In 2019 Terry (aka “the amphibiographer”) got a camera that can shoot 4K video. But in 2019 our 2008 computer was not fast enough to play the clips. This meant that we couldn’t actually review video or audio of the whales that Terry recorded. Further down the line we couldn’t coordinate it with my hydrophone recordings. So in 2021 we finally bought a 2019 computer that could actually play the recordings we’d made. While listening to audio files of singing whales that I had recorded in October 2019 I heard grunts, growls, belches and squeaks that didn’t sound like a song. Are these these whales practising whale solfège? are they enjoying a good meal? or are they talking? What a find! I hope you enjoy the underwater conversation as much as we did.
Category: cetacean culture
August #1 2022 – How do Whales Nurse Their Babies?
More Moms with calves are showing up here in the Salish Sea this season – 6 pairs sighted so far. Judging by their playful acrobatics and assertive blows the young ones are thriving. The mothers seem to be in good shape as well considering they lose 1/3 of their body weight during the >10,000km (6,000 mile) round trip migrations to Mexico, Central America or Hawaii and back. Add in the previous 4 months of nursing her hungry baby and it’s no surprise that a mother whale’s prime directive once she reaches the feeding waters is to feed.
“It’s Big Mama” “And she’s got a calf!” Terry is jubilant. Big Mama is one of the whales we have met several times during the years we’ve been on the water. She is a prolific mother and veteran of the humpback comeback to the Salish Sea. Big Mama was the first whale to return to these waters in 1997. Since then she has brought each of her new calves back with her.
Big Mama and her new baby are accompanied by another adult whale. We couldn’t tell who it was because we couldn’t see the whale’s flukes or whether (s)he was female or male. If the companion whale migrated together with Big Mama and her calf from their southern mating/birthing area then this whale is probably a male who is interested in Big Mama as a potential mate. This “escort” can be an asset to Big Mama and her calf if a pod of killer whales attempts an attack on the young one as he will protect the calf with Big Mama. However, he can also be a nuisance if he attempts to mate with her and interferes with nursing.
Mother humpback whales nurse their babies for the first year even though the baby is already learning to fish as soon as she reaches the feeding area. The baby thrives on mother’s rich milk, which is between 45-60% fat How do whales (and dolphins) nurse in their underwater environment? Terrestrial mammals like humans have nipples which are exposed and easy to suckle. But the mammary glands of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are concealed inside 2 slits on either side of their genital slit low on the abdomen. The nipples are inverted inside these mammary slits. A whale calf must dive underneath the mother and nudge the mammary slits with her rostrum to release the nipple from the slit. Whale calves might be able to roll their tongues into a tube shape and press their rolled tongue around the nipple to channel milk. The mother could then squirt milk into the calf’s mouth using muscles around her mammary glands. Because of the high fat content the consistency of Mom’s milk is thick and doesn’t easily dissolve in water if some leaks out.
Mom and calf stay in close physical contact in the first months of the baby’s life. So much of what transpires between moms and babies is speculation because it happens underwater out of our visual range. Their vocal communication also happens outside of our human hearing range. Mother and baby communicate through touch and very quiet low frequency grunts, barks and groans. They “whisper” so their sounds don’t attract killer whales. Because these “whispers” are so quiet Jude can only pick up a signal on her hydrophone within about 200m of the whales. However, since the whale whispers are too low for humans to hear it’s impossible in realtime to know whether any whale conversations are actually occurring. This can be very frustrating! It is only after recording in the vicinity of whales and afterwards importing the recordings into a software program called a spectograph which translates the sound waves into a visual representation that we can see whether we recorded something. It’s also possible to speed up the slow low frequency sound waves 2 or 3 times within the program so they can be heard in our human hearing range. Unfortunately there is no room in Blue P’s small cockpit for any more audiovisual or computer equipment and no budget for expensive hardware and software. All this has to be done later on our home system.
