More NRKWs, Breaching Humpbacks, Bigg’s and More

Casey Brant started working as first a naturalist then captain in Victoria 14 years ago. She holds a doctorate from the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Science.

Southern Vancouver Island is home to a thriving whale watching industry, loved by tourists, but often maligned by locals. The industry grew around watching the residents due to their once predictable summer appearance.

However since 2013 there has been a marked change. The transient population, once rare and elusive, are now thriving and frequently seen in the Salish Sea. The arrival of the residents is now unpredictable, their numbers declining. The contrast is stark and the cause obvious – residents rely on the Chinook, now scarce, transients feed on seals, now abundant.

When I started whale watching in 2003 as a captain and naturalist it was fun and easy. Sure there were days when we didn’t find whales, but not many. Most days were the same: fill up your boat with passengers, drive over to San Juan Island to observe the residents feeding, drive home and repeat….
read on

Scientists have coaxed a large male killer whale out of a British Columbia harbour by playing recorded sounds of other orcas to the animal.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials say the transient killer whale known as T73B immediately responded to the recorded sounds of whales likely familiar to him and left the harbour and was last seen heading for open ocean.

‘Really odd’ killer whale draws a crowd in Comox Harbour
DFO spokesman Paul Cottrell says the lone whale has been a frequent visitor to the busy harbour in Comox on Vancouver Island for several days and concerns were increasing for its safety and members of the boating public….
read on

A federally organized response team was able to administer antibiotics to the ailing, “very skinny” 3-year-old orca J50 in U.S. waters near San Juan Island on Thursday, NOAA announced Thursday night.

“Progress!” NOAA Fisheries declared in a tweet. “Response teams reached J Pod today in Canadian waters & followed them into U.S. waters near San Juan Isl. While very skinny & small, J50 kept up with her mother & siblings. Veterinarian Marty Haulena from the Vancouver Aquarium got a thorough look at her.

“The team obtained a breath sample to help assess infection & and gave antibiotics. Next step is to determine whether to proceed w/ trial feeding, depending on conditions & location of the whales. Great work by the teams on the water!”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), along with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, have the authority to administer antibiotics to the sick and starving 3-year-old orca known as J50.

J50 was last spotted Wednesday alongside her mother. The J Pod was seen earlier Thursday, but neither J50 nor J35, the orca carrying her dead calf, were immediately seen…
read on

Marg Leehane, co-owner of Great Bear Lodge in Port Hardy, decided it was worth waking up the guests at 6 a.m. Saturday when the whales approached the docks.

She shot a video that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times on Instagram and shows the whales leaping from the water mere metres from the tourists.

Leehane says the video shows the whales using a feeding technique called bubble netting, in which humpbacks blow a large circle of bubbles around fish to trap them.

She says she’s never seen whales so close to the lodge, and until last year she’d never seen humpbacks in the area use the bubble-netting technique to catch fish.

The technique is learned, rather than instinctual, and not all groups of humpbacks know how to do it, so seeing it up close was a special experience for Leehane.

"One of them will swim in a circle around fish, and as it’s doing it, it will release air from its blowhole, and basically create a net of bubbles," she says.

"Then the fish get more and more concentrated … so (the whales) will get a lot more of them in each mouthful."…
read on

An orca in the northwest waters of the Pacific has been swimming with her dead calf and keeping it afloat for more than 10 days-a display of motherly grief that has struck an emotional chord around the world while highlighting the plight of the critically endangered southern resident population of orcas.

The 20-year-old orca, known as J35 or Tahlequah, gave birth to a female calf on July 24. The baby orca died only a few minutes later. Keeping the calf’s lifeless body afloat atop her head, Tahlequah has been swimming through choppy seas for more than 10 days, as of August 2, the pair’s last known sighting:

The pair’s journey has been described by observers and orca researchers as a "tour of grief." That’s because the obvious bond between mother and child orca-what’s known as "nurturant behavior" towards a dead calf-reminds us of our own human mother-child instincts. To see J35 grieving her dead child is to imagine ourselves going through the same process; hence the global outpouring of empathy for the whale. And on a fundamental level, the orca’s evident bond with her child reminds us of how much we have in common with other animals.

