Another highlight was the first sighting of Derecha, #2360, and her calf. This mother had gained some fame back in March when the aerial survey team from Univ. of North Carolina-Wilmington and Duke University photographed Derecha giving birth! (For more information and photos of the event, click here.)

A few of us at the Whale House (Moe, Yan, Candace, Kara and Zach) are preparing to leave for Roseway Basin this week. This is NEAq's second consecutive year surveying for right whales in Roseway (see last year's entry #18). This project was undertaken with the support of the Government of Canada provided through the Department of the Environment through the Canadian Whale Institute.

Our original departure date has been delayed due to high winds in the Gulf of Maine. We're planning to push away from the dock early Thursday morning to make the steam across the Bay of Fundy to Roseway Basin, approximately 30 miles south of Nova Scotia. Ideally, we will spend two weeks at sea however it is unlikely the weather will cooperate and we will be forced to come in for a couple days.


Slideshow of 2009 Roseway Project

We will be in contact with the Whale House via satellite phone and look forward to giving updates on our surveys.

Zach

Links:
Roseway Basin
Safer Havens For Right Whales in Canadian Waters

As two previous posts (here and here) by Marianna shared, we were involved in the necropsy of the latest dead right whale found on August 13 in Nova Scotia. Sadly, this was the third right whale mortality in the past two months.


Right whale necropsy on August 15

On June 27, 2010 a right whale carcass was found floating 50 nm east of Cape May, New Jersey and towed to shore for a full necropsy under the direction of Dr. Michael Moore from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This adult male had suffered a chronic entanglement around the head and flippers which led to its demise. Unfortunately, this particular entangled animal was not known to us when it was alive and we have not been able to ID the carcass as it was too decomposed. We hope to get an identification through genetic analysis.

The second carcass was found floating on July 2, 2010 off the coast of Jonesport, Maine. It had two propeller cuts on the side of the body. Samples taken of the lacerations were taken at sea by a team from Allied Whale at the College of the Atlantic but the carcass was too decomposed to learn anything about the timing of the vessel strike (i.e. if it occurred before or after death). The animal was a sub-adult female. Again, individual ID is not known but may be determined from genetics.

And now, this third carcass - determining the cause of death is still underway but there are indications of blunt impact at the skull region from a vessel strike.



We are very concerned about this latest rash of right whale deaths, perhaps all the result of human activities. Though the right whale community has made great strides in implementing protective measures for right whales, this job is certainly not yet complete.

- Amy

I recently joined the Right Whale Project to help the Aquarium team heading to Roseway Basin later in the week (check back tomorrow for more information on our trip to Roseway Basin). I have a full time position in the Education Department at the Aquarium and am lucky enough to help with this season's surveys. I have previously flown aerial surveys in the southeast but I haven't been involved with data collection for about a year and a half, so the team sent me on the R/V Nereid yesterday to get me back up to speed.
It was a great day on the water and a great way to get me back in the swing of things, I even got to see my first puffins in the wild! I can't wait to see what we will find on Roseway Basin!

Kara

Early on Sunday, Moe, Amy, Yan, Jess and I traveled back over to Nova Scotia to help a veterinary pathologist and his team perform a necropsy of the right whale that we towed ashore Friday evening (see Entry #6). We met Dr. Pierre-Yves Daoust from the Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island on the beach, were introduced to his team (Heather, Jessica and Phil) and made a plan to accomplish the job in two days with a crew of 10. Our tenth crew member was volunteer Cathy Merriman who has been active in right whale conservation for many years and happened to be visiting in the area. Certain logistics were arranged to make our job easier: an excavator and two dump trucks from SpecResources were standing by to help with the necropsy and disposal of the carcass, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) provided two fishery officers who helped us out tremendously with knife sharpening, crowd control, and other logistics.

The ultimate goal of a whale necropsy is to determine cause of death; since there are usually several possibilities, we collect as much data as possible. The first step is to measure different parts of the body as well as blubber thickness, which can help us judge if the whale was healthy. This whale appeared to be a fit adult male, measuring 13.7 meters (45 feet) in length with blubber thickness of up to 20 cm (8 inches).