We learn that the whales are communicating all the time, which is obvious with any amount of time observing their interactions. In the plankton filled waters of the summer Salish Sea it is vibration and sound that carry myriad whale messages through the water. Once on the feeding grounds Big Mama and her calf may associate with various other whales through the season and even during one day. We watch them form a group, separate for a while and come back together obviously communicating with each other. Since all Big Mama’s children return to their mother’s feeding area some of these whale companions may be the new calf’s older brothers and sisters. So many intriguing questions…….
August #2 2022 – Surprise!
Terry and I have more than a nodding – pun intended – acquaintance with sleeping whales. In fact sleeping is what whales seem to enjoy most when in close proximity to Blue Parrot, our 50 year old sailboat. So when we encountered 2 humpback whales peacefully snoozing side by side in mid Sutil Channel Terry and I prepared to settle in for an afternoon nap. In fact Terry was just about to put his camera away for a while when this happened.
Which proves once again that understanding the motivations and behaviours of whales is a mysterious journey indeed.
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July 2022 #3 – Bubble Feeding!
“T-Rex is bubble feeding off Wilby Shoals” the voice of whale watching guide ‘Supernova’ sings cheerily over SV Blue Parrot’s VHF radio.
“Let’s go!” I turn Blue P 90°W. We’ve been floating between Quadra and Cortes Islands scanning for marine mammals.
“It’ll take us half an hour to get there. She’ll probably have stopped by then.” Terry sighs .”it would be amazing to see lunge feeding again”
“YES!” I am juiced. We’ve only seen humpback whales lunge feeding once before and that was 4 years ago in 2018 – an unforgettable experience. Here is the link to that Blog:
https://welcomingwhales.com/2018/10/24/october-2018-humpbacks-lounge-feeding/
During the half hour it takes to get there at our extreme cruising speed of 4.85 knots we try to pinpoint the exact location of the whale. Whales are big but the ocean is bigger and they easily disappear from view. “There’s a circle of boats about 200m off the point. 3 look like whale watching boats” Hawk-eye Terry reports from the bow.
“I see them – on our way” If you can’t find whales in their feeding areas during the summer it’s a good bet that somebody else has. Boats that have been lingering in one place for a while without obvious fishing gear are probably with a whale. And people fishing forget to fish when there’s a lunge feeding whale nearby!
“I see the whales! 2 just came up in the middle of those boats” I slow to an even slower crawl and inch up to the scene. “Woah!” “Right beside the Boat!” They are less than 30 meters away, in close to the shore. Wilby shoals has depths varying from a few feet to hundreds of feet. Currently Blue P’s depth sounder is reading 18 feet!. “I’ve got to move out from the shore” Jude tells Terry. The whales move too – right past us around all the boats. In the time it takes us to move 30 meters they have covered 230. We wait. 20 minutes later………
“They’re coming back this way. They may be doing a circuit”. Terry shouts. I drop the hydrophone to record any feeding burps and belches.
“They’re making that sound!” “the whining sound that herds the fish-Uhrrrrrrrrrr? I try to imitate them. “I hear the bubbles………. Now they’re coming up! Phshshsh—–BUBUBUBUBUBUBUB” It’s a fairly pitiful imitation but with the hydrophone I can hear what the whales are doing underwater and predict when they will come up. Terry gets ready with the camera but I can’t predict where they will come up. He watches the sea gulls circle and hones in when they drop towards the water just as the whales break the surface. Focusing the camera on the exact spot where Terry deduces the whales will surface is a finely tuned art, experience and a large lump of luck.
In order to record a decent signal with the hydrophone we have to be within 200m of the whales. It’s difficult with all the boats starting and stopping their motors to keep up with the whales. But we can’t begrudge anyone this awesome experience. Everyone out here is just as thrilled as we are. And there are times when the whales are close enough for a clear recording. I am over the moon “I’ve waited 7 years to record bubble feeding”. In fact both of us are over the moon. We linger longer with our lunge feeding friends as the other boats leave, the sun sets and the moon rises. Ah…this is the magic time for the best video and audio recordings. We’ll travel back by moonlight – and our running lights of course.
