Our days on Roseway were long and action packed! Here's a log of a full day on Roseway Basin, from a Wednesday evening to a Thursday evening.

Labels: #18: A day on Roseway Basin, 2009 Season, Area to be Avoided, Cyndi, gunshots, head pushing, Roseway Basin gunshots

Upon our annual migration to Lubec, Maine we find ourselves reunited with our "Fundy Family." For the eight weeks of the season we all live together at the field house. The field house was built at the turn of the century. The house was owned by the Mulholland family for generations and was at one time divided to accommodate two families.



It's great fun to listen to the local townspeople reminisce about the people who lived in this house long ago. Since the Aquarium has owned the field house, we have turned a living room into our main office, a back kitchen into an equipment room and closets into bedrooms.


The house has kept it's charm with its original heating registers from the 1900s, antique wallpaper, and hardwood floors. We have made minor improvements such as bringing in internet service, remodeling the kitchen and replacing the 57 windows to protect the house during the harsh Lubec winters. As with any old house, there are a multitude of home improvement projects that we work on as time allows.


The real fun is the dynamic of 9 full-time researchers and many visiting researchers living in the house together. During stretches of long weather, we buckle down in the house and set to work, doing photo analysis and matching the whales we've seen in the field. On these days in we tend to mill around the kitchen alot. Our volunteer cook, Betty, has to chase us out of the kitchen so she can get dinner ready! While living and working together can be challenging at times, it also comes with the benefit of having a built-in family dynamic. We lean on each other in tough times, celebrate each others achievements and take off in troupes for hikes, bike rides and soccer.



At the end of the day, we all congregate in the kitchen for dinner. Dinners can vary from an "intimate" dinner between the 9 full-time researchers to a large, boisterous gathering of over 20 people. No matter how many are in attendance, dinner is always a lively event with great food, stories from the field (present events and past) and lots of laughter!

-Cyndi

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Labels: #1: 2009 Season Starting Soon, #6 Life at the field house, 2009 Season, Cyndi, Fundy family, Lubec, Right Whale

Almost a full week had gone by before we were able to get back out on the water. After hearing reports of right whales near the northern end of Campobello Island, we began our morning by searching for right whales as we passed East Quoddy light. Although we didn't find any right whales at this northern latitude, we came across the first humpback whales of the season! Humpback whales also raise their flukes when they dive, but they have distinctive patterns on the ventral side of their flukes while the flukes of a right whale are completely black. Humpback whale researchers use the pattern on the ventral side of the fluke, along with the shape of the dorsal fin to identify individuals.



Continuing our survey into the Bay, we found that the right whales had moved a few miles to the east. Throughout the day we found that most of the whales were solitary even though they were spatially very close to each other. We photographed over 35 individuals including 12 engaged in a SAG! The whales in the middle of the SAG rolled slowly around the female, stroking her with their flippers. Other whales who weren't positioned next to the female patrolled the edges of the SAG, as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip in next to her. The SAG held a surprise for us although. One of the whales had a dorsal fin! Somehow a humpback whale had ended up in the middle of the SAG! The humpback only remained with the SAG briefly though. As the SAG broke up for a few minutes and then reformed three hundred meters away, the humpback whale headed in the opposite direction. As the afternoon progressed, the tide turned to become poised against the low winds. We turned west and spent the rest of the day photographing whales that we passed on our way back to Lubec.

Top photo: Flukes of a humpback whale. Photographer: Philip Hamilton, NEAq
Bottom photo: Two right whales engaged in a SAG. Photographer: Moira Brown, NEAq

- Cyndi

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Labels: 2008 Season, Cyndi, humpback, Right Whale

On the boat there are several jobs that we rotate through during the course of a long day at work. While we always have a licensed captain on board, we all are experienced at piloting the research vessel. This is an important skill as the U.S. permit we work under allows us to approach these highly endangered whales.







But never fear, the "whale watcher" is there to clear up the confusion. The "whale watcher" is responsible for knowing which whales we have seen in a day (to minimize photographing duplicates) and which whale the photographers are currently photographing. To organize whales within a day we letter them from A to Z and you will hear the researchers yelling letters back and forth as they try to track which whales they are photographing while working a large SAG. Many times the "whale watcher" will recognize the whales on sight and record their catalog number while in the field. Several of the researchers on our team have worked with this population for over 20 years and recognize many of the whales on sight.




