August 22 -- Anyone who studies whales will tell you that we still have a lot to learn about these animals.

After less than a week in Madagascar, I would add that we also have a lot to learn from these animals (which, by the way, pre-date our own human species by at least 30 million years). Anything that's been around that long has to know a few things about ... courtship, for instance.

A cetacean love story of sorts plays itself out before our eyes this morning (and may well be playing still).

Setting: Wind and whitecaps on Antongil Bay.

Plot: Boy meets girl.

Star: Individual 2, Group 1, whom we follow around the Bay for three hours. A whale scientist would call her the "focal animal." Strictly for simplicity's sake, I'll refer to this humpback as "Howardina." Howardina is much beleaguered; not harassed so much by us as several evidently amorous members of her own species, who jockey for position as they vie for her attentions.

Co-Star: Individual 1, Group 1, who persistently accompanies Howardina around the Bay. A whale scientist would call him "the primary escort." I'll refer to him as "Dear John."

The action begins with Howardina and Dear John, a peaceable pair swimming side by side at the surface when we first spot them at 11:15 a.m. We note that Dear John has a white scratch on his left side and a red mark on his pointy dorsal fin that appears to be an open wound. Perhaps he was scuffed by another male who challenged his enviable intimacy with Howardina.

Although popularly known as gentle giants, male humpbacks get aggressive during the breeding season, commonly challenging each other for the right to be the primary escort to a female. "This is the time of year that they all start taking on scratches," Howard says. Males often use their entire bodies as weapons during attacks. Although dramatic, the fights aren't fatal, and serious injuries are probably rare.

Chances are, Dear John's privileged position was hard-won; but Howardina, with her knockout white flukes, is apparently unimpressed. Rather than submit and mate, she languidly slaps the sea with her long white flippers and occasionally brings them together as if to clap overhead. By rolling over time and again and exposing her pleated white belly up out of the water, she is likely spurning the lovesick Dear John by protecting her genital slit and, quite possibly, summoning other males.

As she rolls, Howard tries to detect a basketball-sized lobe on her underside that will confirm her gender. A patch of barnacles covers the genital area, making it a dicey call. Howard says: "She could be a female ... or a male. (Howard's not one to go out on a scientific limb.) "The only way to know for sure is genetic testing," he adds. "That's why we take the tissue samples."

When hit with a biopsy dart, Howardina reacts with a high flick of her almost all-white tail. (An article that Howard authored in 1995 concludes that Southern Hemisphere humpbacks, on average, tend to have more white coloration on the tail flukes than Northern Hemisphere humpbacks.) We can actually track the pair's underwater progress thanks to Howardina's light pigmentation. She calls additional attention to herself on the surface by performing spectacular acrobatics, specifically breaches.

Competing Suitors

Around noon, just when we are ready to leave this pair and investigate breaches that we see happening a couple miles away, things start getting even more interesting. Suddenly our pair becomes a threesome. Howard comments that he knows this new whale; he saw him just yesterday, lobtailing.

The group now takes on a whole new attitude, becoming what Howard describes as "surface active." They begin moving faster; no longer is Howardina lolling about. Individual Three, aka "Challenger," begins provoking Dear John, who answers the threat with an aggressive trumpet-like blow. Dear John is not about to relinquish his position as easily as the sucker-mouthed ramora fish that comes flying off Challenger when he rolls.

A few minutes later, Howard spots a fourth whale swimming at the periphery of the group -- this one sporting a bloody rostrum -- and then a fifth. No matter that the winds are picking up and our boat is seriously dipping and diving, there's no leaving this party now.

Conflicts in competitive groups can be brief or protracted; bursts of activity are commonly interspersed with quieter periods when the whales dive to rest until the next bout. And not all the participants of a group are active: Sometimes smaller and younger whales simply follow along, not daring to directly challenge the escort. They may be simply learning how to act through observation, or perhaps strategizing: hanging around and waiting for a chance to slip into the coveted primary escort position when everyone else becomes exhausted.

Obviously the center of everyone's attention, Howardina handles it all with aplomb, or should I say, like a bomb. She keeps right on rolling and flippering and breaching, repeatedly propelling her 30-plus tons from the water, headfirst.

Crossbow in hand, Howard is trying to get a biopsy dart shot off at Individual Four when the radio interrupts him. The other two research boats are seeking Howard's advice: Should they continue working or return to the island, Nosy Mangabe? The marginal weather conditions we started out in this morning are deteriorating fast. The swells make it increasingly difficult to maneuver and to see and retrieve the darts after shots are taken.

Howard is, in whale-science speak, the focal animal of this expedition. All he wants to do is study whales. But everyone keeps demanding his attention: The student intern wants him to explain how humpbacks produce sounds; a female research associate wants him to smooth out a personnel issue with a boat pilot who is questioning her judgment and authority; the photographer wants him to pose at 8 p.m. when he's going cross-eyed from poring over detailed numerical data; I ask incessant questions when all the guy wants to do is rinse off the salt film that accumulates during nine hours on the water.

Howard would do well if he learned to breach in the way of Howardina. Whatever its purpose (no one knows for sure yet, although there are lots of sound theories), the whale manages to escape for a solitary moment, alone in the air. It also uses the breach to slough off a host of pesky parasites who are hanging on for the ride.

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