Gannet is a whale that we have been seeing throughout the season. She got her name from a white scar on the left side of her head that looks like a gannet in flight. Our survey team first saw Gannet in late December and then several times throughout January. We were very excited to sight Gannet with a calf on February 12.


This was an extremely busy day for the central Early Warning System (EWS) survey team. We saw 49 whales in our area, 22 separate sightings, including 15 mom calf pairs. It is always essential to cover the entire EWS area in order to get the whale alert positions out through the network. Other interesting species we saw that day were one humpback, two leatherbacks and five manta rays. We sighted Gannet with her new calf towards the end of the survey flight, at 2:20 p.m. Photographs serve a multitude of benefits in understanding the population as a whole, as well as keeping track of individuals for different reasons, such as monitoring health following the appearance of wounds. Gannet's scar first appeared in July 2000 as a large wound; it is not certain what caused it.


Females are considered sexually reproductive when they reach 9 years of age; this is based on year of first calving being 10, assuming a one-year gestation period. Most females have their first calves at age ten to eleven. Age at first calving is highly variable in right whales, occurring as early as five, and as late as twenty-one years. Gannet was born in 1996, had her first calf at the age of 10, and it was therefore not a surprise to see her, as a potential mom down here in the calving grounds this season.

While downloading images from our initial sighting of Gannet with her newborn, we noticed that the calf was missing half of its fluke (See photo above). There was some speculation as to the reason for this. Was it a birth defect? Other species are born missing a digit, or with shortened limbs so it is a possibility. The edge where the fluke part was missing was not red raw, and no white scarring could be seen, but if it was a fresh cut, it may have been too early to see white scar tissue, and this also may have been hard to see from aerial photographs. Biopsy teams were on high alert, and ready to better document this calf from boat-based platforms in order to see better detail.


Unfortunately, the next sighting of Gannet was on the February 15, a day when we only flew short lines, partially covering our survey area, due to low lying clouds towards the end of our lines. However, we still were witness to two vessel whale interactions that day, communicating with vessels in order to avoid collisions. One of them involved Gannet, who was seen with a juvenile whale, but no calf. We circled on her for approximately half an hour, in order to be positive that there was not a calf with them, and also to ensure that the small fishing boat that had been on course for the whales, was not intending to harass them. It appears that Gannet had already been through a lot. We may never be 100 percent sure what happened to her calf, but we will continue to piece together the clues. Two days later, on February 17, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservtion Commission (FWC) aerial survey team found a calf carcass in their area. The pieces of the puzzle would appear to fit. She was first seen without her calf seven nautical miles (nm) northeast of St. Johns channel, Jacksonville. With the northeast winds that had been blowing around that time, it would make sense that the calf would show up to the south, 13 nm north-northeast of St. Augustine. It is also possible that this calf belonged to a different mom.

The carcass was towed in, but had been heavily scavenged upon by sharks, so it was missing all of the fluke, including most of the peduncle area too. The dead calf had a white belly, so we are now able to rule out all of the calves that we have seen since the February 17, and those with black bellies. A lot of important information can be gathered from the necropsy, which is why it is always so essential that we retrieve carcasses, and eventually the genetic sample will reveal who this calf belongs to. It is critical to determine the cause of death if we are to understand the various threats that this population faces.

Look out for the upcoming guest article from FWC on discovering the carcass.

-Jess

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On Sunday, February 15, John Sutter from CNN online came to Florida to find out about right whales. He interviewed with us, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Council (FWC) and the Marineland volunteer network trying to capture all of the efforts involved in protecting this majestic creature.

We brought him to our plane to see our team in action and then to our field station to observer how we process all of our data. He asked a lot of interesting questions and took hours of audio recordings. Feeling that he fully captured the dedication of the aerial observers, he headed south to St. Augustine where he met up with the FWC team to discuss the boat board effort.

From there he headed further south to meet the Marineland volunteer network comprised of more than 200 individuals. John put together a comprehensive story about right whales and the efforts involved in monitoring and conserving this population.

