Southeast U.S.

Curious encounters of the whale kind

These last few days we’ve been land bound by windy weather, so we took advantage of the downtime to fit shiny new engines to the R/V Selkie. More control and horsepower to get us safely and speedily around our mother/calf survey area. Very exciting! Before we get anywhere near the whales, though, we switch to our electric motors, which let us maneuver silently to make observations. Sometimes we get lucky: on our third field day this season, we didn’t even need these – the whale came to us…

Yes, we were carrying out photo-ID work on an adult and juvenile (not a mother/calf this time), when the adult whale approached us, slowly and gracefully, and proceeded to gradually circle the boat, surfacing often, each time pausing to take a languid peek at the boat, and perhaps the bizarre land mammals onboard. The water was placid, almost flat. The air was still. We spent thirty or forty minutes like this, enchanted by the unhurried curiosity of the whale. An intoxicating serenity descended upon the boat. Okay, maybe I imagined that last bit. Also, we got some great video, acoustic recordings, and stills.

close up of mouth of whale
Photo: Dana Cusano

To me, at least, this was bliss. I joined Susan’s lab as a postdoc last October, and this is my first season of right whale fieldwork. Oh, to be in sunny Florida in January! Face-to-face with colossal whales! Listening to their weird sounds! You get the idea. Actually, even Grace and Pete with their decades of field experience were taken aback by the experience. These ‘curious approaches’ are typically only seen in juvenile whales; it’s very unusual to see such behavior in an adult. Anyway. Eventually, big whale and little whale moseyed off toward the horizon and the spell lifted. We packed up our gear. Possibly we had lunch.

The End.

A trip to Brunswick

Yesterday there were some sightings too far north to reach from Fernandina Beach. Luckily for us, we were able to trailer the boat to Brunswick, GA to get closer to these most recent sightings. It was our first trip out of Brunswick this year. In fact, we used a brand new boat launch underneath the Sidney Lanier bridge and then traveled the short distance out the Brunswick River into the Atlantic. Along the way, we got a nice view of Jekyll Island to the South, and St. Simons to the North.

dock and water with bridge to the left
The view from the brand new boat launch under the Sidney Lanier bridge. Photo: Dana Cusano
lighthouse across water
The St. Simons Lighthouse on the south side of the island
open water in foreground bridge in background
Back behind us as we left the channel, we got a great view of the Sidney Lanier bridge

One of the advantages of spending a lot of time on the water looking for whales is you see a lot of other interesting things as well. While underway we’re always scanning the horizon for signs of whales, but it is a perfect way to spot some cool birds as well. Look for a blog post later about some of the other creatures we sight on our trips, but for now enjoy some of these birds we spotted on the water today.

Before we even left the river, we spotted some American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrohynchos). Grace noted that these pelicans are always seen on the marsh side of the shore and never on the ocean side. We often see Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentals) on the beach or out offshore . Below are pictures of both species for comparison.

flock of white pelicans on sand
We saw these White Pelicans on our way out of the Brunswick River
Brown pelican flying
Here is a Brown Pelican as seen from the beach.

It wasn’t a bird or a whale, but one of our first sightings today was a mylar balloon. Discarded balloons often get blown or washed into the ocean and actually pose quite a threat to wildlife. Eventually, the printing on these balloons comes off and a transparent polymer is left that can look like gelatinous invertebrates (such as jellies and other similar animals). Sea turtles can consume these types of animals and have been found with balloons in their stomach [2]. (We do see turtles on our trips sometimes; look for more information on these fascinating animals in a later blog post.) Plastic debris is increasingly recognized as a source of mortality for all sorts of marine life by entanglement, accidental ingestion, and even direct absorption of microplastics and other chemicals added to the polymers during manufacture. Some researchers have called for plastics to be labeled toxic waste, because of the chemicals they can contain, to tighten disposal regulations, and to free up Superfund money for cleaning up plastic pollution in aquatic environments [3]. You can listen to the author speaking on Living on Earth, a radio show distributed by PRI [4]. Though we could never get them all, when we see balloons we try our best to pick them up and dispose of them on land, which you can see Nathan doing below.

man holding deflated balloon
Nathan is not happy about this marine debris.

