Species News

And now to our final installment from Sue Rocca in our WDCS North America office as she trys to shed some light on where the humpbacks that spend their summer in the Gulf of Maine go when it comes to winter!

The bulk of North Atlantic humpbacks migrate to the West Indies for the winter breeding and calving season, particularly around the Dominican Republic. However, you can find humpbacks in the waters of other Caribbean nations; for example the people of the Turks and Caicos (TCI) have known there are humpbacks off their coast for generations. In fact there is evidence that a small and short-lived whaling industry took place on Salt Cay, a TCI island, in the 1870’s –80’s. But for much of the time it was thought the humpbacks sighted in TCI were only traveling by on their way to the Dominican Republic.

As the Caribbean is becoming ever more developed, we felt it was important to investigate how the whales are using the TCI waters. In 2007 and 2008 we conducted some preliminary studies on the humpbacks in TCI waters and found some amazing things.

First a little about TCI, the Turks and Caicos is named for two different underwater banks – made up of 8 large islands (40 if you count the small, uninhabited islands). The larger Caicos bank supports six islands, going west to east: West Caicos (semi-private island), Providenciales (largest population and where you will fly into when visiting the Turk and Caicos), North Caicos (the farming island), Middle Caicos (the largest island and least populated Caicos island), East Caicos (uninhabited), and South Caicos (conch, lobster and scale fish exportation and bone fishing destination).

The Turks bank supports two main islands, going north to south: Grand Turk and Salt Cay. Grand Turk is the governmental capital of the Turks and Caicos and a cruse ship destination. Salt Cay was the center of the Bermudan salt industry, the mainstay of the Turks and Caicos economy from the late 1600's until the early 1960's. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO

The cruise ship terminal (constructed in 2006) was an added reason for wanting to know how whales are using the area considering vessel strikes is one of the main threats to whales. This concern is always heightened in breeding and calving grounds. WDCS is also concerned over possible development on Salt Cay as the TCI government sold a substantial proportion of Salt Cay to build a proposed "Four Season’s resort and golf course". Salt Cay islanders’ opinions over this proposed project seem to be split: some believe it will be good for the local economy while others believe that outside labor will be brought in and locals will not benefit as they should. In any event, the resort can potentially poses very real threats to the whales that are sighted in the shallow waters off Salt Cay. These threats: increased pollution, acoustical disturbance, vessel strikes and harassment, could push whales away from these shallow, protected waters.

Our field time in TCI spans two years. In 2007 we were only able to be in TCI for 10 days and conducted research just out of Salt Cay. In 2008 we were able to expand our research to 2 months and more islands. What we have found so far leads us to believe that TCI is in fact part of the breeding, calving, nursing cycle. We recorded a few rowdy groups, where males try to get next to the female in hopes of being the male that she chooses to mate with. We recorded many mother and calf pairs in the waters as well. But by far the highlight for us was documenting a Gulf of Maine humpback in TCI waters in both years.

In 2008 we were with a mother and calf pair, the calf was being very active – tail breaching and flipper slapping. I was able to identify the mother of this active calf as Pinball. Pinball is the daughter of one of our old adoptable whales, Liner. Liner gave birth to Pinball in 1989 and in her 21 years of life Pinball has had 5 calves, including her 2008 calf. It is always wonderful to see whales you know, but even more wonderful to see them with their babies and know that the population is continuing to grow. Once I got a look at the tail fluke and realized the mother was Pinball, I had a look at the dorsal fins we had photographed. (humpbacks don’t fluke as consistently when they are in the Caribbean as they do in their Gulf of Maine summer feeding grounds) and found that we had seen Pinball and her calf the day before. Not only that but we had seen the pair 11 days before.



Looking at 2007 data we were able to say that Pinball was seen in the same general area as in 2008. However, in 2007 Pinball did not have a calf and was in an area with five to six other adult humpbacks right off Salt Cay.

We are looking forward to finding the funding to continue this very important work not just to find more whales setting up a level of residency in TCI but also because of the outreach and education opportunities. In 2008 we gave talks to children in schools about the importance to protect whales and the oceans.

The Turks and Caicos is an amazingly beautiful and diverse island chain, you could spend many years exploring the 40 different islands and cays. If you would like to stay a lifetime then come and get to know the people, an equally enjoyable endeavor.

In part one of our Gulf of Maine Humpback series , I spoke of how we use humpbacks’ readily identifiable natural markings to learn natural history information from migration routes to calving intervals. However, the discovery process is slow, and necessitates good and standardized scientific protocols. It’s this slow accumulation, processing and analyzing of data over decades that allows us to see trends and make new discoveries.

The process is also a collaborative one because whales are highly migratory. No one person or organization can be everywhere – so it’s only by pooling data together can we increase our knowledge of the life history of these highly migratory animals. This process leads to very busy field seasons in our North American (NA) office. WDCS NA curates a catalogue of 2,400 individual humpbacks within the Gulf of Maine, but this accounts for just a small part of the humpback in the North Atlantic.

The College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine curates a catalogue much larger then our -about 7,000 individuals from the entire North Atlantic. So it literally takes researchers from around the world working together to learn about the movements of whales. You are probably saying to yourself right about now- “Gosh, there’s got to be an easier way”. Satellite tags are used to get see how whales migrate over longer times and distances, but it only tracks that one whale and only for about 15 months and getting the tag on the animal in the first place can be troublesome and stressful on the animal. Satellite tags can be a very useful tool in the research box, but they do have their limits can’t give you life history information, such as calving rates and life spans. There are also many welfare concerns surrounding their use and application, and their long-term effects on the individuals concerned.

