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.