A short time later, we passed three Razorbills (Alca torda). This is a beautiful Alcid, the group of birds that includes Puffins and the now extinct Great Auk. Razorbills tend to be a colder water species and aren’t a very frequent sight for us. Pete got a great picture as we passed by. These birds look similar to two species of Murres (also Alcids), but has slightly different plumage and a deeper bill. Recently there was an unusually large number of Razorbill sightings in the southeast U.S. A system maintained by the Lab of eBird published a short article on their website about this [5]. Anyone can submit sightings to eBird and volunteer experts help to validate the sightings. A massive amount of data has been collected and is freely available to scientists and anyone else interested. We’ve uploaded our sightings to eBird to contribute to what is known about the range of this fascinating bird.

two birds swimming in water
Razorbills are excellent swimmers above and below the water. Photo: Pete Duley/NOAA

We spotted two Parasitic Jaegers (Stercorarius parasiticus) on our trip today. One was in the act of kleptoparasitism, a common feeding technique for Jaegers. As their name implies, Parasitic Jaegers often parasitize smaller birds such as terns and some species of gulls by stealing their food (that’s the “klepto-” part). This involves a lot of chasing and harassing and sometimes the targeted bird will drop its catch in order to get away, leaving a meal for the Jaeger. You can watch this happening on this youtube video. Our looks were distant so we didn’t get great photos, but you can check out some photos or even listen to Jaeger sounds at the Audubon website. As the website points out, Parasitic Jaegers breed in the Tundra, but non-breeding birds range widely in the both hemispheres.

brid flying just above water surface
One of the Parasitic Jaegers seen today.

As we traveled today, we saw quite a view feeding frenzies of Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus). These birds are in the Sulidae family, which also holds the famous Blue-Footed Booby. You can see the resemblance especially well in the head. Gannets dive from great heights into the water in order to catch small schooling fish. When there are a lot of fish around, huge groups of Gannets can produce spectacular views for us on the boat. Sometimes we see dolphins feeding on the same fish, surfacing under a cloud of birds. The birds can be seen from quite far away, especially when there are large numbers, and so this is a great way to find feeding animals of all sorts.

flock of birds flying above water
We saw more than a few Gannets today. Photo: Pete Duley/NOAA
white bird floating in water
Gannets in adult plumage have yellow heads and striking black wingtips.
two birds diving in water
In this short animation, you can see a dive from start to splashdown. Two Gannets one after the other are diving in close proximity here, so it’s easy to see the different stages as the birds fold their wings back into a more streamlined position.
bird diving into water
Here’s another Gannet diving
white bird pointed down at water while diving
It’s a little blurry, but look at the shape of this Gannet’s body a split second before impact with the water.

Thanks for reading, and look for more posts soon as we continue the field season! See below for some links and references mentioned in the post.
References and links

[1] Hain JHW, Hampp JD, McKenney SA, Albert JA, Kenney RD. 2013. Swim Speed, Behavior, and Movement of North Atlantic Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in Coastal Waters of Northeastern Florida, USA. PLoS ONE 8(1): e54340. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054340

[2] Tomás J, Guitart R, Mateo R, Raga JA. 2002. Marine debris ingestion in loggerhead sea turtles, Caretta caretta, from the Western Mediterranean. Marine Polution Bulletin. 44: 211-216.

[3] Rochman CM, Browne MA, Halpern BS, Hentschel BT, Hoh E, Karapanagioti HK, Rios-Mendoza LM, Takada H, Teh S, Thompson RC. 2013. Policy: Classify plastic waste as hazardous. Nature 494(7436): 169-171.

[4] Living on Earth, March 8th, 2013: The Hazards of Plastic Waste

[5] Razorbills invade Florida

[6] Youtube video of a Parasitic Jaeger in the act of kleptoparasitism.

[7] Parasitic Jaeger on the Audubon website.

An update on moms

Good news! Two new moms were sighted yesterday, bringing the total number of mother/calf pairs in the southeast to 5 so far this year. Thanks to the awesome work from the New England Aquarium, and the funding of NOAA Fisheries, we can look up the information on all of these moms using the North Atlantic right whale catalog. This is the most complete right whale identification resource available today, with over 200,000 photographs dating back to 1935! By using the work from the North Atlantic right whale DNA bank at Trent University, we are also able to sometimes determine the paternity of some whales too. This is much harder to do, but those guys are ever working on getting more and more pedigrees deciphered! Here is some info on the moms so far:

#1301 (Half Note): a 31 year old female, Half Note was born in 1983. While she has had 3 calves prior to this season, none of them have survived to adulthood. Unfortunately, no one quite knows why. We will all be rooting for her this season though! Another fun fact about Half Note is that her mother, #1001 (Fermata), was the first whale to be added to the right whale catalog! Her father is #1033.

