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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742244037 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 01/10/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
FIRST BREATH
'There's a calf there! It's brand new!'
It had been a typical day with our team of Centre for Whale Research assistants surveying for cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in the Exmouth region off the coast of Western Australia, and Curt was steering our boat WhaleSong II towards the gap in the Ningaloo Reef at Tantabiddi. We were heading for our mooring inside the lagoon, near the Tantabiddi boat ramp on the western side of Exmouth Peninsula.
'Curt, there's an adult humpback over here, just north of the passage,' I said. Curt kindly listens. Right from the very first research projects that I joined in 1986 while I was still studying for my Master's degree, it became evident that my eyesight was better than I'd realised. When Curt and I met in Maui, I routinely found whales from afar, and thus our work in Australia was born on the back of visual surveys from small boats where I put my eyes to work. I got a huge kick out of finding whales and with great whoops and yahoos I would give excited directions to Curt as we skipped over the waves towards a blow from a whale.
As we approached this large, solitary humpback whale — what biologists call a pod or group of one — Curt smoothly reduced speed so I could collect the usual left and right lateral body photo-identification (photo-ID) images. These would be added to our steadily growing identification catalogue.
'This whale is huge. She's so wide, she's probably pregnant,' Curt observed as we motored quietly nearby.
Seeing a pregnant animal was not unusual. Pregnant whales heading north along Ningaloo Reef at this time of year are commonly sighted as they head for the Kimberley calving grounds over 1000 kilometres further north to give birth. As I began the process of photographing the left and right sides of this broad-backed whale, Curt quietly drifted WhaleSong II, our 24-metre expedition vessel, to within 100 metres of the whale. Fractiously, the large whale swam back and forth, first in a northerly direction, then to the south, then northward again, staying within a small area of calm water on the outside edge of the reef. As the whale made four surfacings parallel to us, I was able to get clear images of both sides of her broad lateral flank and dorsal fin. Next, she turned 90 degrees and headed towards the reef. She dived, lifting her tail fluke in a very high dive, nicely showing a perfect view of the underside of her tail. She went down for two minutes, and when she surfaced to breathe (in fact exhaling and inhaling), I saw a tiny pale grey calf bobbing right beside her.
'It's a calf!' I squealed. 'There's a calf there! It's brand new!'
Still drifting at a respectful distance (much further away than our research licences required), I took a whole lot of photos and then quickly looked at the images to see what was happening. Scrolling through, I enlarged a left-lateral-body photo-ID shot. The calf beside the mum's large flank was new all right — it was very little. This was a neonate. The photo showed a raspberry-red line rippling along the surface of the water just behind the mother's body. As she flexed her flukes swimming around her baby, the raspberry-hued blood tainted the water but quickly dispersed. The blood provided certainty that we had witnessed the birth of this little calf! Now we knew that not only did humpback whale cows and calves rest in this little spot by the reef on their southbound migration, but that on her northern migration this mother had chosen to give birth here as well.
I held my excitement and doggedly concentrated on holding the camera very still and in focus and just continued taking photos. 'Keep calm and carry on photographing' should be my motto. One of Curt's nicknames for me is 'lead-finger', not without reason. Quality is always better than quantity in any world, but with biological observations more is always better. High-quality digital images, readily available these days, can capture a multitude of nuances of behaviour and anatomy.
The whole crew positioned themselves on the bridge deck and flybridge and watched on with affection. Beside the mother this neonate tried to swim, but on this first effort it was struggling to take a breath and failing to stay afloat. The poor little thing was swimming around in tight, clockwise circles with only the tip of its rostrum (head) protruding. There was more sinking than swimming going on and it did not look good.
'There's something wrong with it,' Curt said, deeply concerned.
Fortunately, before we could process what was happening, the mother stepped in. I watched through my tel-ephoto lens, my eyes opened wide. The cow dived below the surface and reappeared directly underneath the calf, her large dark form dwarfing her tiny pale grey charge. As the mother came to the surface, she slowly lifted the calf completely clear of the water. The calf was perched sideways right on top of its mother's flat upper jaw, near her blowholes, and was totally high and dry. The cow held the calf gently in this position for about 10 seconds, during which time the calf took what we believed to be its first breath.
As soon as the cow lowered her newborn back into the water, its little tail flukes began to beat like a child's wind-up toy being lowered into a bath. The calf flexed its wobbly tail flukes up and down like crazy and was off and racing. Before the cow could intervene, as if on autopilot the calf headed straight over to WhaleSong II. Just before colliding with us amidships, it turned to parallel our drifting vessel and swam half the length of us, much to the amazement and delight of all on board. We were looking right down on a brand-new calf swimming along our port side.
