9/13/2009

#14: Pico seen!

Last January, we reported on a very unusual and exciting sighting- a female right whale seen off the Azores. Shortly after the sighting, the whale, #3270, was given the name of Pico- the name of the island near where she was seen. Amazingly, the shape of the island matches the shape of Pico's bonnet (see picture below).


Because it is so unusual to see a whale from the western North Atlantic so far to the east, we all wondered when and where we would see her next. Well, three days ago, we got our answer. Pico was seen in a surface active group in the Bay of Fundy. Pico was first sighted in 2002 and has never given birth to a calf that we know of. We will be following her future sightings very closely! You can too at the right whale Catalog web site.




Philip

Photos:

1) Pico Island in the Azores south of which 3270 was sighted (Google maps)
2) Aerial photograph of Pico- right whale 3270 (Photo: NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center)

3) Pico in the Bay of Fundy on September 10, 2009 (New England Aquarium)

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posted by Philip at 8:42 AM 1 Comments



8/29/2009

#10: Moms in strange places

Well, it turned out that what we discovered in our last blog entry was just the tip of the iceberg! We went out to sea on Thursday with the wind blowing and the forecast for the winds to remain strong all day. We were going on gut instinct (and a big dose of hope) that it would be better than forecasted and were right! We had good conditions and found a large group of right whales east of South Wolf Island- 20 miles north of where we usually see them. And one of the pressing questions of this season (Where are all the mothers and calves?) was answered! We had 7 calves in one day and most of the mothers had not been seen yet this season.



Another one of the questions may have been answered as well. I wrote about the whale Tips in post #7 and wondered why we see him only once a season when he comes to the Bay of Fundy. Well ... Tips has been seen repeatedly off East Quoddy light on Campobello, New Brunswick for the last week. One of the whale watch boat captains says he has the latitude and longitude written down and goes there daily to see him. It is rare for a right whale to show such specific site fidelity. Maybe Tips really likes this northern area and has been spending his summers in this area where we rarely survey.


But as each question is answered, new ones come up. Why are many of the whales so far north? The last time many right whales were this far north during the summer was back in 1980 and 1981--nearly 30 years ago! It almost certainly has to do with the distribution of food, but we are not equipped aboard the R/V Nereid to do the necessary oceanographic sampling to determine what has changed.



On Friday, we had an unusually broad picture of right whale distributions. We had 40 right whales in this northern area, the R/V Callisto had another 20 whales in the middle of the Grand Manan Basin, a whale watch boat had 15 right whales to the west near Grand Manan Island, and our research team on Roseway Basin south of Nova Scotia had 20 whales there--nearly 100 whales in a single day!



Stay tuned to see how this distribution changes, if at all, over the coming weeks...


Photo caption:
1) Punctuation and her calf
2) A right whale breaching off South Wolf Island
3) A whale flukes off the Wolves

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posted by Philip at 11:30 AM 1 Comments



8/21/2009

#7: Interesting matches in the Bay

We are all in the house processing this season's data as Hurricane Bill approaches from the south. Luckily the forecast of 45-55 knots (52 to 63 mph) has diminished to 30-40 knots for Sunday. Still no weather to be at sea, but less dangerous for our boat in the harbor. Meanwhile, we will all settle in and match whales.


We have identified 57 whales so far and there are some interesting stories among them. There are a number of big, old males here and one of them, "Tips" (Eg #1124 in the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog), has a particularly unusual sighting history. Seen most years from 1980 to 1991, he disappeared for nine years before being re-sighted off Massachusetts in 2000. He hadn't been seen in the Bay of Fundy for 16 years until he visited in 2007. Now, he seems to come in for a single day each year and then moving on. We will be curious to see if that pattern continues this year; I suspect we will not see him again until next August.


Another interesting story this year involves the mothers and their calves. With the record calving of 39 calves this year, we expect to see a lot of mother/calf pairs in the Bay this season. We did see seven of them early in the season, but have only seen two in the last 11 days (the most recent unusually close to Grand Manan island).