#2040 (Naevus): a 24 year old female born in 1990. Naevus’ mother is #1140 (Wart), who was “famous” last year for having her calf in Cape Cod Bay. Naevus’ father is unknown.

#2123 (Couplet): a 23 year old female, Couplet was born in 1991. Her mother is #1123 (Sonnet) and her grandmother is #1142 (Kleenex). Couplet’s father was #1144 (Dingle).

#2503 (Boomerang): a 19 year old female born in 1995. Her mother is #1503 (Trilogy) and her grandmother is #1240 (Baldy). Baldy is at least 40 and was just spotted last year. Boomerang’s father is #1043.

#2645 (Insignia): an 18 year old female born in 1996. Her mother is #1245 (Slalom) and her grandmother is Wart. That means Insignia’s mother Slalom is the sister of Naevus. Although we don’t know the father of either of the sisters, it ultimately makes Naevus the aunt of Insignia! Pretty neat! I often wonder if they know…Insignia’s father is #1170 (Legs).

This is one of the things that makes the work the New England Aquarium and Trent University does so great: we are able to know so much about the ancestry of these individuals. And it is only going to get better! Check back at the end of the season for a SEUS mom family tree!

New season, new goals

Well we are back in the southeast for our fourth SEUS field season, and this year we are changing our focus a bit. For the past three seasons, we have been focused on conducting behavioral follows of mother-calf pairs while simultaneously making acoustic recordings. Since we have three good years of that, Susan decided we should try to supplement our existing data with tag data. This will allow us to say with even more confidence that what we have been seeing in previous years is representative of the behavior of mom/calf right whale pairs. While we tried our hand a bit at tagging last year, this year we are making it our top priority!

Unfortunately, we have been here for two weeks now and have had some bad luck with the weather. We have only managed to get out three times…very reminiscent of our recent Bay of Fundy days! There are three mother/calf pairs sighted down here so far, but we have not had much luck finding them with enough daylight to tag on two of the days. On the day we did have light on our side, we were unfortunately unsuccessful in our attempts. It is not an easy task, just ask Will!

Despite little success so far, yesterday we were lucky enough to find a SAG of right whales, or a surface active group, which is two or more whales socializing at the surface. SAGs are believed to play a role in mating, but they almost certainly serve another purpose as well. See the New England Aquarium‘s website for much more information on right whales and SAGs. We got some great photos, and even threw in a hydrophone to eavesdrop a bit. All in all, despite not getting any mom/calf data, it was at least an exciting day!

Whale fin sticking out of water
A right whale shows off a pectoral fin during a SAG. Photo: Dana Cusano

Closing out the season

Overall this season has been a resounding success. The number of right whale calves for the season has reached 20, with new mothers still being sighted in mid-February. We have collected behavioral and acoustic data from a good cross section of the population, got a glimpse into underwater behavior from a tag attachment and even have more than one follow for some mother-calf pairs, giving us insight into how the pair’s behavior changes as the calves mature.

I’m excited that I was able to return for the next to last week of the season to check in with the field team. I’m also excited to get another short break from the winter weather in Syracuse. It was 70 when I left Florida in January, and 7 degrees when I arrived in Syracuse. Although this past week has been relatively cool in Florida, the sun, sand and ocean are a nice break from clouds, salt and snow.

I managed to get out on the water for 2 days out of the 5 that I was in Fernandina, which is very unusual for me. For the past few years, I typically get out < 1 day every two weeks in the field. We had great luck out on the water. The aerial survey teams were able to direct us to mother-calf pairs both days, and we were able to collect behavioral and acoustic data. The entire field team is working together well and I was mostly an extra set of hands while they ran the show. Both mother-calf pairs approached the vessel when we were drifting with the engine shut down, recording both the sounds in the environment and the behavior of the whales. Here is Dana’s nice picture of one of the mothers approaching the boat that I photobombed at the last second.

lab member posing while whale breaches in backgorund
Photo taken by D. Cusano, under NMFS Permit #775-1875-02

Our time in Florida is winding down, the team will be packing up all the equipment and heading North soon, where the research will continue in Cape Cod Bay when the whales start migrating up the coast. Check out the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Service website to follow North Atlantic right whale sightings.