We haven't had too much luck catching up with right whales so far this season. There have been many days where we see a blow or fluke over 2 miles away and then when we arrive in the vicinity, we sit and wait for 20 minutes just to see the next blow another mile off. We have heard from whale watching operators out of Massachusetts that they are seeing a lot of right whales around Jeffreys Ledge, so we are hoping that their arrival to the Bay of Fundy is just slightly belated.

However, we have still had some exciting days out in the Bay over the past week when the weather improved and we were able to survey in flat calm waters. We heard reports from local whale watching vessels that they had seen a sperm whale on several occasions. It was quite a surprise that sperm whales were observed in the Bay, they are typically found in waters over 1,000 feet deep and only close to shore in areas where the continental shelf drops off close to the coastline. Considering near-shore populations were whaled out over 200 years ago, we were anxious to catch a glimpse.

On August 14th, our whale watcher, Yan spotted a blow and exclaimed to the crew that he had a surprise for us all. As we approached, we recognized the distinct blow that veers off to the left hand side, along with the bulbous head, wrinkly dorsal surface and 'knuckles' forward of the peduncle. All in all it is a truly bizarre looking creature. The whale fluked as we watched, and we all expected to be waiting a long time before we saw the next surfacing, as sperm whales can remain submerged for over an hour. While we waited we dropped our hydrophone over the side of the boat, and were able to listen to the remarkable clicks that this animal was emitting.

As we continued our survey for right whales, we encountered two more sperm whales. We have little experience with sperm whale identification. However, it only took an untrained eye to see that all three of these sightings were of different individuals when comparing the trailing edge of their flukes.



Jess

Photo/video captions:
1) Sperm whale at the surface - note the distinctive diagonal blow
2) Crew waiting for a right whale to re-surface
3) Sperm whale logging at the surface
4) Flukes of three sperm whales spotted in the Bay of Fundy
5) Sperm whale blow

Early on Friday morning, Moe received news of a right whale carcass on the Nova Scotia coast. Moe, Jerry (NEAq volunteer), Amy and I headed across the Bay of Fundy in Campobello Whale Rescue's Fast Rescue Craft (FRC) inflatable to search for the whale. We caught up with Phil, a Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) officer, on a rocky coastline where the 43 foot male whale was found. We needed to relocate the significantly decomposed carcass to a beach with accessible roads in order to conduct a proper necropsy. The whale was towed to an ideal location, a large sandy beach only a mile away. Unfortunately for us, this large sandy beach was also ideal for weekend beach goers. To appease residents' understandable concern, DFO hired Mr. Stanton, a local fisherman, to help tow the carcass another 10 miles away.


Mr. Stanton needed a deckhand, and before I knew what was going on, I was in his skiff and headed to his boat. I notified him that I had limited boating experience, but apparently he felt confident in me, as he left me in charge of his 45 foot vessel while he tied a line on the whale. About five hours later we arrived at our destination. The locals were intrigued by our arrival and helped the DFO officers and our crew secure the carcass. The crew worked until 3 am to secure the carcass above the high tide line to ensure the carcass would not drift away over night. Final arrangements have been made, and the necropsy has been scheduled for Sunday. We may be one step closer to finding out who this whale was, and why he died. Stay tuned...


Marianna

[Note: Other members of the New England Aquarium staff have responded to deceased whale incidents. You can read about another incident closer to Boston in this post from the Marine Mammal Trainers.]

Since our first survey in the Bay of Fundy last Monday, we have only been able to get out to the Bay one other day (Saturday). The wind and fog have been relentless, forcing us to stay onshore for several days at a time (Click here to view a blog about Bay of Fundy weather). We were able to survey in the Bay last Saturday, however, we were forced to come in earlier than planned after the wind switched from NW 5-10 kts to SW 10-15 kts more quickly than forecasted. Normally 10-15 knots of wind is not a problem, but the wind was blowing against the outgoing tide making the seas too rough to collect data from our small boat. Although the weather cooperated long enough to complete a partial survey, we did not see any right whales.


However, a naturalist aboard a whale watch vessel out of Grand Manan Island located a mom/calf pair on Saturday west of the critical habitat area. They were able to take photographs of both individuals which we used to identify them as Insignia (Eg# 2645) and her calf.




