honolulu by mistake (of course) and we were waiting for Adam to mail it out. Meanwhile, no one was able to look at the van so I made an appointment in Wailuku for the next morning, figuring we could pick up the trailer in the afternoon and pull the boat and bring it in to the mechanic before closing. But who was I kidding.  

Andrea and I brought the van in to the Good Year near the boat mechanic and asked them to check the brakes, check the radiator hoses (which were reportedly soft) and rotate the tires. Whenever I bring the van in I have to make sure they don’t try to open the driver side door, because it doesn’t open. You have to crawl through the passenger side to get out. I think that’s a particularly classy aspect of our large dented mode of ground transport. Luckily each new batch of participants doesn’t usually notice until the second day.

A nice guy from Good Year (who advised that we flush the transmission fluids and radiator fluids- but who I told to hold off until I talked to the boss) offered to drop Andrea and I off at the mall until the van was ready. It was then 8 am. No stores were open yet, but we’re underpaid (or unpaid in Andrea’s case) whale researchers and had nothing to buy anyway. At 10 am I got a call that the reason the radiator hoses were soft was that the entire radiator was corroded and needed to be replaced. Greeeaaat. We checked the times of the matinees at the mall theater. I also put a call into Adam to inquire about whether we should really replace the radiator, but he was training dolphins and instead Dr. Herman picked up the phone. He dealt with the car mechanic and the decision was made to change the radiator. I called the boat mechanic and told them we couldn’t pick up the trailer until 4:30; of course, it was already ready.

Andrea and I got to see the movie “Big Fish” which I highly recommend. I had to run out the theater three times to answer phone calls from the lab or from the crew on shore (the tripod for the theodolite had miraculously arrived and they were running scans from shore all day), but I don’t think I missed too much. One phone call came about five minutes from the end of the movie but I thought it could wait. When I left the theater (skipped last minutes or so) to check the messages the battery on the whale cell was running low and the last message was from the garage, but the battery died before I could hear the message. The whale cell was the only phone number the garage had to reach us, and the phone was busy discharging. … Yeah.

I had programmed the phone number into my cell phone, but no one was answering. We found out later that they were having problems with their phone system, but all we knew at that point was that we were stuck at the mall with no vehicle, and no way to get ahold of the garage to tell them my personal cell phone number. I called a related Good Year and had them transfer me to the finance department and eventually got through to someone. The van was ready and they came to pick us up.

We picked up the boat trailer (boat mechanics treating me now with a degree of sympathy) and I said I’d bring the boat in the next morning. Andy (one of the mechanics) looked up at me and said “Monday”. Shit. Weekends. I’d forgotten it was Friday, or more importantly, that the normal world didn’t work on Saturday’s and Sundays.

I’ve mentioned that I had been fielding phone calls from shore station. We use a piece of land owned by the county to run our shore observations. It used to be a landfill but has long been covered up and serves as a pleasant vantage point for land-based observations. Well, pleasant if you discount the occasional wafts of methane gas that still emerge from the ground. A recycling station also sits at the bottom of the hill and we have a key to the main gate. The guy who runs the recycling station also has a key, but to a different padlock so we have to be careful to keep every lock in the loop so no one gets locked out, or locked in. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Well, the hilltop isn’t used much anymore and the road had fallen into a terrible state. Each year we rearrange our participants’ vertebrae as we rattle over the falling-apart road up to our vantage point. This year however, disjointed spinal columns wasn’t going to be an issue, the road was completely impassable for the van. We were going to have to go on foot. So we bought a wheelbarrow. To successfully run shore station you need a tripod, a theodolite, a computer, several chairs, several thermos’ of water, and a car battery. The computer runs off the car battery. With no road to support a vehicle, we needed a wheelbarrow to get the battery up the 1/4-mile long hill along with all the other miscellaneous equipment we tote.

