Normally I wouldn't bore our readers with a "what I did on my midwinter vacation" post, but the sounds and pictures I collected last week off the west coast of Maui were so cool I wanted to share them with you all.

If you want to know more about the humpbacks' songs, I can't strongly enough recommend David Rothenberg's superb 2007 book about whale music, Thousand-Mile Song. As you can hear, they're very different from the orca sounds I usually collect.

Thanks also to the captains and crews at Trilogy Excursions, who were artful and thoughtful about approaching the whales and maintaining the proper distances while still giving us a thrilling view (and sound scientific commentary from the naturalists).

(Hi-def YouTube version here.)