Humpback whale – All about that baseline:

The Curiosity of Giants!

By: Logan Pallin

As you can see Erin’s previous post, the whales have finally showed up. It has been a great last week for us on the water. We went back out to the area where we found all the whales the day before, and low and behold there were no whales around. We found roughly five more whales in the area and were greeted graciously by a young juvenile that put on an amazing displays of energetic surface behaviors.

The whale began by rapidly ascending to the surface in an attempt to thrash its fluke on the surface water. This is a behavior we classify as a peduncle throw. We proceeded several times to stay parallel with the individual in order to collect a biopsy sample, but every time we approached the whale would turn into us and proceed to swim under the boat. At one point and time, the individual proceeded to lie on its back at the surface, thrashing its fluke, allowing us to photograph the individual’s belly. From these photos, and with the help of some colleagues back in North Carolina, we were able to come to the conclusion that this was in fact a young female.

For several more minutes this whale danced at the surface around our boat, often times raising her large pectoral fins out of the water and bringing them down in a swift slap across the water’s surface. Lastly, she swam just within arms length of the stern of our zodiac and then proceeded to roll on her back and lay under us, showing us the extent of her white belly, pectoral fins, and fluke. We finally then collected our sample and drove off, leaving this curious and playful little humpback to engage her curiosity among the other wonders of this Antarctic environment.

This encounter, even when at times had Erin and I a bit nervous, really allowed us to experience the curiosity of these animals. Moreover, we witnessed the extreme finesse, care, and awareness that these animals have over their huge extremities. Never once was the boat bumped or jostled. These are in fact amazingly intelligent and beautiful creatures.

The Laurence M. Gould was back this week. It had spent the last month traveling the northern part of the peninsula with a group of soil scientists who are trying to understand the biodiversity of Antarctic soil and the ecological relationships between those organisms. Most of the station science teams left this morning and are heading back north to Punta Arenas to go back to normal civilization that lies State Side. We still have 22 days here at Station. Still lots of time to collect lots of samples and get some more great data on the whales in the area!

Humpback whale laying on back thrashing fluke. You can see the belly!

Waving high! Humpback whale pectoral fin.

Whale there they are

Erin Pickett @ Palmer Station

Here at Palmer, we have expensive acoustic equipment that allows us to see down a hundred meters or so to the bottom of the ocean. If krill or small fish (or the occasional penguin) are beneath us, they’ll show up on our computer screen as fuzzy looking colorful patches suspended in space (or along the seafloor). This technology is kind of analogous to the weather stations we have around Palmer. We look at a computer screen or in this case, turn our marine radios to the ‘weather station’, and we get the wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity and air pressure all by pressing one button. So we know where we are by looking at our GPS, we know where the krill is thanks to our fishfinder, and we know what the weather is doing thanks to real-time updates on our radios.

Yesterday morning while Logan and I were taking our first few sips of coffee and looking at the latest weather forecast that is conveniently waiting in our inboxes every morning, there was a man standing on the shoreline by our boat dock. He happened to be one of my graduate advisors, and one of the most senior scientists here at Palmer Station, Bill Fraser. Bill has been studying the environment here for more than twenty seasons, since before most digital technologies. Bill was observing krill along the water’s edge. This was notable, because we have not recorded significant amounts of krill in the vicinity of Palmer Station this season.

Bill mentioned to Logan that the whales might finally arrive today.

Any great field biologist, fisherman, or surfer knows the value of constantly observing the weather, the waves and the sky to know what to expect out of the day. If we are lucky enough, we are able to do this across seasons and years and we’ll even know what to expect from large-scale climate fluctuations like El Niño. Most surfers on the west coast and Hawaii knew the winter surf season would be epic this year, just like many scientists along the Antarctic Peninsula knew it was going to be a big ice year.

