Considering that most humpback whales are the size of a city bus and weigh about 40 tons, you would think that it would be easy for researchers to record them on video underwater.
Except for material that was shot for a couple of Imax films, however, whales have eluded underwater cinematographers for years.Whales typically spend more than 90 percent of their time underwater, making it difficult for humans to spend extended time with them. Another challenge is technological; researchers, who can usually afford only basic equipment, have produced grainy shots taken with standard-definition video camcorders.
This winter, one researcher, Jason Sturgis, 31, changed everything, becoming the first to capture underwater scenes of humpbacks frolicking in the waters of Hawaii with a Sony HVR-Z1U high-definition video camcorder. Mr. Sturgis compiled three months of videotape - detailed images that researchers said have revolutionized how they study whales.
"Jason's images might well serve whale research in the manner that Carl Sagan's eloquence made physics and astronomy meaningful to a lay audience," said Dan R. Salden, founder of the Hawaii Whale Research Foundation, a nonprofit group in Maui.
For Mr. Sturgis, the move to high-definition video had been brewing for a while. In 2003, working under the guidance of the National Geographic photographer Flip Nicklin, Mr. Sturgis began recording the behavior of singing whales for the Whale Trust, a nonprofit research group in Hawaii.Continue reading the main story
Mr. Sturgis learned underwater cinematography with small standard-definition cameras. During the 2005 research season in Hawaii, when the whales migrate to the Auau Channel between the islands of Maui and Lanai, he used a Sony DSR-PD150, a hand-held camcorder favored by independent filmmakers.
This camera, which writes to mini DV tapes at 30 frames a second, was not designed to record compressed high-definition video. Underwater images were muddled, and Mr. Sturgis had to dive deeper to get closer to the whales. "By swimming down to get decent footage, I worried that my presence was impacting the very behaviors I was trying to study," he said.
After months of frustration, Mr. Sturgis was ready to upgrade his gear. The Sony HVR-Z1U appealed to him because it was sophisticated yet small; at 26 pounds, it was light enough to be taken underwater without too much effort.The device also records MPEG-2 video at 29.97 frames per second onto digital tape, which Mr. Sturgis can digitize and edit with Final Cut Pro software on his Apple G4 laptop.
At the start of the whale season in February 2005, the Whale Trust bought an HVR-Z1U for $4,700. In November 2005, the group spent an additional $5,000 on custom underwater housing for the device.
The setup got its first test this February. Floating alongside the Whale Trust research vessel, Mr. Sturgis filmed a group of humpback whales 40 to 50 feet below. As the camera rolled, the haunting whale songs were so intense that they reverberated throughout his body.
Later, in the lab, the benefits of the new technology were obvious. While standard-definition video cameras recorded underwater images at 480 lines of vertical resolution, the HVR-Z1U captured them at 1,080 lines, more than twice as sharp.The contrast between the whales and the water was so crisp that the Whale Trust researchers could see more whales per clip, as well as more of the whales' surface area.
This information has helped scientists broaden what they know about the whales that return to the Auau Channel every year. Meagan Jones, executive director of the Whale Trust, said that by studying the underwater images, she and fellow researchers could supplement what they have learned over the years from still photographs.
No whale researcher, as far as it is known, has witnessed humpback whales mating or giving birth, and Mr. Sturgis said that capturing such an act on high-definition video would be the thrill of a lifetime. "We've got the technology to do it," he said. "Now we just need to get it on video."Continue reading the main story