Fortunately for us, Mark has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his car, which is now sitting outside by our mailbox. This means we’ve had a second vehicle to help during this trying week. The people running shore station that first day were going to pile into the car (six people in a compact) with all the equipment, but they weren’t going to fit the wheelbarrow. So Andrea and I packed the bright shiny red wheelbarrow in the van and dropped it near our gate at shore station on the way to Wailuku. The recycling place hadn’t opened yet only one person was to be seen. We thought we’d decently hidden the wheelbarrow. We were wrong. While we were sitting at the mall, watching Maui residents ponder over papaya and mangoes at the local farmers market I got a phone call from Kira asking where we’d left the wheelbarrow. It was nowhere to be found. They’d looked everywhere and even talked to the recycling guy but to no avail. Someone had stolen our wheelbarrow.

By the end of the day though, we had a working van, a fixed trailer and it turns out that even though the wheelbarrow vanished in the space of an hour, the road had been miraculously fixed and so it wasn’t needed anymore. Things were looking up.

Because we couldn’t bring the boat in until Monday we still had to deal with Saturday and Sunday. I declared Sunday to be the day off (always a participant day off between weeks) and Saturday I’d put people on shore. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that in addition to Mike, Sue Mason, the Australian participant who has been coming back for seven years with her husband John, had stayed an extra week this year. This was her extra week and she was also being patient, but I felt awful. She hadn’t seen much of Maui even though they’ve been coming here for seven years, so while we packed Mike off to shore station again with some of the staff, and while Katie and Amanda were going to get an opportunity to help out on the Sanctuary boat with a SPLASH day, I was taking Sue to see waterfalls on the Hana-side of Maui. That morning though, Kira nearly passed out from a combination of indigestion, stress and unknown causes, so I made her stay at home. Katie offered to run shore so Sue and I could run away for the day which was fantastic.  Through all of the hassles the week brought, our staff has been amazing with keeping up a good attitude, good humor and maintaining a high level of enthusiasm.



On Sunday we pulled K2 without incident and then went to Kihei to see if we could get K1 running. The little Boston whaler had been sitting outside for six months near a storage shed at the Sanctuary office. We had to refill the tires on the trailer, and managed to hook up the battery which had maintained its charge for six months (yay!). This little boat and I have a long history together and I’m very fond of her. The engine is a Johnson 88. When I was talking to a guy at Napa about spark plugs I said it was a Johnson 88 and he said “Is it a Johnson 80 or 90?” And I said “a Johnson 88”. He just gave me a blank look. It’s been so long since they made Johnson 88’s that they’ve apparently passed out of the memories of most mortals.  So as we talked lovingly to K1 and cleaned her up prior to turning the fateful key, I had severe doubts about the engine starting. We pulled the boat over to where a hose would reach and then I realized that we didn’t have a key. A short conversation with someone in the Sanctuary office did locate the key, but then when we brought the gas can over, I realized that we’d forgotten to pack the gas line.

We made phone calls, but no one in Kihei carried gas lines. Of course not. Meanwhile Kira had called to say that they’d lost power at the house. A storm system had been sitting over the islands for the past few days and we watched as the water in front of the Sanctuary began to turn white with whitecaps and the gale approached. The road home is along a cliff face with major wind tunnels that aren’t healthy for 14-passenger vans if the weather is foul, but we decided to risk it and hooked up K1 for the ride home.

I had Jordy listening to the flash flood warnings on the VHF radio as we fled the east side of the island. The rain let up for the twisty part of the road along the cliff face and the sun came out. But the road is narrow and there was a bicyclist struggling up a hill on the shoulder and he was nearing a car parked on the shoulder so he had to veer into the road. Just as I needed to pass him a truck came around the corner in the opposing lane of traffic so I wasn’t able to give him as much space as I’d have liked and I clenched my stomach muscles as we passed. Right when we passed and the trailer neared him Sue and Andrea yelled. I almost died. But what they yelled was “It’s Bagel Boy!!!”. They recognized him as a guy from the harbor that works on one of the boats that they’ve created a little fake personality for. They don’t know his name and they call him ‘Bagel Boy.”  We had a little chat about not yelling in stressful driving conditions.