-Susan

A lesson on sea state

Planning for a possible boat day last night, we of course kept a close eye on the weather forecast.The weather according to the NOAA national weather service forecast was still looking fairly decent: northwest winds 10 knots, seas 2 to 3ft, waters a light chop, etc. We are pretty restricted by the weather as I’ve said, and generally don’t go out in winds more than 10 knots or so. Anything stronger than that and we get a sea state that is unworkable for us, meaning we would have a very hard time keeping track of the whales, putting equipment in the water, taking it back out, recording video, collecting behavioral observations, etc. So 10 was a definite possibility. We all went to bed early and were up at 6:30 to check the weather again.

When we got up, the national weather service forecast was the same, but when we took a look at the real time readings from some of the nearby buoys they were telling us the winds were blowing 11 knots with gusts of 15…that is a bit out of our comfort zone. We decided to see if the winds would drop out a bit as the forecast said. Around noon, we decided it looked like it might be alright judging by our view of the ocean from the deck and some of the nearby buoys. Since we were ready to go, we had the boat in the water at 12:45. One quick glance around us though and we all began to question the readings and forecast…in the channel we were already in a sea state 4 and we hadn’t even left the dock!

For those of you unfamiliar with how sea state is measured, here is a brief overview. Mariners use the Beaufort wind scale to describe the conditions of the sea as it relates to wind speed. The scale runs from force 0 (wind speed less than 1 knot) to force 12 (wind speed 64+ knots). Wind speed obviously influences sea conditions a great deal. Force 0 looks something like this:

calm water no waves

Just for the sake of comparison, Beaufort force 12 looks a little something like this:

large waves crashing into ship
No thank you…

During my (albeit short) time on this project, I have discovered that the maximum sea state we can comfortably work in is about a 3. If we are out and on whales and it turns to sea state 4, we can manage, but it isn’t pretty. Here is what force 4 looks like (although now that I have shown you 12 it doesn’t seem like much):

ocean with slight waves
Sea State 4

So when we encountered that at the dock, we were skeptical that it would be nicer once we got out of the channel, but it has happened before so we gave it a shot. It was rough going I must say. When we finally got out of the channel, we were still in a sea state 4+ with 3-4 ft waves and a very short wave interval. In other words, it was nasty. We ventured out a little bit to see if maybe we were still just caught up in the currents from the channel, but it didn’t get any better. Looking at the horizon, it didn’t look any better anywhere…so that was that, we turned around and began to head in. Fortunately there was a dredge working right out of the channel, so we were able to ride in their wake back to the mouth of the channel, making it a much smoother ride than it would have been that’s for sure!

Now we are back at home waiting for our next weather opening (and watching the seas turn into a force 5 as we speak). Thursday looks like a possibility and Friday looks great, so now we just wait and hope for sea state 0!

The tagging

Well today marks the end of our good weather stretch, but with 4 great days on the water within a 5 day period we have very little to complain about! The past few days are a blur, but what I can tell you is that we got a little bit of everything. That is, everyday we got all the data we set out to collect! The only exception to that is the tag data…we have been trying very hard to get a tag on but it is just as hard as you might expect. So we have not had very good luck as of yet. Good news from yesterday though – we finally got our first tag on! Let me explain a little bit about how the process works so you can appreciate how much work goes into it and share in our feeling of accomplishment.

In the morning we have to load the batteries into the tag and use a Palm Pilot to program it to record the data how we want it (meaning the correct frequency and sample rate, etc. etc.). Then we have to clean the suction cups to make sure they are clear of dust or oils and ready to stick to a whale. Then they get placed inside a hardy Pelican case to protect them in transit.

Once we find a mom/calf pair we then need to assess if they are “taggable”. A taggable whale is one that is calm and resting, not travelling or excited in any way. We don’t want to chase any whales or approach them in any sort of aggressive manner, so we are very picky about what we deem a taggable whale. Yesterday we had a whale that was nice and relaxed and didn’t seem to mind us coming close. That was my cue: I had to get out a tag, use the Palm to tell it to begin recording, and attach the transmitter so we would be able to track it. While I was doing that, Pete was starting to put the tag pole together which consists of three long sections of a carbon fiber that need to be attached to one another using a very sophisticated method – wire and electrical tape. Once that was set I snapped the tag into the holder at one end, secured a line from the other end of the pole to the boat, and we were finally ready to tag!

