Your photos of Hawaii’s humpback whales? Donate them to science

All those majestic humpback whale photos you took on an ocean tour along a Hawaiian island? You can do more than just frame them for your bathroom or designate your favorite as your new Facebook cover photo.

The best photos you snapped of whales and dolphins in Hawaii’s waters can be used for research purposes. Pacific Whale Foundation uses them as data collection for all their ongoing research projects which include cataloging and tracking these creature and monitoring trends and patterns in marine debris off Maui.

Another related projects includes better understanding the social structure of Hawaii’s insular false killer whale group that occasionally surprise tour groups and researchers.

The type of photo “donations” the foundation is seeking from the public are snapshots taken of a humpback whale’s tail, the fluke, in the Pacific Ocean.

However, not all fluke photos are suitable for the catalog. For starters, they need to be of underside of the tail, upright, well lit and with a centered composition to actually benefit the research. If you think you have a photo that fits these requirements, you can submit them here.

For quick reference, here’s what good fluke photos entail (pun intended):

There are also similar guidelines for good dolphin photos concerning dorsal fin photos conducive for photo-identification: focused, centered, well-lit, framed side-on and perpendicular to the camera.

Pacific Whale Foundation is headquartered on Maui’s Maalaea Bay.