Once home the skies had lightened and I found the appropriate gas line. Because boat engines use a water intake to cool the engine you always have to have them hooked up to a hose when turning the engine on out of the water. We attached the hose to the muffs and covered the water intake, turned the water on and then I climbed into K1 to do the honors of turning the key. I’ve mentioned that K1 and I have a bit of a history. Besides turning a key there is often a bit of jostling one has to do with throttle and choke on older boats, or at least, on our boats. Since the time I began to captain the boats I was often on K1 if Mark or Adam had K2 out (seniority and all that) and I had the art of making her start a little more perfected than other people did. Katie had been building up my “special relationship” with the boat all afternoon and now the pressure was on. Mark thought the endeavor would be fruitless and had encouraged me just to bring her to No Ka Oi for a tune-up before wasting my time. So it was with a feeling of “may as well try” that I primed the engine and turned the key. She spluttered. Then more jostling of the throttle and it turned over. K1 was running!!!!! I love that boat. The engine sounds like it’s extinct and just hasn’t admitted it yet, but it does run.

I planned boat maintenance for K1 for the following day. That day was Monday and we were supposed to drop K2 off at No Ka Oi and then return to pay attention to K1. Shore station was planned for at least half the day, and then we were going to try to run K1. Of course K1 hadn’t been DOCARE’d yet but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Jordy and I brought K2 in. Andy had gotten downright pleasant and I realized that boat mechanics on Monday mornings aren’t full of grease yet. It’s kinda hard to recognize them. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that while Maui has several boat mechanics, Chris and Andy of No Ka Oi are the only two noted for honesty. So we cherish them as honest mechanics ought to be cherished. They brought K2 into the back lot, hooked up the hose, and told me to turn it on. I looked at Jordy. No key.

I couldn’t believe it. Wailuku is a forty-five minute drive from our house when there is no traffic. There was one ring of spare keys sitting on the dash of the van and I prayed to whatever deity was listening that one of the keys fit K2. Our luck was beginning to turn and one of the keys did fit and I didn’t have to look like an ass in front of Chris and Andy. Yet. The engine turned over, but it sounded great. It didn’t do what it had been doing in the harbor. Had I called off a week of research for no reason? Had I made Mike sit on shore for a week because I was paranoid?

Chris suggested that Jordy and I put the boat in at the Kahului boat ramp and see if we could get it to act up  and then call him to come down. I’d never put a boat in at Kahului which is known for rough water. I agreed, but Jordy and I planned to check out the water before proceeding. Once at the ramp I was a little nervous about running the boat with just the two of us, so we put in a call to Adam but he was on a conference call and couldn’t talk to us. After debating the pros and cons for a while Jordy and I decided that the best course of action was to launch the boat ourselves, but then call Chris to take it out. That would save us a little money because we wouldn’t have to pay Chris for the time it took to launch the boat ($75 an hour). So we called Chris, told him the plan, and prepared to launch the boat. As I pulled the van and boat around, and Jordy got out to direct, a guy from the Harbors division approached Jordy and told him he was closing down the ramp because the dock was broken at one point.

We managed to talk him into letting us just launch our boat for a half hour. I backed the boat down the ramp with the Harbor’s guy watching. Then I realized that I’d never launched a boat with just two people and I didn’t trust the van’s parking brake and didn’t want to get out. Jordy wasn’t very pleased with this realization. We sat there like idiots for a few minutes with Jordy keeping his cool and then the harbor guy came down to ask me to block the entrance to the ramp with the van after launching so no one else used the ramp because he had to leave. I agreed, but asked him to hold the bow and stern lines while Jordy undid the boat from the trailer. Not a typical harbor agent duty, but he agreed. Then he took off, and I parked the van across the ramp (we have a state seal on our door which is handy in cases where you have to look official).

