Breath is the miracle that we perform every few seconds. It is a miracle that we share with all our fellow mammals, one of the many things that makes it clear that we are them, and they are us. And here was a day on which breath was made visible, and not just my own. I was on an open boat, clad in comic clothing made serious by the chill, gazing at the vertiginous mountains that lined the sea in every direction, for this was a deep inlet of the Pacific.

And before me five pillars of breath. The air was bizarrely still, the sun low and in my face, and the five plumes were backlit, glowing gold. Time hung still in the air, like the breaths, and if you looked at the millpond surface you could see a series of small mounds.

Then that sound again: an echoing sigh, another, another, and there were new pillars standing from the surface to replace the old. New breaths to replace the stale. I was in a country called Whales, a realm of miraculous monsters that breathe just as you and I.

I was in British Columbia, Canada, travelling with the travel company Wildlife Worldwide, and spending a day with Janie and Neekas. Janie Ray is a whale scientist who runs Cetacealab (check her out at whaleresearch.ca) in British Columbia. Neekas is a whale dog, a fine orca-coloured animal with the lupine look of all the dogs of the Far North, and a great whale finder. “He has a whale-bark,” Janie told me.

Now it is always a miracle to meet a whale, to see something so colossal emerge so briefly into the light. It is rather more of a miracle to be personally introduced. That day, I didn't see humpback whales: I met Yoda and Bullet and Twist. Twenty years ago I encountered whales as a species, now I was meeting them as individuals.

Friends reunited

These humpbacks spend their summers in Hawaii, but return to these deep but almost landlocked waters to feed and, of course, to socialise because whales have an intense, if deeply mysterious, social life. This is a remote and inaccessible spot - I came in by float-plane - and there is a sense here of a marine Eden in the lack of disturbance and the strange, walled nature of the place.

The humpback whales are comparative newcomers to this spot. It was orcas that drew Janie here to begin with. But the humpbacks have followed the food to this place and made it their own in season. Janie has recorded 100 individuals, and knows 65 of them as regulars. In a fine day of surveying, we encountered thirteen whales, ten positively identified. The other three are either new, or known from a scant number of sightings, and will be checked back at the laboratory.

How do you recognise one humpback from another? Wait for the big moment. A breath and the whale lazily rolls his bulk through the water. Up again, another breath, another explosive exhalation/ inhalation. This happens maybe half a dozen times, or as many as the whale feels like. And then another blow and the rolling hump is higher in the water, and it goes on for longer and then - glory! - the tail-flukes break the surface and a magnificent dripping letter Y is brandished at the sky and the whale is down.

And every set of flukes is different, with marks, indentations and patterns of black and white. Over the years the patterns of their lives are revealed by the records and the minds of the researchers, and we can begin, just begin, to penetrate the impenetrable mysteries of their lives.

The singing detective

Could any creature be harder to study? They live their lives out of sight. Even their sex is a mystery, until it can be deduced from records and behaviour. And yet they sing. The humpbacks are the ocean's great singers. Janie has heard them singing in places with an echo: a whale listens to his own song and then sings again. Janie tentatively suggests that they are practising, honing singing skills that are vital in such matters as dominance and mate-seeking. This implies a high level of self-awareness, like an ape recognising itself in the mirror.

Then a group of three together, all behaving in a most extravagant, almost silly, fashion. Each would inhale as loudly as possible, a trumpet blast blaring across the flat seas, and then dive at once. Every time, the flukes would break the surface in a way that was as spectacular as it was impractical.

There were three of them, posturing males, vying for dominance, within a few yards of the boat. Perhaps one was a female and the other two were showing off for her. Perhaps one would escort her to Hawaii to make a new whale.

Time and Janie would reveal the meaning of this and everything else. So we turned for home and opened the throttle, making a fine and freezing wind for ourselves. Neekas, whales found and duty done, hid himself between my knees for warmth as we bounced back across Whales.

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