 |
It is summer in Alaska, the whales are feeding in northern latitudes and once again, we at Eye of the Whale are asking for your help in supporting our research. |
 |
Olga von Ziegesar:
I have been working hard this winter on the new whale tail catalog. It has been a huge task sorting through all the humpback tails ever photographed in Prince William Sound (PWS) since we began this study in 1980. Along with the histories and identities of each whale, this version will include stories and photographs for you to visualize the task at hand. One of my stories, “Studying Sea Giants” can be found here. Data and permit applications are done and now it is time to leave the desk and go out in the field.
Shelley Gill:
The
good
thing about being a whale detective and
a writer is I get to put my
best guess in print. These are educated guesses - not proofs arrived at
via rigorous scientific protocol. But I think at
least a few of these observations could be on the money. During the
2006 season Olga, Beth and I made three trips-June, late July and early
Sept.- to western Prince William. In past years we saw and photographed
an average of 40-50 whales a season in the inside waters. Four years
ago a pattern began to emerge. Our humpbacks were staying outside in
Montague Strait, and in the entrances to the Gulf of Alaska. We were
only able to photograph 6 whales last season near whale camp. Why? My
guess is lack of food in those inside waters.
Why? Could it be rising
water temperatures are leading to less plankton bloom? Has
the
bait moved into deeper water? Many species are still experiencing the
effects of the oil spill of 1989. The plot
thickens…
For the past two winters a number of humpback and gray whales in various locations around Alaska have not migrated to their breeding grounds; choosing for some reason to stay in the north and feed. Kick me if I’m crazy but my first thought was animals who have not eaten enough will neither migrate nor hibernate. Re: winter bears: those half starved usually big old denizens who show up in February where they are least expected. Thousands of gray whales were feeding in January off Kodiak; humpbacks were haunting bays near Chenega Village in Prince William Sound in February. Certainly natural shifts in food sources occur and herring may be off shore for now. It bears watching closely.
Author/Adventures - the education partner of Eye of the Whale Research - took off this winter with a trip to Antarctica. It was a humble beginning but I hope to inspire a love of the natural world in the kids who log on. I had over 100 schools nationwide following our progress via a blog at shelleygill.com as we sailed from the Falkland Islands down the Antarctic Peninsula to Latitude 69.8 where I left some of the ashes of my dear old friend and Antarctic explorer Norman Vaughan. You can log on and read the whole story if you are sitting in sweltering heat somewhere and need a bit of cooling off!
Beth
Goodwin: I decided not to go out to sea anymore for the 4 month NOAA cruises, as I have two teenage daughters, and well. ..I started a whale watching company in Hawaii and I also use my boat as part of the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale Sanctuary disentanglement team. I have observed many behaviors of newborn calves: tracked their behaviors over time and determined they start breaching when they are 7 to 10 days old. They start their breach with their eyes open, but just before landing they close them (as do the adults); for the first few weeks their pectoral fins are quite flimsy and their bent over dorsal fins at birth don’t straighten out until they’re a couple of weeks old; they try to protect their mothers from an aggressive sexually mature escort by imitating the tail slapping, breaching and head lunging the mother is displaying towards the escort. I have seen an unusual behavior called “snaking” in competitive pods, where the whale puts his head on the surface, arches his back and almost touches his dorsal fin to his blow hole. An advanced yoga movement at best!
You can go to Beth’s web site and see “best of” pictures at eyeofthewhale.com. She has been able to get more photo-id’s of whales off the Big Island than any other researcher at this time and is bringing new insights to our understanding of these very complex creatures when away from their feeding grounds here in Alaska. She has already found one match between PWS and Kawaihae, Hawaii… in the PWS catalogue it is Z-72 or Kissin’ Fish seen for the first time in 2000 and in Hawaii it is “Luna” seen Feb. 22, 2007. We have raised our kids in PWS and know what a powerful learning experience it has been-particularly the journal writing and drawing our kids have produced holed up in tents and on board. Writing well, expressing thoughts well, is humanities’ most important adaptation. Children worldwide have very little access to wilderness as our wild places shrink and society becomes even more ignorant to the importance of nature. By exposing kids to our world we hope to inspire them to care about whales, clean water, and survival of the natural environment. Hundreds of volunteer hours go into our study-remember it is the ONLY base line study of humpbacks that began before the Exxon Valdez oil spill and continues today. Our ongoing basic research is essential. We are a bare bones operation but we need your support to continue this exciting project.
Please mail your donations to Eye of the Whale, P.O. Box 15191, Fritz Creek, AK, 99603. Secure online donations coming soon!
Olga, Beth, and Shelley