Chris arrived and I tried to start the engine. It promptly died on me. I restarted it and it did its rough running routine it had been doing in Lahaina. Thank God! Jordy and I exchanged the “we’re not insane!” look. Chris said “Oh yeah, you have a lean firing cylinder.”  He made some adjustments and then we took the boat for a spin. It turned out that the lean firing cylinder was not our only problem. The engine has a self-preservation program that when triggered limits the rpms the engine can reach. Once it’s triggered it won’t let the boat run over 2500 rpms. The trick was that neither we nor Chris could figure out what triggered it. The oil light wasn’t going on, nor was the temperature warning light. The only thing Chris could tell us was to run the boat until it became more of a consistent problem, then bring it in to see if it could be diagnosed at that time. I had him run the engine out of gear to hear the awful noise I’d heard, and he concluded that you just shouldn’t run old engines out of gear at really high rpms. Okay. So we pulled the boat, and Chris didn’t charge us a thing. He even helped us pull the boat.



We took off back to Lahaina and relaunched the boat. Had Mike meet us at the ramp and had half a day on the water. I was so happy to have the boat running that I wasn’t totally focused on the research.  We joined a competitive pod that already had a whale watch boat on it so that Mike could see 40-ton male humpbacks whacking the hell out of one another. We left after the pod became popular with more boats and tracked a juvenile for a while. The competitive pod was seen further away in the oncoming wind line. Sue mentioned that the whale watch boats had left. I reasoned that it was worthless to go over because we’d never be able to work it due to the water. After I’d convinced everyone that it was just not a reasonable research option, I decided the thrill of beaufort 5 waters when chasing an impossible pod might be just what an 18-year-old guy might get into. Or maybe I just wanted to try. So off we sped. It was hopeless from the start and we only succeeded in getting utterly soaked and slightly closer to the group before having to give up, but Mike and Sue were laughing and it was fun. 



We left the rough water and tracked a more sedate dyad. The project cell phone rang. The screen read that it was Kira calling. She was running shore station that day with Katie and Amanda.
“Hey Kira”
“We’re out of the loop.”
“What?” I asked, thinking she was accusing me of not communicating.
“We were left out of the loop. We’re locked in at the landfill.”
I laughed. 
“Of course you’re locked in. Call the county”
It was 4:45 and I knew she had no prayer of reaching anyone.
“Call me if you get out, if you don’t we’ll come rescue you later.”

We were on our way in anyway. The boat was running, but our crew was locked in the dump. I left to moor the boat when Jordy radioed me.
“K2 this is Mysetery Machine” (we call the van Mystery Machine on the radio because you’re not supposed to use the VHF radios on land so we pretend everything is a boat).
“Go ahead Mystery Machine, this is K2.”
“The dinghy isn’t starting.”
“Oh.”
“What do you want me to do?”
    “Try again, then see if the other dinghy we’ve borrowed is around.”
“Okay.
    Pause
“K2 this is Mystery Machine.
    “Go ahead Mystery machine.
    “The dinghy still isn’t starting”
“Go ask Wiki Wahine to pick me up, they’re at the gas dock”

So I needed to be rescued by a whale watch boat. It’s probably the seventh time this season I’d been rescued by a whale watch boat. It’s kind of embarrassing.

I took a look at the dinghy when I got into the harbor, but to no avail. I forgot to mention that earlier in the week we had found the dinghy water logged with the gas tank upside down and full of water. We’d drained and dried the tank, refilled it with gas and oil, and drained the line, but there was still a problem. I couldn’t deal with it then because the sun was setting and we needed to break into the county landfill to rescue our staff.

A number of phone calls to various people and we located a bolt cutters. This mishap has happened once before in my time with the project. Luckily friends who work on whale watch boats have access to big tools like bolt cutters. We picked up the bolt cutters and took off for shore station. Fifteen minutes later we’d cut one of the links in the chain and our friends were free. I was considering ditching the trailer at shore station instead of driving it home in the dark because the trailer lights weren’t working and it was now dark out. But after the fate of the wheelbarrow I was loath to leave our now functional trailer at shore station. Kira or Katie devised the plan of driving Mark’s car closely behind the trailer to make sure no one tried to turn into it by mistake. And so we made it home.