Whale watch vessels are an excellent platform for education and public awareness of the issues facing right whales. Similarly, Thursday morning, during a team meeting, we received a call from a local whale watch vessel who informed us there was a right whale in the inland waters of Head Harbour Passage near Campobello Island, a mere mile from our dock. The crew aboard the whale watch boat didn't have a camera, so we broke up our research meeting, gathered our gear and headed for the boat. There was thick fog as the R/V Nereid left the dock in our impromptu attempt to locate and photograph the whale. However, before the team reached the whale's last known location, the fog had closed in again and the whale could not be found.


We often work with crews and naturalists on whale watch vessels in the Bay to locate right whales and, as in Saturday's right whale sighting from the Elsie Menota, obtain identification photographs. In this case their efforts resulted in the confirmation of the first mom/calf pair of the season in the Bay of Fundy!

Zach

Monday was my first day of fieldwork with the right whale project. Until then I had never been around animals as large as these giants. Rather, much of my fieldwork experience came from studying the acoustic behavior of killer whales in the San Juan Islands, Washington for my Masters degree, and conducting passive acoustic marine mammal surveys fifty miles offshore of North Carolina. I have come to the Lubec field research team as a PhD student from Penn State University, interested in studying the effects of ship noise on right whale behavior, hoping to learn as much as I can from the other researchers during this field season, and eager to help them with data collection and processing.

Our first day on the water began promisingly! As I was standing on the bow sprit gazing out at glassy blue-black water and trying to remember all of the things I had just learned about marine mammal surveying in the Bay of Fundy, I saw a smooth, slender, dark form break the calm surface and rise tall, with a forked tip. My thoughts registered this foreign shape as a right whale fluke, and I cautiously gave the right whale symbol to the crew, aware that it was unusual to see right whales so near the harbor. No doubt the crew assumed it was a humpback whale and that my amateur eyes were overly eager to spot right whales. I certainly second-guessed myself too, during the ten minutes we waited for it to resurface from its dive. But, upon surfacing we all cheered when we saw the characteristic callosity pattern atop the rostrum, confirmation this was indeed a right whale!

Our day continued in much the same way—flat waters and abundant wildlife. And though we saw no more right whales, we saw many other creatures I had only read about or seen on television: breaching humpback whales, basking sharks, fin whales, and a mola mola. My experiences doing fieldwork off the coasts of Washington and North Carolina had offered many other surprises, but never these sights. What a beautiful place the Bay of Fundy is--I look forward to discovering more about what it offers!

Jenny

After such a surprising sighting, I suspected a busy first day as we worked out the early season kinks. As it turns out, we would not see another right whale all day. We did, however, see almost every other large marine creature to be found in the Bay. On our way toward the basin to start the first survey transect line we saw basking shark after basking shark (19 in total). It was easy to spot their black triangular dorsal fin from hundreds of yards away since the water was so calm and our view was uninhibited by waves or swell. Off in the distance, a group of humpbacks gave us quite a show breaching, sometimes simultaneously, and slapping their flippers and tails against the water. We saw several schools of tuna and even a breaching Mola mola, or ocean sunfish. The species list was rounded off with hundreds of porpoise, a couple fin whales, harbour seals and a minke whale.

All and all, it was a great day for us to get back in the survey groove and allow the new crew members, myself included, to get use to procedures and protocols on the boat. The next few days are calling for bad weather but hopefully the whales will slip in with the fog and keep us busy all summer.

Zach

The New England Aquarium Right Whale Research Team has relocated the office and researchers from Boston to the field station in Lubec, Maine to start the annual Bay of Fundy research season! This year marks the 31st consecutive year of the Aquarium's right whale research program in Canadian waters. From our seasonal home port in Lubec we will be surveying for right whales in the lower Bay of Fundy every day weather permits (mostly it is fog and wind that keep us ashore). Our vessel is a Dyer 29 named R/V Nereid which has served us well since 1981. For the 2nd consecutive year we will charter a 50 foot fishing vessel to take some of the team offshore to survey for right whales for two weeks on Roseway Basin, south of Nova Scotia. This is the second and only other known critical habitat for the species in the waters of Atlantic Canada.

Why did we choose to spend August and September in these cold, fog shrouded and often stormy waters? Because every summer North Atlantic right whales migrate to these waters to feed on plankton, nurse their young and socialize (courtship). These two areas where the whales concentrate for several months provide us with the best opportunity to document individuals and new calves as well as collect samples for DNA, hormone and health studies. We are looking forward to an exciting and productive research season and we hope you will enjoy following our progress and discoveries throughout the season.