The Sanctuary Ocean Count behavior sheet has six columns, and one of them, Slap, holds four different behaviors. Volunteers put a bar in a column every time they see the behavior, total the bars every half hour and circle the number. This glossary follows the sheet’s own column headings and definitions, from the 2019 behavior sheet and the sanctuary’s volunteer prep document, both posted on oceancount.org.
The sheets themselves, the definitions in full and the reference photos are on oceancount.org/resources. We are an independent site, not the sanctuary or the count.
| Column on the sheet | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Number of Adults | Whales that look adult-sized, judged mostly by the size of the blow |
| Number of Calves | Calves seen; P (present) or A (absent) if you can’t count them |
| Breach | One bar per breach |
| Slap (Pectoral fin, Fluke, Head) | One bar per slap, including peduncle slaps |
| Blow | One bar per visible spout |
| Dive | One bar per arched-back dive |
The six columns on the behavior sheet
Each half-hour block on the sheet, from 0800-0830 to 1131-1200, has one row, and these are the six boxes in that row. The first two record how many whales you can see. The other four count how often they do something.
Number of Adults
Write the total number of animals that appear to be adults. Size is the only way to judge this, according to the prep document, and it usually shows in the blow. The sanctuary’s whale-watching guide puts a humpback’s spout at 10 to 16 feet high. Enter the number of adults you can see in that half hour, and use the other columns for how often they surface and what they do.
Number of Calves
The sanctuary calls this one “often difficult to estimate.” When you can’t pin down a number, write P for present or A for absent. A calf must surface every 3 to 5 minutes, against every 10 to 15 minutes on average for an adult, according to the same document, so a small whale that keeps coming up beside a larger one is worth a closer look through binoculars.
Breach
A breach is a whale breaking clear of the water with its full body and returning to the water with a large splash, in the prep document’s definition. The sanctuary’s whale-watching guide uses a looser test: if more than half the body clears the water, it counts as a full breach. The site leader guide notes that you can see these acrobatic displays from miles away. Mark one bar per breach.
Slap (Pectoral fin, Fluke, Head)
A slap is a whale hitting the water with part of its body while the main body stays underwater, making small splashes. The sanctuary’s instructions count tail, head, pectoral fin and peduncle slaps in this one column. A pectoral slap, or pec slap, is one or both of the long front flippers slapping the water. A tail slap is the flukes lifted and brought down hard, often over and over.
A head slap is a whale lunging forward with its head raised above the water, and the sanctuary describes it as a competitive display. A peduncle slap, which the whale-watching guide calls a peduncle throw, is the whale throwing its tail out of the water and slapping its peduncle on the surface in the process. The same guide calls the head slap a head lunge. Both go in the Slap column.
Blow
A blow is the spout you see when a whale exhales: a cloud of air and condensed water vapor. Mark a bar each time you see one. Sometimes a whale surfaces and dives again without a visible blow. Adults can also stay under for as long as 45 minutes, according to the prep document. A quiet stretch in the Blow column can mean the whales in view are on a long dive.
Dive
In a dive, the whale arches its back up out of the water, the tail may or may not show, and the whale then stays out of sight for some time. The whale-watching guide calls the version with the flukes in the air a fluke-up dive and says it signals a deeper dive. Both go in this column. NOAA Fisheries says the pigment pattern on a whale’s flukes, together with their shape and any scars, is unique to each animal, and a fluke-up dive puts the flukes in view.
Breaches and slaps per whale, 2002 to 2010
The results sheets leave the behavior columns out, but the sanctuary’s 2010 report analyzed them for 2002 to 2010 (Cullum 2010, chapters 7 and 8). For each time block on the sheet it divides the breaches, slaps and dives on the sheet by the whales seen, so every figure below is behaviors per whale sighted. It then averages each site over the nine seasons and each island over its sites. The report gives dives only for 2006 to 2010, so the table below shows breaches and slaps.
Slaps outnumbered breaches on every island in every month. On Oʻahu, breaches per whale rose from 0.19 in January to 0.33 in March, while Kauaʻi stayed near 0.30 all season. The single Kahoʻolawe site had the highest rates: 0.51 to 0.76 breaches and 1.04 to 2.12 slaps per whale.
| Island | Breaches, Jan | Breaches, Feb | Breaches, Mar | Slaps, Jan | Slaps, Feb | Slaps, Mar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kauaʻi | 0.303 | 0.315 | 0.303 | 0.752 | 0.684 | 0.800 |
| Oʻahu | 0.194 | 0.286 | 0.329 | 0.391 | 0.467 | 0.543 |
| Hawaiʻi Island | 0.390 | 0.416 | 0.303 | 0.802 | 0.663 | 0.664 |
| Kahoʻolawe (one site) | 0.593 | 0.510 | 0.760 | 1.043 | 2.123 | 1.040 |
They count only the behaviors volunteers saw and recorded from shore. Every site’s values by season, the dives and the report’s rules for missing data are in the behavior file on our download page.
Terms for the comments section
The back of the sheet has space for notes, and the sanctuary asks volunteers to describe what the whales are doing when none of the six columns fits, with the time written first. The sanctuary’s prep document gives four terms to use there.
Traveling
Continuous movement in one direction with frequent surfacing. From a fixed shore site, a traveling whale or group crosses your view and leaves it. The sanctuary’s filled-in sample sheet has a comment in this style: all whales in the area “generally moved through” for the whole watch.
Surface Active
A whale breaching, slapping its tail or flukes, or spy hopping. The breaches and slaps still get their bars in the columns, and this term describes the overall activity of a group in the comments. The sanctuary’s whale-watching guide calls large splashes a good indicator of active whales, so scan for white water as well as blows.
Nursing
A calf with its rostrum, the front of the head, next to its mother’s body, while the mother stays mostly still. Record the calf in the Number of Calves column as well.
Milling/Logging
Whales staying at the surface for an extended time, like a log floating on the water, in the prep document’s own comparison. A note in the comments records what the whales were doing in a half hour with few breaches, slaps or dives.
Seen but not recorded: head rise or spy hop
The prep document shows eight behaviors with photos, and one of them carries the label “Not Recorded on Data Sheet.” In a head rise or spy hop, a whale rises vertically with its head out of the water. According to the prep document, some observers believe this lets the whale look at what is happening above the surface. The sheet has no column for it. Write it in the comments if you see it, and don’t add a bar anywhere else.
Codes on the site map sheet
The optional site map sheet, done between 10:30 and 11:00 at sites that still use it, has its own short codes. Each group of whales is a dot or circle with the number of whales next to it. M/C marks a mother and calf. M/C/E marks a mother, calf and escort, the escort being a second adult with the pair. The sample sheet shows groups at 0.4 to 1.3 miles from the observer.
The visibility chart
Both the behavior sheet and the census sheet end with the same hourly visibility chart. For each hour you circle yes or no for each condition and rate fog, rain and haze (heavy, medium or light), wind (strong, medium or light), foam (lots, some or none) and swell (high, medium, or small or none). Glare gets a yes or no and a percentage. The chart has a box for a visibility code, and the sheet tells volunteers to leave it blank: a data analyst decides the code later.
Every preliminary results sheet from 2018 through 2026 on oceancount.org says the behavioral data “is not part of this report,” so the published results show whale counts only. Our page on how the count works covers the 15-minute census scans those whale counts come from.