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

Happy Birthday Fin Whale

by oceansadminWhalesPosted on One Comment

We love fin whales.

Fin whale in British Columbia
A few years ago, this photo of a fin whale was taken on Rob’s birthday during a series of surveys he initiated with Raincoast.  The surveys for marine mammals in British Columbia coastal waters yielded an abundance estimate for fin whales (corresponding to an area that’s roughly the PNCIMA region) of 496 whales.  There is a lot of uncertainty associated with that estimate, because there weren’t many sightings, so there’s lots more work to do on the species.  Here are more details about the study.
Next, we assessed where fin whales might encounter marine debris and where they are most likely to be hit by transiting ships like this fin whale.  Turns out the south end of Queen Charlotte Sound turned out to be one of a few regions where we should be on the lookout for fin whale ship strikes.  Fin whales are endangered in the United States and in Canada. Many populations are still depleted from commercial whaling and their recovery could be slowed by ship strikes and chronic ocean noise from marine traffic.
If you want to learn more about fin whales, Rob wrote a neat encyclopedia entry about fin whales in the Antarctic.
Our next work on fin whales is acoustic.  We’re screening our recordings for fin whale calls, and estimating how much acoustic masking fin whales may experience from shipping noise.  So, watch this space for more information.  Until then, please enjoy the pretty picture of a birthday fin whale.

(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?

REMEMBER, THE CAMERA ADDS 10 TONNES…

by oceansadminAcoustics, Dolphins, Ecosystems, Habitat, Whales, Women in SciencePosted on 2 Comments

At New Year’s, we all make resolutions about diet. But we’ve got nothing on Pacific humpback whales, which are currently on their mating and calving grounds in Hawaii and Mexico. During this time, they go weeks or months without eating at all. BC waters provide important habitat for these highly migratory animals. When they’re here in summer, they only have a few months to put on all the fat reserves they need to migrate over 4000km (each way) across the ocean, calve, mate, nurse their calves and return to BC to start the cycle all over again. From our perspective, this creates a sense of responsibility for Canadian resource management: human activities that degrade the quality of feeding habitat in BC waters carries consequences that affect the whales throughout the rest of their range.

WE LOVE THE BBC SERIES, “NATURE’S GREAT EVENTS“.

Humpback whales eat a lot, and they accomplish all of this without teeth.  How do they do that?  An incredibly gifted filmmaker, Shane Moore shot this extraordinary footage for the BBC that shows the northeast Pacific ecosystem much better than we ever could describe in words (although Sir David Attenborough comes a close second to the whales themselves). [Please note:  BBC put this link on youtube, but they’ve also put some other amazing footage on their site, which we encourage you to see.] Enough lead-in.  Check out this frenzy of seabirds, herring and whales:

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH…

Of course, not all marine mammals migrate. Some, like the Pacific white-sided dolphins we study, have been seen in our study area every month of the year.  Dolphins, including the killer whale (the largest member of the dolphin family) do not fast over the winter months. Instead, they eat like we do — constantly.  And dolphins and killer whales both have teeth, and big brains, to help them come up with clever ways to find their prey.

The following video shows dolphins and killer whales hunting.  You might want to watch this on your own before deciding whether it’s appropriate for younger viewers.  [Note.  We collect our photographs and video under a research permit.  We learn a lot through photo-ID, but we are obviously not filmmakers.]

[vsw id=”14224604″ source=”vimeo” width=”600″ height=”400″ autoplay=”no”]

Listen.  Everybody’s gotta eat.  The whales aren’t doing this because they hate dolphins.  They’re doing this because, like dolphins, us and all organisms that can’t feed themselves through photosynthesis, whales need to eat to survive.  Our colleague, Jackie Hildering, recently witnessed a similar event.

A lot of our work aims to estimate abundance of whales, dolphins and other top predators, because we want to see ecosystem-based fishery management practices that ensure that nutritional needs of marine wildlife are taken into consideration when setting fishing quotas.  But lately, we’re growing concerned about the potential for underwater noise to mask the ability of a whale or dolphin to find its prey or detect when predators are nearby.  Going back to Shane Moore’s tremendous BBC footage, a frenzy like that must make some noise that a humpback whale could hear and use to locate a school of fish.  OK.  We’re guessing at that — it hasn’t been proven scientifically (although this is a research question we’d love to take on).  Our colleagues have shown convincingly that killer whales use sound to find and locate their prey, so it’s not rocket science to guess that human-caused noise can disrupt that sensitive acoustic system.

OK.  Maybe we shouldn’t make this all about human activities.  Maybe you should forget the text, watch that BBC footage again and just appreciate, as we do, how neat these animals are.