As Susan Casey, an author who has written several books about ocean life, writes in The New York Times, "To learn the orcas’ natural and cultural history is to understand how closely connected a mother and calf are, how tight-knit their bond."…
read on

“It is only the second time I have filmed whales and dolphins interacting like this,” said Jaimen.

“The two species interacted for about 45 minutes. It appeared that the dolphins would swim between the solo whale and the mother and calf that were located about 100m away.

“The whales are Southern Right Whales. They migrate from Antarctica to the Southern half of Australia between the months of June and October each year. They do so to rear their young in our calmer waters.”…
read on

Olive Andrews believes Timor Leste could be one of the best destinations in the world for whale watching. The research scientist with a particular interest in cetaceans drew this conclusion when she joined a survey team assessing the coastal waters north of Timor-Leste in October 2016. "I’ve never seen such a biomass of cetaceans in such a small geography," she says. "We encountered 2287 cetaceans from 11 species, including superpods of up to 600 individuals."

There are 90 distinct species of cetacean – and at least 30 of them occur in Timor-Leste. These include both local populations like melon-headed whales and spinner dolphins, and migratory species such as humpbacks and pygmy blue whales. Managed properly, whale tourism could generate significant income for Timor-Leste, one of the world’s youngest – and poorest – nations.

But the local whale population faces a number of threats. Timor-Leste is seeking to establish itself both politically and economically following a decades-long conflict with its former coloniser Indonesia, which only came to an end in 2002. Illegal fishing from neighbouring countries is rife and the tiny nation doesn’t yet have the resources to prevent it. Besides a single patrol boat there is no monitoring system to identify shipping in its territorial waters. Whales are getting tangled in vast ghost nets that drift all the way down to the Australian coast. According to Andrews, these intruders aren’t just artisanal fishers, but entire fishing fleets….
read on

Nick Pyenson, a National Geographic Explorer and author of Spying on Whales, thinks of himself as a whale detective. As a paleontologist he spends his time travelling the world examining whale bones in places as far afield as Chile’s Atacama Desert. The fossils help reveal the whale’s deep history, from extinct species that originally lived on land to today’s cetaceans. And by knowing their past we can help ensure that these magnificent creatures survive the many threats they face in today’s world.

When National Geographic caught up with Pyenson in Washington D.C., where he is Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, he explained how one ancient species of whale looked more like a dog than a marine creature, what he discovered when he spent time on an Icelandic whaling vessel, and how climate change is creating both winners and losers for whales.

Say whale and we think of a giant, oceanic creature. But the earliest whales, I was amazed to discover, were land-dwelling creatures the size of a German Shepherd. Tell us about Pakicetus and how it turned into a present-day whale….
read on

It was not so long ago that killer whales were reviled as vicious pests, shot, harpooned, and even machine-gunned by whalers, fishermen, and government agencies. Today, the world has come to appreciate these sleek creatures not only as apex predators but also for their complex societies and their ability to feel grief. But as Jason Colby explains in his new book, Orca, our love affair with killer whales may have come too late, as declining fish stocks, marine pollution, and other forces push some of them ever closer to extinction….
read on

This year, more of these species than ever have been spotted by the public, including orcas, minke whales, humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins, and harbour porpoises. Thirteen species and more than 500 sightings have been reported.

Strandings data from the Museum also shows that more whales and dolphins are washing up along the UK coastline, possibly suggesting more animals are paying the country a visit.

Dr Chiara Giulia Bertulli, organiser of this year’s national event, reported that 527 sightings were submitted after the nine-day count. Species numbers are up 50% on last year….
read on