IF YOU WERE A WHALE, WHERE WOULD YOU LIVE?

by oceansadminHabitat, WhalesPosted on 3 Comments

Former First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, said it best: “There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.” She was talking about people, but it’s not a bad description of how we protect wildlife. Much of our work as marine conservation biologists involves identifying habitat that’s important to whales and dolphins, and ensuring that their home is kept safe from human activities that may be causing harm. Easy, right?

THE CONCEPT OF HOME MAY BE A BIT, UM, BIGGER TO A WHALE THAN IT IS TO US.

Some whales migrate half-way around the world between a good meal and a hot date, so a whale’s home covers some serious square footage. Legal definitions of “critical habitat” tend to be a bit fuzzy: critical habitat is the habitat area essential to the conservation of a listed species. Canada has interpreted this definition progressively for resident killer whales. Their critical habitat includes adequate availability of Chinook salmon, the whales’ preferred prey, and most interestingly, a recognition that a whale’s habitat is inherently acoustic. So we know that critical habitat is more than just a box on a map.

The pioneers of killer whale research, like the late Dr Michael Bigg, first called the fish-eating killer whales “resident”, because they found the same whales in Johnstone Strait year after year. Some features of the whales’ landscape are pretty obvious.  The famous pebble rubbing beaches off northern Vancouver Island, are fixed and immediately apparent to casual observation. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess that a place like Salmon Bank might be important feeding habitat for southern resident killer whales. A rubbing beach, a narrow strait, Salmon Bank — these are relatively small, tractable areas to protect.

We do a lot of work in critical habitat for killer whales.  We estimate how much salmon killer whales need to thrive, how boat noise can mask a killer whale’s ability to find fish, and how many killer whales could be affected if an oil spill occurred in critical habitat. For years, we’ve studied how boat traffic can affect behaviours and activities of killer whales, and have recently identified a candidate marine protected area for southern residents built around the whales’ feeding hotspots.

What about all the other whale, dolphin and porpoise species?  How do you begin to identify the areas that are most important to species that cross national boundaries the way you and I cross the street? How do you look at the whole ocean and set aside priority areas to protect? These questions are at the core of marine spatial planning and systematic conservation planning. We partnered with Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society’s (WDCS) Critical Habitat/ Marine Protected Area Programme to outline steps to incorporate cetacean distribution into marine planning. Download the report by Rob Williams, Kristin Kaschner, Erich Hoyt, Randall Reeves and Erin Ashe here, or on Erich’s website, www.cetaceanhabitat.org.

The first step is outlining where people have looked for whales, and where they have and have not seen them. Then you can figure out methods to fill in the gaps.

One use of this report is in designing marine mammal-oriented protected areas (MPAs), networks and protection zones.  We’ve mapped the data so you don’t have to.  We’ve combed the published literature from all the line transect surveys we could find, and with Doug Sandilands’ help, we produced cetacean distribution and density maps for dozens of species throughout the vast IUCN marine region of the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The report includes a number of appendices for data sets and experts for the region.

At the First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA) in Maui (Hawaii) in 2009, participants concluded that a global effort was needed to identify and define important marine mammal habitats and hot spots. Our new report is our contribution to that global effort. It sums up the current state of knowledge on the density of cetaceans on a large geographical scale. Such information — once integrated and mapped with similar data on other species and with biogeographic data covering environmental features and ocean processes — can be used to help identify critical habitat and contribute to the design and creation of MPAs, networks and zones in national waters and on the high seas.  To paraphrase Mrs Carter, we’re working to create good, safe and secure homes for whales, dolphins and porpoises in BC waters.

Check out the pretty maps

Big Skye Country

by oceansadminDolphins, Habitat, Women in SciencePosted on 2 Comments

In the summer, you can you usually find Rob, Wishart (the dog) and me doing field work in our little boat with whales and dolphins in British Columbia, Canada.  This year’s different.

We’re in a new country.  Scotland.  I’m finishing my PhD on dolphin ecology and Rob is in the middle of his Marie Curie Research Fellowship (researching ocean noise), both at the University of St Andrews.