The next day we tried to fix the dinghy before leaving for the day, but we needed a part for a gas line that we couldn’t obtain in Lahaina. So I sent Jordy to trek into Wailuku to visit Chris and Andy at No Ka Oi. When he returned to the harbor we went to pick him up, but the fixed line wasn’t fitting the dinghy engine. I almost left him in the harbor to fix the problem all afternoon because there was nowhere for me to tie up K2 and I was trying to hover near the dinghy dock, pissing off the harbor master. But a minute later Jordy had it fixed and he jumped on the boat.
The following two days were forecasted to have 25 knot winds whipping down the channel and I doubted we’d be on the water, but the menehunes seemed to have been satisfied with the trouble we’ve endured. The water remained calm off Lahaina. Whatever penance had needed to be paid has been paid, and we haven’t had any trouble since- knock on wood.

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Never Say Never

2-15-04

I am eliminating the word “never” from my vocabulary. I have, in the past, used the word “never” in sentences such as: “Whales have a great sense of where their bodies are, and though they may get very close to the boat, they never touch it.”. 

Now, let it be known that there is a difference in the way a boat feels to stand in when it is floating in the water, and when it is not. When a boat is not floating in the water it might be on a trailer, on a sand bank, on a reef, or, as I found out on Friday, on the head of a very, large whale.

Friday was the last day on the water for team 3. It was a gorgeous day with flat water, sunshine, and very few whale watch boats in the vicinity. Jordy had just finished tracking a singer. The singer had ditched us for another whale and vacated the area. We took a short break and began searching for the second group of the day. Katie was driving.

We saw a group of three whales nearby and motored in their direction. A whale with white flukes was tail slapping and two whales were trailing. The whales dove and Katie proceeded to track them. They surfaced within 50 yards of the boat. The two whales who had been trailing turned towards the boat. The water was aquamarine glass and I watched as the closest whale rotated into a vertical position and slowly emerged out of the water in a slow-motion head rise taking a good, long look at the boat.

This whale then re-submerged and moved under the boat, perpendicular to our angle in the water. Jordy was on camera and I had been telling him “get the head rise! Get the head rise!” as he took photos of the other whale’s flukes, obtaining data like we should have been.  Now he, Earl, John and Mike were all leaning over the port side of the boat, looking down on this whale who was hovering below the boat. The boat was tipping and I tried to balance it for Katie by standing on the starboard side. Soon I’m hearing reports that the whale was rising. Someone jumps over to the starboard side and looks down “it’s head is RIGHT HERE!”
“It’s lifting the boat! It’s lifting the boat!”

I felt us stop floating. The angle of the floor changed. We were tilting to the port side, and now it wasn’t because too many people were there. It was solid underfoot. We seemed to keep rising and my stomach went tense. Then we stopped.

Katie’s voice was shaking as she told no one to move. She didn’t want footsteps to interest the whale further. There wasn’t a feeling of antagonism, just overzealous curiosity on the whale’s part and we didn’t know how far that curiosity would go.

We were still perched on its head and I began looking around for other boats in the area. If I had seen another whale watch boat or research boat I would have radioed them for assistance. I took Katie’s place at the wheel and called Kira to give her our current GPS coordinates and told her if I didn’t call back in the next five minutes to send the coast guard to that area. I tried to get ahold of Mark but he wasn’t around. I had Mike pull out enough life jackets for everyone on the boat. I knew I had at least one non-swimmer on board. And then we just waited.

Jordy was looking at the back of the whale and he saw propeller scars on its back. ‘This whale has done this before.”  Apparently the last boat either tried to drive off the whale’s back or the whale rose under a boat still in motion.

I considered getting in the water to distract the whale from the boat, then discarded that idea. Forty-ton whale, little me. Then I considered throwing an orange in the water for the same purpose, but decided that was stupid. So we continued to wait.

