Here are described real human whale communication adventures, starring prominent guests, students and two guides, traveling along the immensely scenic marine coastlines of eastern Canada. These few are matching new knowledge with many individuals of "The Great Whales," as well as other sea and land animals, in a recently discovered form of Nature's low stress inter species communication. This new knowledge now seems appropriate for a worldwide development of altruism, or kindness, which interactions seem compatible, but behaviourally quite the opposite, to the important 19th century discoveries of evolution.
Throughout this research and adventure story we use both an internal upper case ‘T’ and closed words (such as ‘onTime’) to designate a newly discovered temporal form called ‘Rhythm Based Time.’ Such new concept is defined by “a mental perception of lateness relative to an agreed, biophysical, cyclical concept of rhythmic synchronization, including ‘onTimeness,’ between two or more minds.” ‘Conventional time’ is well known to physics. ‘Rhythm Based Time’ is both biophysics and a foundation of a newly discovered ‘Rhythm Based Communication, RBC,’ which has now been studied between humans and ‘The Great Whales,’ eagles, moose, fox and other unstressed animals. Such is explained in a book entitled Dancing With Whales (Creative Publishers, St. John’s, NL, CA) and is now presented with much more detail, and data, in this sequel, Dancing With Nature. Newly described also is the seemingly important ‘Mental Vector Process,’ or ‘MVP,’ which appears as the ‘Most Valuable Player,’ for all living organisms, in ‘The Game of Life,’ and which now aids in a novel concept of ‘mind.’ We present this research story (methods, materials and results) with ocean expeditions from Trinity, Newfoundland, aboard the Ceres, a large rigid hulled inflatable with hull mounted under water transmitters. There follows a part of this adventurous story involving one of our typical ‘animal-contact expeditions.’
“T minus one minute and counting. Gentlemen please place your chair backs and tabletops in the upright position for takeoff! A-OK Nick, castaway. T minus zero. Up slow to half speed.”
“What was that upright stuff?” asks Edward, a new British student.
“Just Dad’s attempted humour Ed,” says Nick, with a smile.
“Practice bearings everyone: one o’clock - Admiral’s Island; four o’clock - ruins of an old whaling station; eight and eleven o’clock - church steeples; two o’clock - Fort Point lighthouse.”
We are cruising at 30 knots on a glassy calm, spectacular harbour. A slow practice turn to starboard is announced and the Ceres leans gently into the curve like a Formula One racing car on a sharp, 90 degree, banked bend. Down speed to zero. Engines off. The ‘sound of silence.’
“Welcome to ‘Admiral’s Island Airport,’ home of about 100 pairs of Arctic terns.”
“Up slow to half speed.” A moment passes while Nick and I search the horizon for whale blows. “The rock statue on the right was named the ‘naked man’ hundreds of years ago and when we tried to get it changed to the ‘naked person,’ in honour of all liberated women, many fishermen refused because there’s a ‘naked lady’ on the other side of this point. It was aptly named the naked god, before the first European settlers.” We stop in sheltered waters.
“Range 5000 meters, bearing twelve o’clock, seven humpback whales in Spaniard’s Cove,” I announce.
“Assuming that Nicholas first saw the whales, from high up on the main mast,” Hans comments to Alex, “good Lord, that young man must have fantastic sight.”
“The way that Nick identified these whales at almost four miles was to watch for the low contrast blows against the dark cliffs behind. Polaroid glasses and a cap with a brim are a help. You’ll find lots of such caps in the aft port locker, or you can hold your hand above your eyes to shield the glare and thus differentiate the blows.”
Hans and Alex unpretentiously, don their sunglasses!
“It’s Ida’s group,” shouts Nick from on high.
“Blow, and another at twelve o’clock, range 3000 meters, feeding along the capelin spawning beach at Pigeon Cove. More blows; do you see them Elliott?”
“That time I believe so,” comes the reply.
“That time definitely,” say together, George and Jay, the latter a New Zealand student, specializing in acoustic mammal behaviour.
“Range a mile, bearing still straight ahead. Down slow to half speed.”
“Sounding dive, large tail up - and - down. That’s Andrew. I could see his black dots on the underside of his right fluke,” announces Nicholas.
“Come on down Nick, we’ll start the computer program. We should use an ‘alpha concept’ of one minute as the whales are all in shallow water. Set your watches everyone. Starting with the next countdown we will be transmitting two second, underwater sound pulses every minute.”
“Six whales are lunging after capelin along the shoreline and another is closer to us in deeper water,” Nicholas broadcasts above the steady, moderate purring of the two, enormous, Honda, four stroke, ‘super’ engines.
“Down slow to dead slow,” and the in-air sounds reduce to a low purring so that calm voices are all that’s needed for the onboard discussions.
“5-4-3-2-1-mark!” shouts Nicholas. “First signal out.”
“Starboard engine turned off, at the mark, Nick,” as he had perceptively already started to enter such a signal as a comment on the computer data base.
With one engine off and the other in dead slow even the calmest talk is heard from the forward observers.
“The third signal is coming up, watch any or all of the seven whales for synchronization.”
There follows another countdown to ‘mark’ and at that very moment we all see a huge blow on the closest whale.
“It’s Andrew,” declares Nick.
“Synchronization, one o’clock, 1,000 meters.”
“Did you suspect that ‘sync.’ Dad, or just feel it?” asks Nick.
“The latter. What’s the stress program reading?”
“Amber stress light folks; situation looking good,” states Nick to all on board.
“Switch to the passkey program Nick and give a ten second warning before transmissions please.”
Asking Alex and Hans to watch the coming manoeuvre, Ceres gently turns toward Andrew. Explanations about the next transmission are made, the ‘first message signal,’ which will be 90 seconds delayed in the ‘offTime’ window. Elliott and George glance at their watches.
“Warning for the first message signal, Dad,” confides Nick.
“Thank you.” Quickly, a second pinger, tethered to the console, is activated. It’ll be tossed forward to hit the water precisely at the start of the main computer controlled transmission. Hans comes closer to observe.
“Down one stop on the main sound intensity; log that please.”
“5-4-3-2-1-mark, first message signal, ‘gamma one,’ we call it,” announces Nick. “It’s lower in intensity by half the output power.”
“Estimated location: 700 meters at twelve o’clock. He’s probably resting on the bottom as it’s only 150 meters deep where Andrew was last seen.”
“Andrew knows our ‘passkey’ so watch for synchronization on the coming, ‘second message signal.’ This one could be good for you to photograph, George.”
“Warning on ‘gamma two.’ Dad,” whispers Nick, as he has remounted to his mast position and he gently taps me with a boot tip, a practiced, concentration and focusing procedure.
“My dear Hans, will you take over on this new transmitter. It should go into the water on Nick’s ‘mark’ but you should haul it out between two and three seconds later.”
“A-OK as Alex would say! Hey! That’s poetry!” replies Hans jubilantly.
“5-‘flipper up’-4-3-2-and, down,’ right on the mark for synchronization!” hollers Nick, with excitement in his voice. “We’ve green light, low stress conditions and we’ve a potential, ‘reciprocal, overlapping greeting,’ one of the terrific thrills of these new animal communication methods.”
“The third message component w