December 2020 #2 – Chain of Whales Feed Together
“I don’t know how many whales are out here! 6 of them – at least.” Terry is counting whales diving, surfacing, circling. They’re almost rubbing together they’re so close. I wonder: “Are they fishing? They must be fishing”.
It’s common in Alaska for humpback whales to form large feeding groups where each whale has a role to play. The iconic shot of all the whales surfacing together, mouths agape and pleated throats bulging is in every humpback whale documentary. Here in the Salish Sea we have yet to see anything like this group feeding buffet. Perhaps the schools of fish are bigger in Alaska or maybe the schools are in deeper water here and the whales finish gulping under the water. Even without the lunging at the surface half a dozen whales swirling and moving together is fascinating to see.
“Do you recognize anyone?” I ask camera man Terry as he zooms in on the action. “One is definitely ‘Zed’, with the chewed off left fluke.”
“Yeah” Terry answers “and I see Nick with them. See that white fluke? Could be Apollo or maybe even Neptune” Neptune is Apollo’s calf.
“Snouter!” I exclaim as a whale rostrum partially emerges from the water. Snouter is our affectionate name for a whale’s “face” also known by whale lovers as “pickeleface” because of the many bumps on a whale’s chin. Each bump contains at least one single sensing hair. Biologists are not sure what tubercule hairs are sensing but a good guess would be movement and vibration. Like the whiskers of seals and sealions humpback whales could sense schools of fish from the “trails” of disturbance their swimming leaves in the water. Tubercule hairs may even sense electrical charge or something more mysterious since they are rich in nerves.
Mother whales like to support their babies on their rostrums so they might have other functions as well – smell? There is an organ in a humpback’s chin whose function hasn’t been identified as yet. Could it have an olfactory function along with the tubercules? The deeper down the whale whole one ventures the more questions bubble out!
October 2020 Halloween Reveries with Whales
These are the sounds we were hearing on Halloween night. Terry and I anchored off Savary Island in our little old sailboat Blue Parrot. A lovely end-of-October eve on the Salish Sea filled our senses. I dropped my 2 hydrophones over opposite sides of the boat about 4 metres deep into 8 metres of water. We were watching the full moon rise through ribbons of cloud over the mainland mountains. Mars rose orange in the East. Brilliant Jupiter appeared over Vancouver Island in the South with smaller, dimmer Saturn a little further Southeast. Silver moonlight lit the sky. Below, a calm silky ocean shimmered, where the occasional belch of a seal or cry of a gull drifted across the water. Moonight revealed the mainland contours on one side of the Strait and Vancouver Island on the other as far as we could see. Blooms of neon purple, green, red, indigo, yellow and white flowered over both shores chased by muted boombiddy-booms as adults and children around the Salish Sea gathered to enjoy the Halloween fireworks displays.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to this whale who was quite far away – probably 6 – 8 km. You can hear the sea splashing against the hull. The odd creaks and knocks are the boat rudder knocking and the crackles are shrimp talking on the bottom under the boat! One whale is singing all the notes – the very high squeaks and the low growls. He is practising his song for performing in Mexico or Hawaii. The song becomes more complex and developed in December before the whales leave on their southern migration.
It was Magic – perfect for a Halloween reverie accompanied by the haunting music coming through from the hydrophones. was this music the eerie wails of long departed souls? or aliens trying to communicate with receptive earthlings? No. The ghoulish notes in my headphones were the eerie wails of eerie WHALES – Whales who are very much alive on planet Earth right now. This is the music of humpback whales you are hearing. They’re practising their song here in the Salish Sea of BC before they begin their long migration to Mexico or Hawaii or even Japan. Once they have perfected their song, which slowly changes every year, they will perform it in the warm waters of their southern destinations.