Using our electric motor so as to be “discrete” and not spook the whales, we began to slowly approach. We finally got close enough and Pete ever so casually plopped the tag down. It stuck! Success! We began tracking the tag using a receiver that makes a clicking sound whenever the antenna at the top of the tag comes to the surface. After only about 15 minutes we began to hear a constant clicking but could see no whales, meaning the tag was off the whale and floating somewhere at the surface. Bummer! We quickly spotted the tag (which is bright orange to make it easy to locate) and brought it back on board. It was only on for a short while, but 15 minutes is better  than nothing and we were all pretty excited!

orange tag on back of whale
Photo: Will Cioffi

We are having a pretty successful season so far in my opinion; lots of data, a good amount of mother/calf pairs, and still three weeks left to get even more! Now I have quite a bit of work to do before our next boat day, but that is definitely a good thing! Before I go, here is another beautiful sunset photo taken from the boat. A brilliant way to end a great day!

deep red sunset over water
Photo: Pete Duley

Grounded

Well it has been nearly a week since we last went out, and while it was useful in terms of getting our data organized and browsed, we are all ready to get back out on the water. When we went on Saturday there were at least 8 mom/calf pairs in the area, out of the 16 known pairs down here. That’s pretty amazing! The planes flew on Tuesday though (despite the fog and haze that prevented us from going) and they only came across two adult right whales…no mom/calf pairs. Hmm…hopefully they just moved offshore in anticipation of the storm that came across the area. Or maybe they were just staying down for extended periods of time. There is only one way to find out. We need to get back out there!

It looks like the next 3 or 4 days may be good weather days, so hopefully by this time next week we will have lots of sightings and new data to go through!

They say two is company and three’s a crowd

That may be true in some cases, but not for our project! Three is not so much a crowd as a bare minimum. It takes at least three people to go out and collect data on Selkie, but we have discovered over the years that the more people we have, the more data we can get (within limits of course…Selkie is by no means a large boat). For our project to be successful, we have a lot of data to collect each and every trip. We have photos to take, GPS coordinates to track, video and audio to record, behavioral data to sequence, and CTD casts to do. On top of all of that, we must be constantly watching the whales, driving the boat, and keeping track of the hydrophones. On top of all of THAT we also may have to biopsy and this season we are trying to deploy suction cup tags for acoustic and depth data right from the whale. 

Now that the grad students and Susan have returned to their duties in Syracuse, it is just me, Pete, and Grace. On Saturday we went out for the first time this season as a trio and it wasn’t easy! We worked hard and we worked together, and in doing so we were rewarded with two biopsies, acoustic recordings, video, photos, and behavioral sequencing. It wasn’t perfect, but we got a lot done and learned some things to do better the next time around…it doesn’t look like we are going to have good weather for a few days, so we are settling in to take a look at what we have collected thus far this season. More soon!

When roles are reversed…

Yesterday started out as a great day at only 7am. The weather was looking great for the day, we had Selkie back and all of our gear was packed up and ready to go by 8:30. Not long after we launched, the plane called and we were on a mother/calf pair by 10am! Now that is what a day should start like!

We started working our pair, taking photos and video, and soon another pair popped up to join the fun. After the initial confusion of who was who and what was what, we decided to follow #3294 and her calf. We were ready to start getting behavioral data, photographs, and video all by 10am. Our day was getting better and better, but it was soon about to get even better!

The best way to get the best behavioral data is simply to shut down the engine and drift. We hope that doing so will allow the animals to relax a bit and maybe forget we are there, even for a little while. So that’s what we did. With the whales still a couple hundred meters off, we turned off our engine and settled in to watch. Then we noticed the calf starting to swim our way…and he kept on swimming. Pretty soon we knew we were going to have what we call a “curious approach”, which is when a whale (usually a calf) comes close to the boat as if curious about what it is.

Well this calf was indeed very curious. He swam close to the starboard side, popped up his little head (like Leanna, I use the term little loosely), and took a look. He then proceeded to go around to take a look at our port side. Back and forth he went for a minute or so, doing some rolls on his side to take a better look at us. He was probably wondering what all these little orange things were doing on this big orange thing! Well conveniently for us, while he got a better look we also got to take a much better look at him. We even got to confirm that he was indeed a he, which is a pretty hard task for any right whale let alone a calf! We followed them for another 4 hours until it was time for us to head home with a lot of data and quite the story. Now THAT’s a good day!

sunset over water with flock of birds near surface
Heading home at sunset. Photo: Dana Cusano