These five positions are always filled while we work whales here in the Bay of Fundy. There are many other tasks that pop up throughout the day such as collecting biological samples or matching whales with our field matching book. Everyone on our team is trained to work in each role and we take turns wearing these different hats!





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Labels: 2008 Season, Cyndi, research vessel, Right Whales, SAG, whale watcher

The recent north winds blew out the fog and then calmed down nicely this morning, giving us our first good weather window in two weeks. Excited to be out on the water again, we awoke at 4:15 this morning to check the weather, put on lots of layers, ate breakfast and loaded the boat with equipment. By 5:30 we were off the dock and headed out to find the whales!

We went to the eastern part of the Bay as we had heard that whales were recently seen there. After a few hours of surveying we found our first whale and quickly began to see others. As we photographed each whale, we would head over to photograph the next one that surfaced and soon found ourselves so far east that we were sitting in the middle of the outbound shipping lane! Keeping a keen eye out for ships (although we didn't see any all day) so we could be quick to move out of their way, we photographed four mother and calf pairs and six other individuals. Four of these individuals were involved in a surface active group (SAG).

We photographed the whales as they energetically rolled and twisted around each other. The female in the SAG was a well known whale named Morse (go to the right whale catalog and search for #1608). Morse was born in 1986 and was given her name because a few white scars on her head reminded researchers of Morse code. After a good day with the whales, it will be a quite night at the "Whale house" as we all head to bed early in hopes that we will be woken by a subtle knock and the words "we're good to go."


We were able to get out on the water today for a brief window. Here is some footage of researchers Yan, Dan, Cyndi, Monica and Erin Burke (Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries) hard at work documenting a mother and calf pair. The mom's name is Arpeggio (go to the right whale catalog and search for #2753). Listen and look closely and you will hear the sounds of camera shutters clicking as researcher describe the scene and see the distinctive propeller scar on the right flank of Arpeggio.

Photo of Morse (EG #1608) taken by Erin Burke.
Video of Arpeggio (EG #2753) and her calf taken by Jonathan Cunha.

- Cyndi/Jonathan

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Labels: 2008 Season, Cyndi, Jonathan, mother and calf pairs, Right Whales, SAG

After another two days out in the Bay of Fundy, we are all thoroughly exhausted! Thursday shaped up to be another amazing day full of right whales. Many of these whales we had seen on the previous day, but we documented the presence of a few whales that we had not seen before. Within two days, we documented at least 53 right whales in the Bay of Fundy. Not bad for two days of work!

Today (Friday), we woke up bright and early and headed out into the Bay expecting to have yet another whale-filled day. After fueling the boat, we decided to head north, around the northern point of Campobello Island (known as East Quoddy Head). During the past two days on the water we continued to see whales to the east of us that we didn't have time to get to. In an attempt to find the eastern-most whales, we began our search for right whales by heading south-east. We soon found one right whale, who declared her presence by breaching. As we approached the whale started to "log." Logging is a resting behavior that is frequently seen and we describe it as "lying still at the surface of the water." From a distance, a resting whale can look like a log in the water, hence the term "logging."


Along with the callosity, this whale was identified as #2791 in the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog by a distinctive scar on her flukes. She is a female who last calved in 2006. As we resumed heading to the southeast, the seas slowly began building and we started to see lots of white caps. The wind was light, but coming from the northwest and the tide had started coming in. In the Bay of Fundy, having even a light breeze against the powerful tide can ruin your day!

The Bay of Fundy has the highest vertical tidal range in the world. This dynamic body of water sitting between Canada's New Brunswick and Nova Scotia can rise, at high tide, to just over 50 feet. Approximately 115 billion tons of water flood in and out of the Bay during each tide cycle. While folklore claims that these tides are caused by a giant whale splashing water into the Bay, oceanographers have another explanation. The tide of the ocean at the mouth of the funnel shaped Bay of Fundy creates a wave of water the builds as it travels up the Bay. Other factors such as storms, atmospheric pressure and position of the moon can influence the height of the Fundy tide. Unfortunately we decided that this wind vs. tide effect would cause the sea to be too rough to find and photograph right whales and so we turned towards home early today.

- Cyndi

Top photo taken by Bob Bowman. The research vessel Nereid heading for home as Monica and Jon stand on the bow searching for marine life and debris to record.

Lower photo taken by Marilyn. the distinctive flukes of right whale # 2791.

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Labels: 2008 Season, Bay of Fundy, Cyndi, research, Right Whales