No human knows why humpback whales sing or what the whales are singing about. Only the males sing and a singing male will attract other males who will often join in the song. In the 5 years we’ve been listening underwater for vocalizing humpback whales in the Salish Sea, the end of October and beginning of November are the only times we’ve heard any vocalizing at all. It’s another whale mystery that, along with so many whale mysteries, only adds to the awe that 2 tiny, curious humans feel when in the presence of these majestic beings.
Undoubtedly whale biologists feel it too, even while they conduct precise, tightly structured investigations and analyze the data. Whales are so much like us. Mothers feed, care for, teach and protect their babies. Whales often hunt and feed together with every whale having a prescribed job. They socialize and play with friends. Male Humpbacks sing and compose complicated songs. Whales from different areas have different languages, cultures and food preferences. They communicate vocally and with body language. But here is where we begin to differ. Aside from the obvious differences of size and body shape whales and humans have evolved very different physiologies in order to thrive on land or in the sea. We both have 2 eyes and 2 ears but what whales see and hear both underwater and above the water is very different from what humans see and hear. We humans do not have nostrils on top of our heads or mouths that gape open to our bellies while consuming more than 1 ton of fish per day.
Here is the biggest mystery of all in my humble opinion: Whales and dolphins are conscious breathers. They have to be awake in order to breathe. But, like every other mammal, they must sleep and dream. So they have evolved a clever work-around to allow them to sleep and breathe simultaneously. All dolphins and whales sleep with only 1/2 of their brain at a time. One hemisphere is off in dreamland while the other is monitoring the immediate environment and initiating breathing in realtime. Have you ever woken in the middle of the night and hovered in that half asleep/half awake horizon where dream characters populate your consciousness but you are also aware that you are in bed? or that the click you are hearing is your digital clock? or that you might have to pee? Is that how whales experience their sleeptime? I wonder what kind of consciousness that produces in whales?
And here is the real kicker. Humans have been learning about our planet from other animals and plants forever. We also use their special gifts to help us thrive in the environments we share. We use a dog’s sense of smell and hearing to help us hunt. We use the hawk’s eyes to scan the landscape. We tune in to the alarms of birds to notify us of predators in the forest. Plants, trees and fungi transform minerals and vitamins in soil and water into compounds that our cells can use to keep us healthy.
So why sit here in front of your screen googling for information on the internet when you can be outside letting your dog take you for a walk through a park or forest? Have you sat with your cat on the porch or balcony or slightly opened window of an apartment? Can you observe what she’s observing? Lots of folks can watch flowers, or fish, or listen to birds for hours. Try it. The world you’ll discover is the world that goes on around us 24/7, mostly unnoticed by humans.
As the dominant large animal species on Earth today we get lost in our own human stories. We root out ways we are different from each other while we are surrounded by beings who are more different from us than any human is from any other human. And what a cornucopia of differences there is – so many ways of perceiving the universe, more than we can ever know. So many stories to explore. Find someone to share your adventures and stories with. You will be constantly amazed as well as amused – and healthier and happier in the bargain.
July 2020 #5 – Playtime with Spotlight & Calf!
We moored Blue Parrot on the dock with her nose toward shore. At low tide with a NW wind blowing us towards moored boats in shallow water it’s a bit tricky getting off. We time for a gust to blow Blue P off the dock and pull a 270° turn to head out into Evans Bay. The NW wind sweeps across low terrain on Read Island from Hoskyns Channel, Johnson Strait and Bute Inlet. White caps on the crests of short steep waves rile up the mouth of the bay. Wind and waves blow us around the point all the way into Burdwood Bay.
Terry assesses the possibility of an anchorage for later tonight. “Looks good at low tide here. I think we’ll be OK. Let’s head out.” Blue P angles across the frothing mouth of Evans Bay to the Penn Islands. We’re getting ready to raise the sails when the water suddenly flattens and the wind dies. “Typical” Jude mutters as another attempt to sail is foiled yet again.