There are a number of different webpages dedicated to right whales on the CNN site. I have labeled them to make it an easier search.

Searching for right whales (Plane, Boat, Land)

Spotting Endangered Species from the Skies

How to Identify a right whale

Some of our favorite whales

~Jonathan

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Yesterday, we flew our survey area. It thunderstormed throughout the night and into the early morning. When we woke, the weather had subsided and the winds dropped down to 12knts. Thinking that the weather would follow the forcast and pick up, we waited for the next few weather buoy updates. None of them showed the predicted winds.

We took off at 11:30am and flew from north to south. Before the plane was even off the ground, two public sightings came through on the pager alert system. We were preparing for a busy day. Uncertain that the weather would hold out long enough to complete a full survey, we decided to just cover the St. Mary's and St. John's River channels, that is the northern and southern end of the survey area. We proved the weather men wrong, sighting 6 whales and 3 mother and calf pairs and informed a vessel of right whales near by. All in all it was a successful day.

The weather forecast can be useful in planning your week, but today is a perfect example that predictions are not always 100% accurate.


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The last we reported on the calf count on January 13, we had 21 moms which was a record for that time in any of the past calving seasons. The total record to break was the 2001 record of 31 calves. Well, I'm happy to report that as of February 6, we matched that record. My job in this field effort is a remote one. I sit at my computer over a thousand miles away and match, or confirm the matches, of all the mothers and some of the other whales as well. Using DIGITS and images uploaded to servers by other research teams, together we try to have a real time assessment of all the different mothers in the southeast.

Global climate change has become a growing concern all over the world. Data suggests global temperatures will increase by 1.4-5.8 C by the end of the 21st century. The increase in global temperature will affect every part of the world. Coastal communities will be affected as sea level rises 13-95cm due to the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps melting as well as the thermal expansion of seawater. Global mean precipitation will rise by 5-20%, particularly in the higher latitudes, resulting in increased freshwater runoff from rivers to oceans. This will reduce salinity in these areas and may increase the prevalence of red tides. Areas not afflicted by excess precipitation will likely experience longer periods of drought.

In the ocean, as temperatures rise and salinity decreases, significant changes in ocean biology are likely, although we can only guess the effects on such a small population like the North Atlantic right whale. A climate change related shift in hydrographic factors has the potential to affect the abundance and quality of Calanus finmarchicus, a planktonic copepod that is the primary food source of the North Atlantic right whale. Calanus copepods are about the size of a grain of rice, and are the dominant zooplankton species found the western North Atlantic. Right whales consume between 0.6-6.4% of their body weight in calories per day, or as many as 2.6 billion C. finmarchicus! But because copepod development is temperature dependent, warming oceans could affect plankton population dynamics. A shift in C. finmarchicus abundance in right whale feeding grounds may cause right whale numbers in these areas to drop considerably. Salinity can also alter food for right whales. In the 1990's, arctic freshwater currents made their way down into the Gulf of Maine leading to changes in salinity and stratification that favored large increases in smaller species of zooplankton, most of which were not a suitable substitute as right whale food.

For right whales, climate change could mean shifts in the ranges and abundance of preferred food (Calanus copepods), shifts in species composition from copepods to other smaller less suitable prey species, and increases in red tides (which are known to be eaten by right whales accidentally).The reduction of suitable prey could pose a number of threats to right whales. Strong correlations have been made between C. finmarchicus abundance and right whale reproductive success, so reduction in prey abundance could lead to a decline in the number of calves. Reduced food can also lead to malnourishment, and increased susceptibility to disease, and increased mortality.

Not everything is so bleak though. One of our right whales, "Porter" travelled from Cape Cod Bay one spring to Norway by September, and returned to the Gulf of Maine the following year. Another whale was seen in the Bay of Fundy last summer, and in the Azores last month! These travels suggest that the capacity of this species to adapt to environmental changes, whether anthropomorphic or natural, may be greater than heretofore believed. Perhaps these travelers have carried the right whale population through tough times, and the long-distance travels of individually-identified right whales have shown they may not be as habitat restricted as has been believed.


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