To: Journey North
From: Anne Smrcina
Stellwagen Bank National Marine
Sanctuary
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Greetings --
Can you believe that it's May already? This Journey North season has been
flying by too quickly.
I have a short report for you on whale sightings this week. A couple of humpbacks have been seen in the Cape Cod Bay area over the past week as well as a finback mother and calf and a minke mother and calf. Scientists were very interested in this last sighting because they had believed that minkes went elsewhere with their calves (this was only the third sighting ever of such a pair in these waters). What they are theorizing now is that minkes might wean their calves earlier than other whales so that they would not be seen in typical mother-calf pairs during the summer like other species.
I had a chance to talk to Dave Mattila of the Center for Coastal Studies about his work in Hawaii on humpbacks (partially funded by the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary) and he had some interesting material to relate. After a slow start due to bad weather, conditions changed for the better and the researchers were able to get lots of whale sightings from Penguin Bank off the SW corner of Molokai Island. This area has the highest density of whales but some of the roughest water among the major Hawaiian humpback whale breeding/calving areas. Dave's experience in the North Atlantic (where open water conditions are often rough (and there are no volcanos to hide behind) gave him the expertise and credentials to undertake this work. His team was able to take at least 120 fluke photographs, record interesting behavioral data, and collect 70 skin samples.
He reports that there are subtle differences between the Hawaiian and Atlantic breeding populations with males in Hawaii lifting their heads out of the water more often. They're not quite sure what this head-lunging (or head-up) behavior is for, but it may be part of an aggressive display. They are particularly interested in the skin samples and what the genetic information contained in them might provide. Elsewhere, researchers in Mexico and Japan have collected 70 samples from each of their resident whale populations for comparative studies.
An interesting fact from Hawaii is that, despite the state's rich native history and ties to the environment, whales are not mentioned in folklore or included in native crafts. The whalers in the 1800s used Hawaii as a restocking port, but never mentioned whales in the area. Scientists believe that humpback whales might only have recently found this area and may have their roots in either the western or eastern Pacific stocks. Testing of the three sets of samples may determine if these are genetically distinct population, if any of the stocks are related, or if their is mixing between the populations.
That's all for now. For answers to some of your questions on right whales and humpback whales, see my other posting for today. I'll be sending these answers out over the next two weeks.
Anne Smrcina
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
The Next Humpback Whale Migration Update Will be Posted on May 8, 1996
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