All thoughts of sailing evaporate as we spot 2 humpies close to the shore of the middle Penn. They’re moving slowly, making their way around the outside island closest to Cortes. “Sleeping” Terry notes wryly. He notices one of the whale watching boats emerging from Whale Passage and reports the whales. We decide to move a little closer when “What was that? Up ahead – a breach – towards Von Donnop” We hear the WHHOOMP of WHALE hitting Water. “Let’s Go!” Jude steers Blue P over as the whale watchers speed past.
We approach slowly and cut the engine “Is that a baby?” Terry wonders “Yes! A Mom and Calf! Look! The baby is breaching – she can’t quite make it all the way out of the water” —–“Is this a good position?” Jude calls to Terry who is perched precariously on Blue P’s bow manouvering carefully around the furled jib.
“WHOAH!” Mom is tail lobbing. Half her body is up out of the water. Baby is so close it looks as if Mom is going to land on top of herm – but she doesn’t. “Looks like they’re playing” Terry shouts during a brief lull in activity. He’s performing some fancy footwork to keep the whales in focus as they circle around Blue P at about 100 meters. Their play is so exuberant and Baby’s ingenue breaches are so adorable. Then Mom BREACHES – WHHHHUUMMMPPPP! The SIZE of HER!! There are no words equal to the AWESOMENESS of a 40 TON WHALE leaping clear out of the ocean into the air. “Sky Hopping” as our friend Martha thought it was called – A much better description of defying gravity!
So special to finally witness a Mom and Calf playing together like this. We are so juiced! We’ve waited 5 years for this moment – and to capture it on film so we can share it with you was worth every minute of boredom and discomfort.
Mom and Calf are moving north. They’re getting farther away as the wind blows Blue P south. Then “Looks like playtime is over. They seem to be resting now”. Terry observes. “Heads up!” Jude calls. She swings Blue P around in the direction of a nearby cove where half a dozen boats are congregating. “There are a couple of whales over there. Maybe they’ve finished sleeping” We hang around with them for a while but they’re not interested in people. They dive and easily give us all the slip.
Meanwhile it’s getting pretty windy so we decide to head back towards our evening anchorage. Evans Bay has once again erupted in white caps and heavy winds. We angle across the waves, navigating around another whale who is also crossing. “Happy sailing friend”
There are 2 other sailboats already anchored in Burdwood Bay so anchoring is a bit tight. But it’s protected from the NW waves and the gusts will blow us off shore not towards the other boats, so we settle in for the night.
April 2020 – Humpback Body Language
We humans love the animals who live with us. And they love us too. Over milennia we have learned how to communicate with each other by reading each others body language. Because we are all binary models ie: 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 brain hemispheres, 2 ears etc. a lot of our musculo-skeletal responses to stimuli are similar. We “raise our hackles” and snarl when angry, we whimper and cower when afraid. Humans have learned to read tails and our animal friends can read human eye and hand movements. We recognize each others’ voices and faces and scents. Wild animals who live close to humans have also learned to read us. Racoons, birds who nest and feed near us, squirrels, mice and rats – even house spiders I am trying to avoid while vacuuming are aware of my movements and what they are signaling.
Fish can be extremely curious. Divers love to play with friendly octopuses, seals, manta rays and dolphins. Divers keep returning for more encounters, sometimes with gifts of food or toys.
But what about whales? They are mammals like us with symetrical brains and limbs BUT -and that’s a BIG but – their scale is Super Sized. The medium through which whales perceive the universe is water so their senses are tuned to that environment and not as acute in air. Humans need special aparatus and training to spend any time in a whale’s world other than at the surface of the ocean. Our eyes and ears are not evolved for the liquid environment so we need to surround them with air in order to focus light and sound. So how can we become familiar with whale body language if we only see the 10% of their body that breaks the surface and can’t correlate their vocalizations with their actions?
