whale observation lab

Introduction: over to past 10 years thousands of humpback whales have been hunted for the resources. japan and Norway alone kill over 1500 whales every year. because whaling is outlawed i'm wondering if the amount of whale population has gone up or down.

Question: is there more whales at the beginning of the session or at the end of the session?

Hypothesis: the amount of whales killed might still be high today so there would be more whales at the beginning of the session.

Prediction: If the number of whales hunted go up then there will be more whales at the beginning of the session.

Materials:

pen/ pencil

data sheet

clinometer

Procedure:

you will need to find your elevation from sea water with a GPS.

then you will take your clinometer and aim at a whale. the angle of the clinometer will help judge the distance from the whale. you will take to angle and put it into a formula: D= elevation X tan (angle.

Data: at the beginning of the session i spotted an estimated 5 whales from shore. at the end of the session i was not able to go to the whale watch, but friends let me use the data they found. it turns out that they spotted an estimated 7+ whales.

Conclusion: i hypothesized that there would be more whales at the end of the session, but my data clearly shows that there where more whales at the end of the session then at the end of the session. there may have been some sources of error. when we where spotting whales at shore we might have miss counted the amount of whales, and since i was never at the whale watch i dont know the exact amount for sure.

over all it was a great time of good whale watching fun. although i wasnt able to go to the whale whatch its self i dont think it hinders my ability to understand the whales. after all we will in hawaii.