One of the great aspects of being new to right whale aerial surveys is that everything I am seeing down here is novel for me, especially this early in the season. And so, I was pretty excited to spot the first mother-calf pair of the season in our area during our December 22nd survey. Jess estimated the calf to be about 2 or 3 days old, based on it's size, lack of cyamid coverage and light grey coloration.

The coastal waters of Florida and Georgia are the only known calving grounds for the North Atlantic right whale and as such, this area has been designated as a Critical Habitat Area by NOAA. This area is also busy with vessel traffic, including freighters, tankers, dredges, naval ships and LOTS of recreational boats. Thus, as we circled the mother-calf pair so Jess could photograph the pair for identification purposes, we all kept a look-out on three nearby recreational boats.


Photo Credit: New England Aquarium, Jessica Taylor
Taken under a Scientific Research Permit issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service/NOAA.

Two of these boats were stationary and well beyond the 500 yards mandatory approach limit established by NOAA in 1997, but the third vessel was underway and had changed course a number of times. All attempts to hail this vessel on marine channel 16 to warn them of the nearby whales failed and we watched with increasing dismay as the vessel headed straight toward the pair! Fortunately, the recreational boat did not hit either mother or calf, but they were definitely too close for comfort. NOAA has established several regulations to reduce ship strikes in this area, one of which is that vessels 65 ft or longer must travel at 10 knots or less. However, it is strongly recommended that smaller boats also slow down and post a look out while traveling through the calving grounds. Also, if they monitored VHF Ch 16 then perhaps we could avert future violations of the 500 yard closest approach rule - it sure is a 'first experience' I would prefer never to witness!

-Suzie

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The great news is that we are beginning to see more and more North Atlantic right whales here on the calving grounds off of Florida and Georgia. More whales mean more challenges for us researchers; we're now able to put our thorough training and reviewing into practice in the plane and on the ground. In a position with such variegated responsibilities as this one, practice truly does make perfect, and two days ago I learned the hard way that no matter how many times I lift the research camera, fuss with the settings, and practice shooting from the ground, there's no way to prepare for photographing right whales from the air other than actually doing it.

As we survey for whales each day, the main responsibilities in the plane are divided between the two team members who are flying that day. The person next to the right window of the Cessna is responsible for photographing the whales in each sighting, while the person in the left is responsible for assessing the area and ensuring there is no potential vessel traffic heading on course for the whales. Vessel and whale data is recorded both by hand on data sheets, by computer, and verbally into a voice recorder.



Photo Credit: New England Aquarium, Kelly Slivka.
Taken under a Scientific Research Permit issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service/NOAA.

Two days ago I was in the right seat manning the camera when we had our fist Surface Active Group (also known as a SAG) of the season. It was a relatively small group, containing only six individuals. However, the part of the sighting I found truly difficult was not keeping track of the whales, but simply managing to photograph something-- anything-- from 1,000 feet in the air as the plane spins in a circle as if it's winding up to go into orbit, jostled by the blustering, icy winds that shove through the open window, finding the most stable way to prop the 7-pound camera so it faces down toward the water's surface, then fighting the constant centrifugal forces in order to manage 20 seconds of stability so that I can aim, focus, and shoot the whales diving and rolling beneath us in that slight window of time allowed as the plane swings into position over them-- clickclickclick-- before the whales are gone behind the overhanging wing. Though I was, in the end, able to capture identification shots for the individuals in this SAG (one of my shots is above), I certainly left myself a lot of room for personal improvement and have fostered a weighty respect for the more seasoned aerial photographers on the team.
-Kelly

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Marine science has always been a completely fascinating field to me. Growing up, I was impressed by everything to do with the ocean, from mysterious pictures of deep-water fish with strange biolumiscent fishing lures, to the sheer size of the great whales. Aboard a whale watch off the coast of Maine, I saw a humpback named Colt, staring up at the passengers onboard with his inquisitive eye, blurring the boundaries between people watching and whale watching. (See an example of this for yourself by watching this video)

Wednesday was a big day for me - I saw North Atlantic right whales for the first time! Two juvenile whales (calves of 2008) were rolling, touching and diving for extended periods together; in other words, they were displaying the behavior of a Surface Active Group (SAG). Unfortunately, the other first for me on this survey was not such a happy occasion. We encountered an entangled humpback whale.

During yesterday's aerial survey our team spotted its first North Atlantic right whale of the season--even though the weather has been trying to keep us down, we are finally rolling here on the calving grounds! I'm ecstatic that we will be seeing more and more whales on our surveys now, since long stretches of surveying without whales can be quite mind-numbing. In fact, there's a definite art to spotting whales over miles and miles of textured, churning water.



When looking for something that's not a whitecap or a wave, a buoy or a bird on the ocean's surface, we basically have to train our minds to detect an aberration. As we scan back and forth, we need to find that one patch of white-water that's unlike the others, or that one shadow rolling a tad unusually. It's definitely not simple, and it takes a lot of practice. I think a good comparison would be looking at a pointillist painting, like Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and trying to find the one dot that doesn't belong. The photo above is an example of just how subtle a right whale at the sea surface can be.