Soon after Logan spoke to Bill, we got our gear together and about ten minutes after leaving station Logan spotted blows on the horizon. There were so many blows, so frequently, our first thought was that it might be a large group of killer whales. We hadn’t seen more than one or two humpbacks this month, and had never seen so many individuals at once this season at Palmer. As we approached we started seeing the tell-tale humped dorsal fins arching, and flukes raising above the water as the whales dove.

Logan and I spent the next three hours doing our best to collect biopsy samples and photographs (for photo identification) of each whale. There were nine animals in the vicinity of our boating limit and probably another handful too far away for us to get to. In the end, we collected biopsy samples from seven whales and lost our last bolt amongst a group of four animals travelling into the glare of the sun, out of our boating range as the swell and wind picked up. We attempted to use a handful of nearby Wilson’s storm petrels to guide us to the lost bolt as the birds are attracted to the tissue samples, but we did not find it.

Logan wrote a blog post earlier in the season describing our biopsy sampling procedure and what we will use these samples for: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/ltercetaceans/2016/01/19/25-mm-sample-45-foot-whale/. In short, each 25mm long sample will allow us to conduct genetic, hormone, and dietary analyses to assess the health and status of this population of humpback whales.

After a full afternoon of whales, we returned to station exhausted and exhilarated. Over the next month, we will be continuing to search for whales and for krill on our fish finder. In addition to our sophisticated software and instruments, from here on out I’ll take a hint from Bill and use those good ‘ole analog methods i.e. I’ll remember to walk down to the shoreline and get a feel for the conditions.

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(Research activities conducted under the National Marine Fisheries Service permit no. 14809-2)

It’s hard to keep a straight face when you’re trying to write something serious about bubbles

By: Erin Pickett

When I was in middle school I wrote a report about bubble rings but I don’t remember if I had the same problem I do now of trying to sound serious, I was probably less concerned about that at the time. That paper was about individual ring-shaped bubbles, like the kind dolphins (or humans like me) blow underwater. This blog is about the bubble nets that humpback whales create to corral their prey underwater (I have yet to master this skill).

I have just finished auditing about 7.5 hours of video footage that we obtained from the suction cup tag we deployed on a Humpback whale earlier this month. My objective was to create a detailed log of underwater foraging behavior. We were especially interested in recording video footage and collecting fine-scale movement data from the whale during coordinated bubble net feeding events. This video footage is the first of its kind documenting this type of feeding behavior in Antarctic Humpback whales.

I found many occurrences of both bubble net and lunge feeding events, and in some cases the underwater visibility was good enough to observe other whales in the video frames. Throughout most of the 7.5 hours the tagged whale was travelling and foraging with at least one other whale, but at one point up to three other individuals were present. Other notable behavior included vocalizations and pectoral fin slapping on the surface of the water. Krill were frequently observed rushing by the forward facing camera just after lunge events.

Watching these videos over the course of a few days I became kind of committed to this whale’s story, and where each video ended and another began I found a narration running through my head that went something like, “next time on the life of the whale… will he find more food?” When the final video ended I even felt a little sad that I wouldn’t be able to keep following him on his journey.

I’ve included some screen shots below to give you a better idea of what I observed while watching the videos.

A lone Antarctic krill passing by the camera

If you look closely you'll see two whales in the top frame (left side of the whale) and one whale in the bottom frame (right side of the whale) — If you look closely you’ll see two whales in the top frame (left side of the whale) and one whale in the bottom frame (right side of the whale)

This frame captured a whale slapping it's pectoral fin on the surface of the water — This frame captured a whale slapping it’s pectoral fin on the surface of the water

Another whale blowing bubbles in the background

This frame looks over the front left side of the tagged whale and you can see the bubbles rushing by. You'll also notice a barnacle stuck to this whale. — This frame looks over the front left side of the tagged whale and you can see the bubbles rushing by. You’ll also notice a barnacle stuck to this whale.

P.S. I named this whale Mr. Opihi man, since the barnacles and the suction cups stuck to his back reminded me of the way Opihi (the Hawaiian word for limpet) stick to the rocks.