Biologist and researcher Denise Hertzing has spent over 3 decades studying wild spotted and bottlenose dolphins in one bay in the Bahamas. The water is warm and clear which makes it possible for Denise and her team to actually interact with the dolphins in their world. Because she can be in the same environment as the dolphins she has learned their body language. She understands the meaning of many of their calls and can relate some of their behaviour with their vocalizations. Her team has even adapted dolphin body language to the human body. The Team can approximate some of the gestures and expressions dolphins use. Instead of rubbing fins with friends as dolphins do the humans rub elbows. Denise knows the pod as individuals and has become very friendly with a few of the females. They know she is in charge of her team and will show their disaproval directly to Denise if one of her team doesn’t follow dolphin protocol. The dolphins choose whether they want to interact with the humans, coming and going as they please. Denise is one of the few biologists who openly studies interspecies communication and the possibility of humans and cetaceans learning each others’ languages.
But what about whales? What does it mean when a whale slaps their tail on the water? In beaver language a tail slap signals a startled reaction or pissed off response and generally means “take off, eh?” In humpback whales Terry and I have observed that a tail slap can mean anything from “Hey, give me your attention” if soft and gentle to a warning or reprimand if hard and explosive. We’ve seen tail slaps when humpback whales are playing with sea lions and also when the whales seem to be feeding so maybe they use tail lobs to stun and disorient fish.
I am curious to know whether many body language gestures have similar meanings and/or intentions throughout the cetacean family tree – a question I will ask the research folks and the whale watching guides who have the most opportunities to observe wild cetaceans in the water.
November 2019 #4 The Pinnacles of Whalesong
Nov 6th dawns another frigid morning. While our tea kettle attempts a few tunes of its own Terry downloads video from the camera. Jude is programming her mixer/recorder while listening for whales on the hydrophone. “Terry – I hear something – it definitely sounds like singing – not close. Let’s head out. I’ll keep the hydrophone down and keep listening. We may be able to locate them”
We head the Parrot ship SW in the direction of Vancouver Island – to The Pinnacles. That’s where, yesterday, the golden light of the setting sun backlit heart-shaped blows of 6 – 10 humpback whales. Their dark backs appeared as tiny black crescents breaking the surface 2km SW of Blue Parrot.
The Pinnacles is a rock formation which rises sharply from the ocean floor at 600ft up to 70 ft below the water’s surface. Fish like to congregate here and so do all the critters who eat them including humans. As we motor closer Jude is listening for increasing volume of whalesong. “Sounds like we’re going in the right direction. Do you see anybody” “Nobody yet” Terry answers “Let me know when you want to stop”
During mid-day there is a break in service on the Comox-Powell River and Texada-Powell River ferries as their crews change shifts. Happily it’s break time now. The silence is heavenly. These are the clearest songs Jude has been able to record. Subtle nuances and inflections which had been obscured by boat noise on the previous recordings are now clearly audible. “You’ve got to hear this Terry! I think there are 2 whales – 1 farther away” An enraptured Jude holds out the headphones “I’m going to get the speaker so we can both listen.” Jude plugs in the speaker and whalesong pours into the air.
We listen: The sounds are so awesome – so expressive. It’s not possible to listen without being moved – enthralled by the ranges and timbres of their voices.
They grunt, groan, whoop and whistle. There is even a knocking percussive sound. How are they making that sound?
What are they singing about? What emotions are they expressing? Do groups of males get together to sing in unison? Are these whales singing together? The 2 whales don’t seem to be singing the same part of the song. Are they friends? Do whales sing over each other like birds do when they are proclaiming their territory? – So many questions but mostly exhilaration and awe.
Aerial whalesong might be what attracts a curious young seal to Blue Parrot. Seal circles our ship, peering into the cockpit at us. 
