I would think that we would have better chances of developing a real conversation with Orcas than with Humpback whales. They are more involved in things that we sort of understand. And, we have a long history of teaching them to do shows for humans.
We just don't seem to "get" what they sometimes seem to be trying to tell us. For instance, Tilikum killed 3 people who worked with him. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilikum_(orca) . He was not "happy".
But, having watched an Orca show at Sea World, I was impressed with the inter-species cooperation. The big act involved a swimmer diving underwater and the Orca swimming underneath, coming up under and balancing the swimmer standing on its nose, and then breaching the surface with the swimmer on its nose, and the swimmer finally jumping higher than the whale's maximum altitude, and both diving back through the surface in sync. It was spectacular, and it was done multiple times each week. There was some "communication" there, for sure - but apparently one-way - humans getting animals to understand what the humans wanted them to do.
Currently, a wild Orca pod near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea is going after boat rudders on large yachts, tearing them off, but not sinking the boats (although it sometimes creates holes that need to be blocked to avoid sinking), It seems to be the same pod of Orcas that have been doing this for months. See
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230626-why-are-orcas-suddenly-ramming-boats . Maybe we need to figure out how to ask them "Why are you doing that?" We probably would not like the answer. But, we probably should learn what it is about from the Orca's perspective. Right now, the debate is whether the pod matriarch is somehow mad at boats, or if this is just destructive play with no real message content.
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