Weather has us at a standstill

By Logan:

The last three days have been pretty tough. We had not seen any whales since the 20^th. The weather has been pretty unforgiving, and the winds have pushed a lot of ice in the inlet making it hard to get the zodiacs away from the pier. The weather finally let up today and we were fortunate to travel within the extended boating limits with the bird group to dream island and Biscoe bay.

Light shines through the thin parts of the ice making the blueish glow

A large tabular iceberg sits about 2 miles away

A large tabular iceberg we estimated to be 10 stories tall

Brash ice that blew into the harbor making it hard to get out in the zodiacs

We sampled three whales today, but probably seen some where around half a dozen in total. The many icebergs within the boating limits make it hard to follow and see the whales at distance. We have collected 13 biopsy samples thus far. So far it has been a pretty slow year. We also had two Adélie penguins jump into our boat today while we were sampling.

We photographed one whale, presumed female because it was accompanied by a juvenile, which had intense scarring on the left side near the dorsal. We are unsure what may have caused it, but it looks as if it is from a potential fishery line interaction. We have yet to have a re-sight within the palmer boating limits, which is a sign that the whales are moving in and out of the area quite rapidly. This is good for us, as it means we will get a sample from a wider range of individuals.

Humpback whale with large scar on left anterior side

The weather is supposed to be good for the next couple day so hopefully we will be able to get some more echo sounder surveys in and look for krill biomass, and of course get some more whale samples. We were able to see some large mountains today as the sky began to open up.

Will post again soon!!

25-mm sample – 45-foot whale

By: Logan

We learn a huge amount about the humpback whales we study from tiny samples of skin and underlying blubber. We use a specially designed remote biopsy dart system, which we fire from a crossbow, to obtain a tiny sample from each whale we identify in the field.

Each sample measures about 25 mm in length and 5 mm in diameter and weighs only a few grams. In contrast, the whales are about 15 meters long and weigh 40 to 50 tons. The best analogy we can think of is that it’s like a mosquito bite to you or me.

We work hard to ensure that we identify each whale before attempting to sample it. We try to not resample an individual within a field season. We do this by comparing pictures of an animal’s fluke, which is unique to the individual, with our current biopsy/fluke catalog, which is stored on an iPad that we bring onboard. We are able to utilize the pigmentation and scarring of the flukes to identify individuals. If the whale is new to us, we move our Zodiac alongside the whale and fire the biopsy dart at its flank when it arches to dive, usually from a distance of 10 or 15 meters. We are extremely careful throughout the entire sampling process as to not get ahead of the whale or get directly behind its fluke. So far Doug is an excellent driver, and if not for today, I would have a 90% shooting rate, but now am sitting back down around 50%.

Fluke of Mn16_017B_P. Has killer whale rake marks on fluke.

Female humpback that had a calf. Biopsied animal Mn16_017B_P.

The tiny samples provide an enormous amount of information about each whale we sample, including its sex, recent dietary history, reproductive status, and health. We also use genetic markers to infer which breeding population the whale comes from.

Part of my master’s work will be to conduct progesterone assays on the blubber from our samples to determine if female whales are pregnant. We have successfully now documented variations in pregnancy in our samples from 2010, 13, and 14. We are really excited to look at 2015 and this year’s samples over the summer.

Whales! Whales! Whales! Whales! Whales!

By: Logan Pallin

So it has been an exciting few days here at Palmer Station. We happened upon our first humpback whale while out calibrating the echo sounders (fancy fish finders), which are an adventure of their own. Doug and I spend most of our working days here at Palmer Station floating around whales in our trusty Zodiac. Most of the time it is a comfortable quaint little office, with space for all of our equipment and, importantly for the work we do, a very good platform to approach whales.

Cruising in the Zodiac. I am in the front of the zodiac ready to collect a biopsy.