Eventually the whale did let us back onto the water. Our permit doesn’t allow us to approach whales within 15 yards, which means we cannot be under way within 15 yards of the whales. But this was going to be the opposite of an approach and as soon as I knew we were clear and wouldn’t hit a whale I threw the boat into reverse and backed away from the area. I slowly turned the boat around and we could see the whale turn to follow. Its rostrum was out of the water creating a small bow wave as it pursued our boat. I increased speed and we kept looking back until we were certain it had given up chase. We hung around at a good distance for a while trying to get more fluke photographs, then eventually left the area to let our hearts return to a normal beat rate. I called Kira and told her she didn’t have to call the Coast Guard. We had been a whale toy for perhaps  5-7 minutes and I had called Kira once in the middle to let her know we were still in the boat and not capsized.

For the rest of the day we were very cautious around stationary whales, and suspicious of any that surfaced in close proximity to the boat. We ended the day with an exciting competitive pod, so Earl and John, participants who were at the end of their team, had a memorable finale.

Once back in the harbor we were talking to a whale-watch captain friend of ours’ and he told us about a female humpback a few years ago who had a habit of harassing boats by surfacing under them. I wonder now if it is the same whale returned to Maui, or if the higher density of whales in the area is making them bolder as a whole.

That night there was a researchers’ social for SPLASH. We were all gathered at Flip Nicklin’s house (of National Geographic fame) and I was telling my tale to Meegan Jones (student working with Jim Darling). She said that her boat had been lifted up by a whale on a few different occasions. “It really gets your attention doesn’t it?”

Chyyeeaah! I couldn’t believe her nonchalance, but then rethought the situation. I think if it had just been staff on the boat, or just myself and another person, or better yet, if someone else had been in charge, it would have been a thrilling, unique experience, and not one where I was reviewing all my life-saving training in my head.

Dr. Herman tells a story of his kayak getting lifted by a whale once. It was years ago, but a favorite tale. And in addition to the whale watch boats mentioned above, I have heard of other, very large, whale watch boats being shifted slightly by the humpbacks. So our experience was not unique, but it was certainly was one I will never (whoops) forget.

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Talkin' Trash
Sometime in April 2004

The top rims of the clouds near the horizon were glowing blacksmith yellow as the sun set this evening. I was driving the crew back from the harbor feeling very much like a mother hen herding her chicks home. Today was the first day I sent Kira out to captain and I stayed home to work on my thesis- the supreme act of delegation. Bringing them home safely was satisfying. Today was also Katie’s first day doing solo in-water work with the whales. Everyone is graduating.

A friend of mine joined us a participant for Team 6 and before he left we went diving. The dive site is called Five Graves (named for a nearby graveyard and several underwater caves) and we saw a large turtle, a white-tipped reef shark, an octopus, loads of fish, pretty healthy coral and the bottom halves of a boat-load of snorkelers. On a visit to a different reef he saw a ray and another octopus. His commented that everything was coming out to say good-bye, with the exception of the bottom-halves of the snorkelers. 
It makes me think of my own planned departure from the project, and possibly from Hawaii.

I was in the water with a mom, calf and escort the other day. We’d already biopsied all three and they were still fairly approachable so I took the underwater video camera in to get some sizes.  The mom and calf were right under the boat and they sort of just floated slowly to the other side of the escort, so I stayed near him to get sizes. The depth sounder worked, which was a minor miracle, and because the group seemed pretty chill I waved Jordy in for his first official “diver” experience. My timing was a little off and as Jordy swam over to me (with a replacement depth sounder just in case) the group began turning to surface. Of course, they turned towards us. The mom and calf passed within about 25 feet, and the escort came up closer (keep in mind their pec fins are 15 feet long). The calf’s eye was bulging out as he passed us, but when I checked the mood of the escort (which I’ll determine by their eyes) I couldn’t find his eye. It was completely closed and he just kind of ambled by, if an animal without legs can amble. The comforting thought that came to mind was that this whale didn’t give a damn whether I was there, or in Timbuktu. There will be no goodbyes from the whales.



