Whale song courtesy of The Oceania Project and New Scientist. Original song in the public domain.
----- In an effort to lift Dipper's spirit, Stargazer takes them on a special boat ride.
----- I remember hearing this song in the mid 70's and being amazed by it. I was very fortunate to find recordings of whale song online that I could use for this.
In the world of The Beach Bears, many species are intelligent, but each has an unintelligent counterpart as well. For centuries, communication became the primary means of determining sentience and sapience, but as computers began to communicate, that definition had to change, else computers which simply respond to commands would be considered intelligent.
They had been developing tests that did not rely on communications to determine sentience and sapience, and after many years of testing, they seem to have found the right tests.
Whales were a problem before. Since no one could communicate with them, they were assumed to be unintelligent, and hunted, especially by polar bears. And for decades after the development of the tests, no one thought to test it on whales.
Once some scientists did, and it was discovered that the whales were indeed sentient, and sapient. It took several years for the findings to be verified and accepted, and whaling was thereafter banned.
dangerrodent2004. Full image can be found here 