Cruising in the zodiac. There is a humpback whale in between us and JD, the photographer.

We work in quite hostile environments, so safety is paramount. We have survival equipment on board and there are caches with tents and stoves on some of the islands in our study area, just in case the weather comes up quickly. And it really can come up quickly. One moment it’s calm and pleasant and the next we are in the middle of a blizzard. We keep in touch with the Station by calling in our position every 30 minutes on the VHF radio.

We were out sampling on Sunday when we happened to come across a mom and her calf. Then out of nowhere, a large ominous dorsal fin came up just to our starboard side. It was huge!! It was a large bull killer whale (Orca). Next thing we know we are in a group of 7 killer whales. It was quite spectacular.

We have 6 biopsies so far. We were fortunate to go outside the boating limits today to Dream Island. We were accompanied by the birder group who was counting skua chicks and eggs on Dream. We saw three more humpbacks today and a minke whale, that disappeared after about 10 seconds. One of the humpbacks, whom I named the fat pig, was surface lunge feeding. It was amazing to witness. This particular whale would dive and releasing a net of bubbles to concentrate its prey, we call this phenomena bubble net feeding. The animal would then lunge up through the center of the ring of bubbles, opening its mouth and filling his large bucal cavity with water and krill. It would then roll over on its right side, lazily like and slosh its pectoral and fluke fins around for a while. This series of actions was repeated several times.

There is still a lot of ice around which makes getting in and out of the boat ramp quite difficult. Also makes sighting whales quite challenging as well. The crabeater seals are quite pleased with the amount of ice however. Doug and I will be going back out tomorrow to finish the echo sounder calibration so we can start prey mapping (looking for krill).

Will post again soon!!

I don’t know if it was sunrise or sunset, but it was beautiful

By: Erin Pickett

Yesterday someone said to me, “I don’t know if it was sunrise or sunset, but it was beautiful” So it goes on the LMG, the surrounding scenery is incredible but the general work schedule on this research ship makes it difficult to remember what time of day it is.
Here on the Antarctic Peninsula, the sun never really sets and our daily schedules are dependent on things like the diel vertical migration of krill, the current wind speed and the amount of sea ice in between us and our study species, the humpback whale. For these reasons, we sometimes find ourselves starting our workday at odd hours, like 11:45 pm (or 4:00 am).
We are about one week into our journey and so far, so good! We have spent the last four days transiting between various sampling stations around Palmer deep, which is an underwater canyon just south of our home base at Palmer station. When conditions allowed, we loaded up our tagging and biopsy gear into a small boat and went to look for humpback whales. We’ve been incredibly successful with the limited amount of time we’ve had on the water and this morning we finished deploying our sixth tag.
We brought a few different types of satellite tags with us to deploy on humpback whales. One type is an implantable satellite tag that transmits location data over a long period of time. These data allow us to gain a better understanding of the large-scale movement and distribution patterns of these animals. The other tag we deploy is a suction cup tag, named for the four small suction cups that attach the tag to the whale. These multi-sensor tags measure location as well as fine scale underwater movement (e.g. pitch, roll, and heading). They are also equipped with forward and backward facing cameras and most importantly, radio transmitters! This allows us to recover the tags once they fall off the animal and float to the surface (after about 24 hours). The data we get from these tags will allow us to quantify fine-scale foraging behavior in terms of underwater maneuverability, prey type and the frequency, depth and time of day that feeding occurs.
When we deployed each of these tags we also obtained a biopsy sample and fluke photos. Fluke photos and biopsy samples allow us to distinguish between individual animals, and the biopsy samples will also be used to study the demographics of this population through genetic analysis.
Now that we’ve deployed all of our satellite tags and have recovered the suction cup tag just in the nick of time (!), we are starting our first major transect line toward the continental shelf. We will be continuing south along these grid lines for the next week.
Right now we don’t have a good enough internet connection on the ship to post photos, but I’m hoping to get around that and have a few up for you soon!

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