When it came to the surface, its little head popped out of the water on a 30-degree angle, making the water flow past the bumpy sensory tubercles on its flat upper jaw in endearing watery streams. The pale grey body was simply beautiful. It was tiny, only four metres long, and a just adorable replica of its 40000-kilogram mother. As it opened its two blowholes, each the size of a pear, as wide as possible during the breathing process, it was clear this little tacker was on the move!
Its dorsal fin was completely folded over towards the right, as the fins of newborns are. In utero, the fin, which is mostly cartilage, is folded over. During the first few weeks it becomes upright, playing a stabilising role as the calf swims. Ness, one of our research assistants, took a video on her compact digital camera that we later played over and over. This neonate's first swim was accompanied by a delighted chorus of oohs and aahs from our research team.
After briefly checking us out, the little calf re-joined its mother. Together again, they moved back near the spot where the cow had given birth. Soon the calf would be learning the fine art of suckling. As we didn't want to dis-turb this lesson, once we were certain they were fine and doing well, Curt slowly drove WhaleSong II into the lagoon to moor.
At dinner that night we all talked excitedly about the beautiful surprise of the day. Had we really seen this? A calf being born! Wow! How lucky were we?
'We have to call it Tantabiddi!' I said.
'It was surprising to see how small and skinny that little whale was,' recalled Curt. We knew that humpback whale calves are born almost blubberless, but once you see them in the flesh, it's clear how vulnerable they actually are.
* * *
Most calves in the Western Australian humpback whale population are born in the warm waters off the Kimberley coast, near Camden Sound. During July and into August, the water temperatures are typically four or five degrees warmer than the sea surface temperature at Ningaloo Reef, where we had seen this little whale born. Scientists agree that this temperature makes a significant difference to the energy requirements for newborns and in some cases may assist their survival.
At that time, July 2009, this was the first documented birth of a humpback whale. Over the years several fishermen had recounted seeing various things, but none had captured photographs of the event. Our observations of the mother's pre-birth behaviour, her issuing blood and the newborn calf beside her, coupled with our detailed research notes and still and video images, made this sighting significant.
We had waited 20 years to witness this event. Most mammals give birth at night, and we suspected humpback whales followed this practice. Several years later, a research group in Madagascar documented the birth of a humpback whale calf while collecting photo-IDs from an active and combative pod. With several thousand researchers across the world studying humpback whales, we felt very privileged. This was a whale biologist's Holy Grail.
But why had this pregnant female given birth to her calf in such relatively cold water? Was she a very young mother who didn't know where to find warmer water? Did she leave her departure from the southern feeding grounds too late and simply run out of time to get all the way up the coast? Or had some human activities disturbed her progress? There had been an increasing amount of heavy offshore work in the North West Cape area north of Ningaloo. New oil and gas facilities had been installed on the edge of the continental shelf over the previous few years. We were concerned that noise from these facilities and the vessels servicing them could be disrupting the migration of pregnant animals northwards along the coast.
Female whales nearing their delivery time may well be sensitive to noise and unusual disturbances. At worst, this could result in their migration being delayed or even terminated so that they didn't travel past the source of the noise. These types of questions, and testing the many possible answers, keep the team at the Centre for Whale Research very busy — not only with humpback whales, but also blue whales, sperm whales and the numerous other whale and dolphin species that populate our coastline.
Can increased human activity in pristine areas coexist with recovering whale populations? Even though whaling has ceased, we don't know whether these complex giants can increase their numbers to the levels of a century ago. Has the world they live in, increasingly exploited by humans, changed too much? These are pressing questions that require urgent answers. In the last 50 years there has been significant development along the coastline of Western Australia. Iron ore from the inland Pilbara towns of Newman, Paraburdoo, Pannawonica and Tom Price is exported worldwide from shipping terminals at Port Hedland and Dampier — the busiest and heaviest tonnage ports in Australia — and transported right through the middle of the whales' migration routes. Iron ore and oil and gas from the seas beyond the continental shelf have been the main-stay of the Western Australian economy and — until the recent dip in resource prices — Australia's national GDP.
Following on from our original goal to monitor the growth of the humpback population from the Dampier Archipelago, the Centre for Whale Research undertook aerial surveys from a migration bottleneck at North West Cape, near Exmouth, from 2000 to 2009, and established that the Western Australian humpback whale population had steadily grown to between 33 000 and 36 000 animals. This was extremely exciting news. When whaling ceased in 1963, the population had been less than 500, and in the early 1990s their numbers were still only 2000 to 3000.