S/he dives underwater and we hear whiskers snuffling against the hydrophone “Hey! Get off of there!” Jude yells into the water. Up comes seal but s/he doesn’t leave. S/he stays with us checking out our dinghy – looking and looking. “Maybe s/he’s a seal scientist or engineer and s/he’s calculating the logistics of how we could be hiding a humpback whale in the cockpit of our little boat!” Terry laughs. Jude holds the speaker out where seal can see it and turns it off and on to demonstrate to seal where the whalesong is coming from. Seal disappears underwater and then surfaces again. The whalesong must be very loud underwater. And the same song is coming from our boat – probably delayed by a few seconds. It must be a profound puzzle for a curious seal.
Could this curious seal be the one under our boat listening to the whalesong?
Humpback Whales singing at the Pinnacles in the Salish Sea
Eventually seal departs. But the blessed reprieve from boat noise is soon blasted apart by the engines of several tugs towing heavily loaded barges northward up the Strait. The bass throbbing of those engines chugs on and on for hours.
After 2 1/2 hours the whales seem to have stopped singing. We scan the sea looking for blows or surfacing whales. “A BREACH” Terry yells as one whale launches himself out of the water 500m away. Another whale is with him but we aren’t close enough for ID. “Of course I don’t have my camera!” Terry mutters. And of course the whales swim off to the west – away from us. On these shorter days we have to head back to the anchorage before the light fades. So we do.
Tomorrow is another day.
November 2019 #3 Entangled!
NOTE TO READERS: All “Quotes” in this blog are approximations of conversations and are NOT the actual words that were said by any of the people quoted.
“Let’s check out the other side of Harwood” Terry suggests. The 2 frolicking humpback whales and their sealion friends have left and it’s a sunny afternoon. We’re drifting around Harwood when the VHF radio crackles with an incoming alert. “Susan, where’s your boat?” It’s a call from Nick Templeman of Campbell River Whale Safaris to Susan MacKay, local whale naturalist and sightings recorder, founder of WOWS. “I’m with 3 whales**. I think the calf got entangled in a prawn trap line. It’s been thrashing around trying to free itself. It might be panicking.” “Is it trailing line or a buoy?” Susan radios back. “I’m out in my skiff and heading over there. Can you stay with the whales?” “Roger that” Nick replies.
We have just passed the prawn traps they are talking about. We scout for escaped buoys and detached floating polypro line but don’t immediately find anything. So we head in the direction of Nick’s fast zodiac while calling him on our VHF radio. “Blue Parrot to Nick. How is the whale now?” “Looks like the 2 adults have broken off the buoy. The young one’s managed to shake off the line. I don’t see anything else on the calf. All 3 whales are looking more relaxed. I’m going to stay with them for a while longer to make sure they’re alright.” he answers. “I’ll see if I can find the broken line and buoy” Susan calls “They’re supposed to be using sinking line on prawn and crab traps so these entanglements don’t happen.”
This time the whale gets free. Susan ensures that no lines remain on the calf and finds the broken off buoy. Later she tells us that too many people are abandoning line, traps and buoys. Susan has photographed derelict buoys all over the Salish Sea. They are a death trap to whales and other marine mammals.
Many people believe that all whales use echolocation to precisely image their surroundings. But only toothed whales have the physiology necessary to echolocate. Baleen whales like humpbacks, right whales, blue whales and grey whales do not have that ability. They may use a form of sonar to find large schools of fish and krill but fine distinctions of materials and spatial location are not available to them. Even young orca who have extremely sensitive echolocating abilities get entangled in lines and nets because they are curious, playful, and unaware of the dangers human contraptions pose to them.
It’s not difficult to change this situation and protect our marine friends from entanglement and drowning if people follow guidelines for using sinking line on prawn and crab traps. Please do it.
** The 3 whales are later identified by Nick as BCX0545 Europa / Bounty, her calf BCX Pony, and BCY Dalmatian