This is the first time in over a decade that we are away from the Pacific Northwest and sitting a summer out.  There’s no denying it:  we are homesick.  Wishart’s actually homestick (there is way less driftwood on these beaches than at home!).

We find ourselves fighting the urge to pack our camera equipment, binoculars, field notes and dog biscuits into the boat.  We’re restless.  We are constantly gazing out into the waves, hoping for a marine mammal to emerge.

Wishart the dog's field equipment

Wilderness was required.  We needed to increase the probability of a dolphin sighting.  A road trip was in order.  So, we packed up and headed to the Highlands, to the stunning Isle of Skye to visit a friend, Deirdre.  (Truth is, we needed a doctor’s signature on a form, but any excuse for a road trip.  We also miss long Canadian drives.)  So we did what you do before any pilot field study:  we asked around for traditional ecological knowledge.  Fortunately, here at the world renowned Sea Mammal Research Unit, you don’t need to go far to find an expert on sea mammals.  Our good friend and colleague, Lindsay Wilson, conducts amazing research on seals and their diet all over Scotland.  Lindsay handed us a map, pointed out some hotspots, and away we went!

Wishart is an incredible dolphin-spotter.  But this trip was going to be exclusively shore-based.  However, he did mange to spot some wildlife for us along the way.

Highland Cow on Skye

When we reached our destination the first night, we spotted a pod of about 20 common dolphins swimming past our hotel as we parked the car!  Mission accomplished.   Unless we start seeing bottlenose dolphins in St Andrews Bay, that glimpse may have to tide us over until the fall, when Rob and I will be presenting our work at the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference in Vancouver.  Rob will present his work on ocean noise, killer whales and salmon.  I’ll present on dolphins.  We will travel to the conference thanks to generous donations of frequent flyer miles to our charitable pooling account with Aeroplan.  If we can raise enough cash to put fuel in our boat, we will also be able to spend two weeks conducting conservation-minded research on Pacific white-sided dolphins.  Learn more about our dolphin study here, and if you’re interested, you can help support our dolphin field work here.  Thanks very much!

Happy summer,

Erin +Rob

(WHALE, DOLPHIN AND HUMAN) MOTHERS ROCK

by oceansadminDolphins, Habitat, Human Impacts, Populations, Whales, Women in SciencePosted on No Comments
Killer whale (orca) mother and calf

I’m not a mom (yet), but being in the field with whales and dolphins for my PhD research is making me think a lot lately about motherhood.  The killer whales (orcas) that we study stay with their mothers their entire lives:  they live in a matrifocal society.  That’s rare.  Sure, when the daughters grow up and have whale babies of their own, they often travel in their smaller family groups and spend days apart, but what’s unusual is that even sons stay with their mums their entire lives.  That’s unheard-of in any other mammalian society.  We’re not sure what advantage this social structure offers to killer whales.  Maybe mothers pass on critical information, and serve as archives of lessons learned through time on where to find salmon in lean years and where the best rubbing beaches are.

This week we attended a fantastic lecture by Jane Goodall here in St Andrews.  The science was interesting, but we were most struck by the story of how Jane Goodall became Jane Goodall.  As Dr. Goodall recounted her incredible story of becoming first a primatologist and then a force of nature, she attributes her path and success to the support of her mother (we do too!).  Chimpanzees, Dr. Goodall reminded us, also have societies that rely on mothers to teach offspring, and nurture and protect young chimps.

Moms know stuff.  In one ‘green mommy blog’, Eco Child’s Play , the author points out the possible dangers to your baby (decreased IQ, increase in attention-deficit disorder, cancer, endocrine disruption) from using products loaded with chemical flame retardants.  These contaminants are not good for human babies and, as it turns out, not good for killer whale babies either.  Our colleague, Dr. Peter Ross has found very high levels flame retardant chemicals in the blubber of killer whales.

