From above water, perching on the edge of a RIB boat, I could hear a humpback whale singing. No hydrophone required. I’d come to the South Pacific nation of Niue, a 100-square-mile upraised coral atoll home to roughly 1,800 people between Fiji and Tonga, for precisely this encounter.
My guide signaled to our group that the humpback was in sight and we could enter the ocean—clear as a swimming pool—to see it. We slipped quietly off the boat’s gunwales and into an underwater symphony.
Beneath the surface, the whale song was so intense I could feel it reverberating in my chest. But the behemoth had yet to materialize into clear view. So I waited and listened. I’ve been a diver for more than half my life, but on this tour with diving company Niue Blue, I was well aware that I was about to witness something wondrous.
I’d chosen to visit Niue because it promised a less-trodden experience than elsewhere, both in the water and on land. Even in peak season around July and August, only two flights arrive each week on the island (3.5-hour jaunts on Air New Zealand from Auckland, some 1,500 miles to the south).
Between July and September each year, humpback whales on their annual migration north from feeding grounds in Antarctica arrive in these clear blue waters (as well as those surrounding neighboring South Pacific island groups like Fiji, Tonga, and French Polynesia, among other places) to mate and calve.
Mere minutes offshore from Niue’s rugged coastline, under highly regulated conditions, it’s possible to enter the water to snorkel with the whales while they are at rest. Only two whale watching and snorkeling operators—the PADI Eco Dive Center, Niue Blue, and Niuean-owned Explore Niue Tours & Travel—take people out to snorkel with the whales.
Much about why male humpbacks sing remains a mystery.
Photo by Ant Brown Photography
Before we headed out, a guide had briefed our group on ethical whale interactions and the strict regulations for snorkeling with them. Humpback interactions start with careful observations of their behavior at the surface. “If [the whales] are active, moving, or showing any competitive behaviors with male and female, we generally leave them alone,” explains Evan Barclay, managing director of Niue Blue.
Once boats come within 200 meters of the whales, the vessels must slow to “no wake” speeds and can only approach from the side, keeping up to 50 meters distance at all times. If conditions are deemed acceptable, guides will enter the water to scout before motioning visitors to follow them in, maintaining 20 meters distance from the whales. A maximum of six people and one guide are allowed in the water at once, with limits to how much time a boat can spend near a whale, too: one hour, including locating the whale and time with guests in the water.
For locals, the return of the whales every season marks a special time on the island, according to JinNam Hopotoa, who is part of Niue Ocean Wide (NOW) Trust, a charitable trust under New Zealand law that plays a critical role in the island’s sustainable development and community-led conservation efforts.
“They carry history,” he says. “They carry memories, in a way, from all the whales that have come through Niue as part of this migratory route. It’s a reminder for us that there’s maintenance in keeping something beautiful going for the next generation.”
As threats to whales increase (like strikes and underwater noise pollution from boats), efforts from NGOs, governments, scientists, and community leaders are growing in the blue corridors of the western Pacific as well as elsewhere around the world. In 2023, the Caribbean island of Dominica created a Marine Protected area (MPA) for endangered sperm whales. And in 2024, the Azores Marine Park, also home to resident sperm whales, became the largest marine park in the North Atlantic.
Cliffs meet the ocean along the tropical coastline in Niue.
Photo by Rick Neves/Shutterstock
Niue first established its Moana Mahu Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2020 as a no-take zone that prohibits things like fishing or mining and covers 40 percent of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a maritime zone extending 200 miles from a country’s territorial sea. Over the course of two years, Niue voted to offer protection for marine life across all its areas of economic use.
Today, the country (a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand) is a world-leader in preserving all of its ocean territory, an area of water the size of Norway that protects the humpbacks as well as other species like the endemic katuali sea snake.
“With the protection of our MPA, we want to continue to make this a special and sacred place for them,” says Hopotoa. “The whales have been a massive part of our culture; they train their calves here for the long journey back south.”
Niue has just one hotel, the oceanfront Scenic Matavai Resort, a government-owned lodge built to promote tourism, with 55 rooms and a whale bell on the terrace that guests can jingle when a humpback is sighted offshore.
The cultural significance of welcoming whales to their waters is of great significance to Niueans, explains Hopotoa, whether they get into the water to snorkel with them or just listen to their exhalations, fluking, and singing at night from dry land.
Only the male humpbacks sing, I had learned on the boat before we entered the water, and much of why they do remains a mystery. Their songs can carry across thousands of miles of ocean—which seems entirely plausible, I think, as I float in the water, listening to the melodious mammal.
I lay belly down like a seastar on the surface with my eyes focused on the blue below. The whale’s song amplifies my heart’s thudding—indeed, it feels like the bass booming from a speaker. I see a dark shadow and realize it’s the humpback. I linger in place, listen, and wait.
Then, after 15 minutes of floating, I realize the humpback is rising in the water column—a leviathan levitating.
Within seconds, the whale looks to be just meters below us, rolling onto its back to reveal its white underside. Then, as if in slow motion, it rises at an angle to one side of us, breaking the water’s surface a short distance away. I raise my head out of the water to watch, treading water, light as a feather and stiff as a board with wonder, just taking it all in. Then the creature drops silently down, back into the depths.
“They come here for a reason,” Hopotoa had told me. “Our ancestors would have seen them, and we want our kids and future generations to see them as well.”