-Kelly

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Unfortunately, the weather prevented us from flying a survey today. On the bright side, those of us scheduled to fly were able to check out the Right Whale Festival in Jacksonville Beach, Florida instead.



Monica, Kelly, and Kara manned the New England Aquarium's booth and did a great job providing information about right whales to festival-goers. Despite the rain and biting wind early in the day, people came out to show their support and interest in right whale issues. Overall the festival appeared to be a success!

-Karen

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Each winter the New England Aquarium is part of a comprehensive aerial survey effort in the Southeastern United States called the Early Warning System (EWS). The EWS was developed in December 1993 to provide near real- time locations of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) so that seasonal dredging operations did not interfere with these vulnerable whales. (Read more about this in previous posts here and here.)

The effort, communication, technology and awareness of the EWS have evolved greatly over the past seventeen years, yet the primary goal remains the same. Today the EWS is an extremely large network which attempts to prevent ship collisions with right whales by providing real-time detection to commercial mariners, U. S. Navy, ACOE, US Coast Guard, harbor pilots, port authorities and recreational boaters. (Learn more about the busy ports in the area from this post.)

The EWS consists of three survey teams working from north to south along roughly 100 miles of coastline (see map). These teams work every day it's possible to fly, even during the holidays, and consist of many dedicated observers from Wildlife Trust, the Florida Conservation Commission, and the New England Aquarium.

With many thanks to the team members, funding agencies, experts and all those that have contributed to and enforced this extraordinary operation, another North Atlantic right whale season is now underway on the southeastern calving grounds.

Since mid- to late-November, researchers have been gathering down south and setting up shop along the coast, preparing to meet the arriving right whales. North Atlantic right whales, a still very mysterious species, can generally be found feeding in Cape Cod Bay and the Great South Channel in spring. Come warm summer weather, many of the whales move up to the Bay of Fundy, between Maine and Nova Scotia, and continue to take in massive amounts of food before moving back down the coast for the wintertime. While some whales return to Massachusetts waters for their falls and winters, a sizable amount come down to the warmer waters off of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida before and/or after feeding near Massachusetts. The large majority of the whales we do see down in the southeast are pregnant females and females with brand new calves, so this close-to-shore southeastern area is known as the main calving ground for the species; in fact, it's the only calving ground for North Atlantic right whales known at all! (You can claim a plot of ocean in this area and pledge to protect it by living blue on the Aquarium's Live Blue Initiative.) As this species of whale continues to teeter near the edge of extinction, the EWS effort to survey the calving grounds is crucial, and the project draws observers and researchers from all over the world.

But getting down to business for the 2009-2010 season in particular--all the teams had arrived by the last days in November and met for the usual team meeting on November 29 in order to discuss new changes to research, particularly with photo identification (play a flash game explaining this here). As it turns out, EWS aerial surveys provide an excellent platform for researching right whales and keeping track of this precarious population, so as observers we collect data about the whales while reporting to concerned ships about the whales' locations. This makes the importance of our surveys twofold.

On November 30 many of the observers met in St. Augustine Florida to get some training on disentangling right whales from fishing gear that the whales tend to get wrapped up in, just in case any of us are needed in an emergency entanglement circumstance. (If you're wondering what on Earth this entanglement business is about, stay posted! There will surely be a better description later in the season. You can also read about past entanglements in these previous posts.) Anyone not involved in the disentanglement training was finishing up the preparation for flight--testing radios, wiring the survey airplanes, and solidifying the EWS network.

Starting mid-November, a few North Atlantic right whales were seen heading down the coast by researchers further north, which is a really early arrival. Special buoys planted in the ocean around the calving grounds have also been picking up right whale calls under water, meaning that whales have been in the immediate area. Because of these good signs, we were all ready to get going right away on December 1, the official first day of the seasonal surveys.




Unfortunately, with the first of the month came an onslaught of bad weather, and the seas were too rough to make surveys functional. Instead of surveying on December 1, we did some in-flight training, and I had my first ride in our small but sturdy survey plane, a Cessna Skymaster 337 (at left). The coast was beautiful from the airplane, and we tested our radios and took some practice photographs of marker buoys in order to cinch the routine for photographing whales. (More about photo-identification of right whales in many of the next posts!)




Most importantly, we got to know the New England Aquarium team mascot: Louie, the adorable pup of Ken, one of our pilots.


Weather was less than ideal again today, so we hunkered down at the house and went over a computer program named DIGITS, which we'll be using all season to upload our photographs and data about the right whales we see in order to help the Aquarium maintain the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog. Luckily, the weather looks better tomorrow, so we should be able to get in the air and finally see which right whales, if any, are hanging around the seas just off the southeastern coast.

Keep checking the blog in the next few days for more information as the season gets underway. We will have multiple updates per week about new mothers and calves and all the right whale action happening in the EWS area! Who knows: we might break last year's all-time calf record of 39 newborns and see many of those young whales return nice and healthy to the south.

One last thing ... If you happen to be local to the Jacksonville area, be sure to come explore this year's Right Whale Festival at Jacksonville Beach! The Festival is this Saturday, December 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

-Kelly

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