Mom and baby Pacific white-sided dolphin

Alexandra Morton began to notice Pacific white-sided dolphins in her study area in the late 1980’s.  If you open any guidebook, they’ll tell you that Pacific white-sided dolphins “belong” way offshore, but after a decades-long absence, these dolphins came into the inlets of mainland BC in groups of hundreds.  The odd thing was, there were no babies.  Just adult dolphins.  Then, in 1995, the first young dolphins began to appear.  Were other dolphins scoping out peripheral, new habitat before letting moms and babies know that it was safe?  These days, I see quite a number of mothers and babies.  Even newborns.  In fact, these dolphins may actually be giving birth in the inlets right in our neighborhood. That’s quite a surprise for a species perceived as a resident of the high seas.  This is the phenomenon I want to study next.

In the meantime, knowing this makes me want to protect dolphin habitat from noise, nets, pollution and plastic.  Are these my maternal instincts kicking in?

The best of times, the worst of times: Dolphin-palooza 2011; Earth Day; and the First Anniversary of the BP Spill

by oceansadminDolphins, Habitat, Human Impacts, Populations, Women in SciencePosted on No Comments

This is a big week for the planet. Earth Day and the one-year anniversary of  the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It will take years to assess the damage from the Gulf spill economically, societally and ecologically. A recent paper in Conservation Letters led by Oceans Initiative’s Dr Rob Williams with the help of many co-authors, suggests that the dead dolphins washing up on the beach are really just the tip of the iceberg.   The team evaluated historic carcass recovery rates in two ways.  One indicated that there could be as many as 50 dolphins that were scavenged, drifted offshore or sank to the bottom of the ocean for every dolphin carcass recovered on the beaches. The other method yielded an even scarier ratio of 250:1.

Photo: Associated Free Press

Dead whales and dolphins on beaches represent only the damage we can see. Killer whale biologist and director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society, Craig Matkin, notes that a genetically distinct pod of killer whales, the AT1pod, exposed to oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, have yet to reproduce 22 years later. Since no calves have been born, the unique killer whale pod will be lost.  However grim the statistics, scientists are able to make these calculations thanks to years of careful research on whale and dolphin populations.  Closer to home, imagine how warped our perception of killer whale populations in BC and Washington would be if all the information we had available came from the occasional carcass that washes ashore, instead of conducting annual counts of the entire population, which is what our colleagues at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Center for Whale Research do.  There is simply no substitute for the hands-on, hard work of long-term monitoring of cetacean populations.

But many cetacean populations are still under the radar.  You may be surprised to find that for many whale and dolphin species, we still lack basic information on how many  there are and how healthy the populations are.  In 2004, we partnered with Raincoast Conservation to design and conduct systematic surveys to estimate abundance of 6 cetacean species in BC, and we’ve seen first-hand that it is possible to contribute important baseline science while working on a modest budget.

At Oceans Initiative, our aim is to identify data gaps and make it a priority to fill the ones we can afford to (and are most qualified) to fill. Earth Day prompts us to reflect on the contribution we are making to marine research and conservation, but our goal, every day, is to identify modest contributions that we can make to improve the quantity and quality of science available to make decisions that sustain the BC marine environment.

Our recent dolphin ‘spring fling’ {AKA Dolphin-Palooza 2011} is a good example.  With 10 days and a lot of help from our friends and neighbours, we collected gigabytes of photo-identification and acoustic data on Pacific white-sided dolphins in BC, at the extreme south end of the Great Bear Rainforest. Because we are building on Alexandra Morton’s 20 years’ worth of meticulous photographs and observations, we expect that soon we will have a good estimate of abundance, survival and a glimpse into Pacific white-sided dolphin population structure. These important pieces of information form the basis on which sound management decisions can be made. The kind of baseline information we are collecting is essential, whether we are dealing with day-to-day conservation and management decisions or (heaven forbid) assessing damage and supporting recovery if a catastrophe on the scale of the BP oil spill should ever occur in Pacific Northwest waters. The science we do is not the most glamourous kind of field work, but it is necessary.  And we love what we do.

Pacific white-sided dolphins leaping in Knight Inlet, British Columbia