While it is not uncommon for the mother/calf pairs to be somewhat segregated from other whales, it is unusual not to see them at all! Are they still here but not in the broad box that we survey? Have they moved on to another area? And, with the exception of the mothers, why are all but three of the adult whales in the Bay big males? With a few days of bad weather ahead of us, it will be a while before we can continue our surveys and collect the necessary clues to potentially answer these and other questions. Stay tuned!

- Philip


Photo caption:
1) Whale #1124, Tips, in the the Bay of Fundy- 2009,
2) A map of the Bay of Fundy with Grand Manan Island,
3) The calf of #3440 off North Head, Grand Manan.

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posted by Philip at 12:57 PM 1 Comments



9/22/2008

#30: Two days in a row!

We finally had two great days in a row on the water. The R/V Nereid went out the 20th and 21st and our other vessel, the R/V Callisto, also went out on the 20th. The result of this effort was a fairly comprehensive picture of right whales in the Bay of Fundy. They are spread out over a very large area with at least two different aggregations--one to the northeast and another to the southwest. Yesterday, we started the day with a small SAG off Swallowtail Light House within a stones throw of Grand Manan Island.



With such good coverage, we learned that there has been an influx of quite a few new animals into the Bay and many of them are big, adult males. These animals seem frequently to be on the edges of the distribution, often performing acoustic displays known as gunshots--loud, percussive underwater sounds. Towards the end of the day yesterday, we had several old males exhibiting typical gunshot behavior (lifting their heads out of the water and then pushing them down forcefully) way to the south in the middle of the outbound shipping lane. One of them was "Starry Night," an old favorite that we have been watching since 1980.



We don't know why animals segregate in the Bay, but that doesn't keep us from having fun speculating. For example, why would adult males stay on the fringes? Are they setting up acoustic territories advertising to females with the gunshot sound? Since many of the big males were on the southern edge of the distribution, someone joked that they are serving as the "gate keepers" to the Bay of Fundy. That joke got me thinking--could that be possible?

Nothing described about this species' social structure would indicate that they coordinate in such a way, and yet there is much we don't know about these animals. Could they patrol the edges of the right whale distribution forming a protective perimeter like male musk ox in a circle with the females and young in the middle? What would they be protecting them from? Killer whales are their only possible predators and they are relatively rare in these waters.

I include this wild speculation to show the fun part of science--exploring ideas. If we found any evidence of this behavior in other similar species, then we could formulate a formal hypothesis and then test it with the appropriate data. The small yet exciting steps of science.

- Philip

Photos:
1- SAG in front of Swallowtail Light, Grand Manan (Yan Guilbault)
2- Bottom photo: Starry Night (Moe Brown)

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posted by Philip at 2:11 PM 5 Comments



8/04/2008

#3: Still in fog!!

We have been here for 4 or 5 days now and the weather has been uncooperative. First thick fog, then rain, then rain and fog. We need good visibility to find the whales and dry conditions and relatively calm seas to use the equipment we need to work (cameras, video, computers).

So we have been spending our time setting up the office, reviewing research protocols, and remembering how to live co-operatively in a large house with 10 to 15 people. Although there is plenty to do to set up and plenty more to do to process back-logged data, we are all growing antsy--a feeling which is magnified by the knowledge that right whales have been seen in the Bay of Fundy.

Laurie Murison, our colleague from the Grand Manan Whale and Research Station, made several trips into the Bay before the weather turned bad and reported 20 to 30 right whales. Knowing of our particular interest in mothers with calves of the year, she forwarded some excellent photographs she took. Low and behold, she had documented a new mother for the year! Most of the mothers and calves are first seen off the coast of the southeast U.S., but a few are first seen further north. This whale, #3115, is a 7-year-old female that gave birth to her first calf this year.










Photo of #3115 from Laurie Murison's July 28th sighting in the Bay of Fundy.
See more pictures and sighting history on the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog web site.

This brings the calf total for the year up to at least 21. The weather does not look good for the next few days (in fact, we just had torrential rains and lightening that knocked out the power twice), but we will keep our fingers crossed for a change so we can see some of these youngsters for ourselves.

And for those of you in the sweltering summer heat, you may be surprised to hear that it is cold in Lubec. All of us already bundled in our sweaters and wondering if it is too early to turn on the heat!

-Philip

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posted by Philip at 9:08 AM 0 Comments