In a rare good news story for the environment, we have concluded that over the last 50 years, coastal and offshore development in north-western Australia has proceeded in parallel, and mostly in harmony, with the increase in the humpback whale population. Curt and I believe that a mixture of processes has been at work. That Western Australia is so remote has been key. Low numbers of humans and few disruptive human activities during the critical period between the cessation of whaling and end of the 1990s allowed the whales unhindered use of the most favourable areas for rearing newborn calves. Now, through education and the efforts of groups like the Centre for Whale Research, good management practices have limited seismic surveys for petroleum in critical habitats, such as the calving grounds of the Kimberley, and reduced shipping in nursery areas like Exmouth Gulf. We feel fortunate to have been working at a time when this recovering population needed a helping hand. Curt and I were able to identify areas of coastline that were critical to the recovery of this population and then influence governments to protect them — a real privilege. For their own part, humpback whales appear to be a resili-ent and tolerant species. They doggedly go about their lives, migrating along coastal shores in close proximity to humans on all continents. They just need secure areas to breed and feed. Leaving them alone is the best protection we can give them.
A recent review of 13 global humpback whale populations has prompted the National Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration to take nine of these populations off the endangered list. Is this just a political move to enable funding to be passed on to more threatened coastal dolphin species? Or is it a true reflection of the relative health of these populations post-whaling? Regardless of the motive, long-term monitoring must continue to assess the Western Australian humpback whale population, and as that population grows, new strategies are needed. A new technique employed by the Centre for Whale Research, in collaboration with state and federal government agencies, is to utilise commercially available satellite imagery to count whales. Yes, we are counting whales from space! And it works. Curt analysed a swathe of north-south oriented images collected over two days in August 2016 that revealed 26 and 30 animals in Camden Sound. And four pods had calves with them! This technique will now become part of a regular monitoring program for this humpback whale population.
* * *
Tantabiddi and its mother had been passively subjected to an effective and globally standardised system of benign 'tagging' of individual humpback whales. We just quietly took photographs of them. Using high-resolution cameras, readily available these days, three images are taken of each whale. The digital photographs, managed in our custom-designed archive and matching system, are compared within and between seasons and locations, providing valuable long-term data on the life history and movements of individual whales as well as populations. The photographs are taken directly beside and behind each whale. We aim to collect left and right lateral body photographs, showing the dorsal fin and the scars and marks on the sides of the whale's flanks; and a photo of the beautiful patterns on the underside of the tail flukes. The black and white markings on the lower surface of each 5-metre tail fluke are as individual as our fingerprints and can be swapped like baseball cards between researchers looking for matches.
When we first began work in the Dampier Archipelago in 1990, we aimed to collect as many photo-IDs as possible of migrating humpback whales. By matching the three images of individual whales year after year, it is possible to document a whale's life history. When we set up our research project on Enderby Island, many details of the humpback whale migration remained a mystery. By photographing every whale we encountered and matching the images of individuals within and between the seasons, we used a well-known statistical mark-recapture technique. The mathematical model takes into account the number of whales photographed and the number resighted within and between seasons and provides a robust understanding of population movement. If, for example, you wanted to assess the number of students in a school, you could take a sample of the school by taking a photograph of the students at the library each Tuesday at the same time. Mostly the same pupils would be present each Tuesday, so this would be looking on a fine scale at the movements of that class. If the students were photographed at the library each school day at the same time year after year, one could make a range of assumptions about changes in the population of the school and gather information on individuals as well. After our first four seasons based on Enderby Island, 30 years after the protection of humpback whales from whaling was introduced, we produced a humpback whale population estimate of between 2000 and 3000 individuals. The photos allow for modelling but alone they effectively tell the stories. A whale photographed by Wayne and Pam Osborn with 10 other animals near Rottnest Island in October 2009 was recognised from our July 1992 Montebello Islands expedition when Curt and I saw it migrating northward with another adult — this gap of 17 years remains our longest humpback whale resight!
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Secret Life of Whales"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Micheline Jenner.
Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
Maps,
HUMPBACK WHALES,
First breath,
A shaky whale nursery,
Pec fin ride,
One crazy whale,
On the belly of a whale,
Our Kimberley dream,
Protecting the Kimberley,
The orphan,
Close pass,
Sunset thrash,
Singers,
Satellite tags,
BLUE WHALES,
Within the blue,
Don't we know you?,
Saving technology,
A week in the life of a pygmy blue whale,
Eye to eye,
Ancient tracks,
Tag away,
Whaling then and now,
DOLPHINS,
Dolphins on the bow!,
Diamond dolphins,
Common ground,
Killer whale surprise,
MINKE WHALES,
Minke whale magic,
Minke mischief,
Saving whales,
LISTENING IS THE NEW LOOKING,
Bringing sights and sounds together,
Dolphins and dynamite,
The future is in listening,
COOL WATER: ANTARCTICA,
Twenty years in the making,
Krill soup and tag success,
Tracking Tiny,
Hungry whales and fussy eaters,
Sperm whales,
Where have all the blue whales gone?,
A stormy homeward passage,
POSTSCRIPT,
Too much fun in the sun,
Endnotes,
Further Reading,
Acknowledgments,