A week ago I was on the water with Mark on what should have been April Fool’s Day. If whales spoke English, the one word they would have used was “…psych!”  Two whales were traveling parallel courses down the coast but surfacing at alternate times so Mark kept zig-zagging between them, thinking they were one whale. Then we tracked a singer, who was supposed to be stationary, but who would surface 300 yards from where he dove and then fly at top speed before neatly diving back under the surface. Who does that? Maybe a whale that knows there’s a biopsy dart with his name on it. But we got him in the end.

It was a day for philosophizing. The sky was overcast and the whales seemed to be waging a battle of wits against us. Mark has been working on the project for eight years now and has accrued a bit of wisdom. And like many people of few words, when they choose to speak, others listen. But before he could say much, we saw a competitive pod.

Here were Big, Small and Scar. Mark named them. They were crossing paths with another group and there was a bit of surface activity. When it subsided we were left with the three already named, cruising west. Tall and Scar appeared to be vying for proximity to Small. Big split off from the group early on and we were left with Small (the supposed female) and Scar. As they headed for the far tip of Lanai the two seemed to make a pact: Small would never fluke up and Scar would be impossible to dart.

Attempt after attempt to position the boat right for darting, and after seeing Small fluke down dive what seemed like a dozen times, we started getting a little feisty. Jordy likens it to Dirty Harry, mock growling “Come on Scar, make my day.”  You throw caution to the wind and start to pit your determination against that of your study subject, forgetting perhaps that your study subject weighs 400 times as much as you do and has been navigating Maui waters for a much longer time than you have. That’s why we’re field biologists, rational beings need not apply. Plus, we’ve got a boat.



Finally, after one particular surfacing Scar is within reach of the crossbow. The boat was parallel to his course and when he arched, I shot the dart. And I got him. But Scar, being Scar, wasn’t going to be outdone, so he kept the dart.

Aghhhhhh!!!!

We’d already been tracking the group for almost an hour. The seas were picking up and we had been thinking of leaving the group, but oh no, now we had to stay with them to wait for the dart to fall out. And Small still wouldn’t fluke up. “Oh yeah, you want the dart? You come get the dart” Scar seemed to say.

At this point Mark sighs and shakes his head. “If there is one thing I’ve learned about working in this field, it’s that you never talk trash to a humpback whale.”

I looked at him. What in the hell was he talking about? I learned to talk trash to humpback whales from him. Not that he would think of it like that. It’s the schmucks like us who never learn that valuable lesson that stay with the project for five to eight years.

Each time the whale surfaced Mark would speak for the whales: “You like that eh?” (Mark’s Canadian).  “Let’s see who keeps the dart.” We ended up staying with Scar and Small for another hour, but the dart never fell out. The seas had grown to the point that Andrea had to put the camera away, and that was when Small fluked up. Greeeaat..

Now this was not an isolated incidence of trash talking. Some of the staff are fond of referring to calves as talking trash. Calves are notoriously difficult to dart because they are so much smaller than their adult counterparts. After the first attempt or so, the photographer will assume the calf is talking trash. “You see me? Here I am, just see if you can hit me” it seems to taunt.

Humpbacks talk trash to one another as well. We’ve had past participants translate humpback whale behaviors into dialog.  Mark did his masters on pec slapping as a behavior. Pec slapping is when a whale lifts its pectoral fin in the air and slaps it down on the water. Often it’s a repeated behavior, with the driver having to count the number of pec slaps. It’s also a behavior whales execute when they are inverted, or on their backs. This would be called….drum roll,,.,  ‘inverted pec slapping.”  Mark found that pec slapping has different possible meanings depending on what behavioral role the pec slapper holds. Most pec slapping occurs near affiliations and disaffiliations. It could be a recruitment behavior, or a behavior saying “get the hell away from me.”  One particular 18-year old participant interpreted pec slapping as: “I’m slapping you in the face.”
Inverted pec slapping was “Oh yeah, now I’m on my back, and I’m still slapping you in the face.”  It’s even more demeaning that way.


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