Peter Stevick, from Allied Whale, gave a talk at this year’s Whale Watch Naturalist Workshop highlighting some of Allied Whales work. Here is some of what we know about North Atlantic humpback whales. Of these 7,000 individuals, 4,810 have been documented on one of the six different North Atlantic feeding grounds (Gulf of Maine, Gulf of St Lawrence, Newfound, Greenland, Iceland and Norway) whilst 2,250 individuals have been seen in multiple years. The longest time between sightings of an individual is 36 years. One individual was first sighted in 1976 in Puerto Rico and then again in 2009 off Newfoundland. Never in the 36 years in between do we have a recorded sighting of this individual. I think this is a great example of what we are up against while trying to study whales.

About 2,400 individual humpbacks have been sighted in the main breeding grounds – the West Indies (link to http://www2.wdcs.org/fieldblog/index.php?/archives/128-Humpbacks-in-the-Gulf-of-Maine.html) however, only 772 of these 2,400 have also need seen in one of the feeding grounds, 175 of them in the Gulf of Maine.

However, not all the whales seem to go to the West Indies. The West Indies seems to be more heavily used by humpbacks that feed in the western North Atlantic whilst there is still a chunk of the eastern North Atlantic humpbacks that we do not know where they go to breed. There is another breeding ground in the Cape Verde Islands, however it seems that Cape Verde Islands are utilized by only tiny percentage of the population. For example, this year of eight animals photographed in Cape Verde Islands, five had been documented there in prior years. But there are cases of eastern North Atlantic humpbacks being documented in the Cape Verde Islands – two from Norway, and one from Iceland.

There is also a small exchange of individuals between feeding grounds. For Gulf of Maine (GoM)– 56 individuals have also been sighted in Newfoundland and Gulf of St. Lawrence, while one individual from the GoM was sighting in Greenland. Particularly scary due to the fact that Greenland wants to start hunting humpbacks.

As for this year we have documented 112 known animals and 18 mothers so far this year. Of course this is the growing and reproducing part of the population so we pay special attention to who’s giving birth and how often. So for now we are out on the water working as hard as we can to document humpbacks within the Gulf of Maine –for science as well as conservation.

And there is no better of example of how photo-ID, whale watching, research, conservation and management intertwine than Tofu. Tofu was born in 2005, to Isthmus, she was the grandcalf of Orbit, a third generation of identifiable humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine.



On June 24, 2007, WDCS received a call from a whale watching boat reporting a dead humpback whale. We went out to investigate and tow the whale in for a necropsy. We were able to identify the whale as Tofu from a small area of skin on her flukes, on her otherwise skinless body. A quick look at our data showed a sighting of Tofu on June 15th. Further investigations from whale watching boats indicated Tofu was last seen alive on June 21st – given the times of the sighting and the discovery of her body- she was dead, at most, two and a half days.

As there were no external signs of injury on her, WDCS and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary towed her to Brewer’s Plymouth Marine to be hauled out, placed in a truck, and driven to a site for necropsy. The necropsy indicated she died from a vessel strike.



In the US, the Marine Mammal Protection Act includes a calculation for Potential Biological Removal (PBR). It is the number of animals that can be accidentally killed by human causes without harming the population level as a whole. For humpbacks in the Gulf of Maine, the number is three. Already that spring, two other humpbacks had been killed by vessel strikes. When PBR is met or exceeded, management actions must be considered.

From Tofu’s discovery to necropsy took three days and involved more than 50 people - from whale watching captains to Federal Agencies and everything in between. Knowing who this whale was, and how she died, mattered, not just to WDCS but to the conservation of the entire Gulf of Maine humpback population.

Tofu’s skeleton was sent to the Sea Coast Science Center in New Hampshire (US). She leaves a legacy exemplifying the threats whales continue to face at our hands and why the sighting of that one whale matters to the future of an entire population. On-the-water research is expensive and time consuming. WDCS’s most recent research trip in the Gulf of Maine lasted over 13 hours at a cost of more than $500USD in boat time alone. But a small price to pay to ensure the future of a population.

In recent days, researchers have published their findings showing that humpback whales have a much more complex social structure than previously thought. Certain female individuals were known to have long-lasting associations with other females for over 6 years, the first baleen whales shown to exhibit such behaviour. At the same time, the IWC meeting is almost upon us (scientific meetings of all magnitudes are taking place behind closed doors just now!) and humpbacks are still on Greenland's wish-list! Surely this recent news of long-term associations between whales deserves some consideration when thinking of adding them to the menu?

So for the moment, some lighter reading ... WDCS's Sue Rocca introduces us to the magnificent humpback whales that she (and others) are studying on the East Coast of the USA. Over to you Sue ....

Researchers have been studying humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine for over 30 years. Every new discovery both advances our knowledge and helps us better protect this charismatic species. You would think that in over 30 years we would have them all figured out, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. But that’s what keeps it exciting – there is still so much left to discover.

We are lucky to work with a species in which individuals are so easily recognizable as humpbacks. Each humpback has a distinctive black and white pattern on the underside of their tail fluke. And we get to see this marking when humpbacks fluke up on sounding (or deep) dives. The ability to tell one apart from the other is the bases of any and all study. Without this we could not do something as simple as censes the population without worrying about counting the same individuals over and over. Before you learn how often a mother can have a calf, or at what age they reach sexual maturity, or what the life span is - you have to be able identify individuals.

So much of our work goes into recognizing and recording individuals – where they are, who they are sighted with, and what they are doing. You get enough years of this type of observational data and it’s amazing what you can tease out. Which is one of the reasons the lethal, scientific whaling conducted by Japan is such a joke. You can learn exponentially more by watching whales alive and well in their natural environment then you would ever hope to by killing it.

We know humpbacks in the western North Atlantic separate into six distinctive feeding stocks and there is some level of fidelity to which feeding stock your mother takes you to in that first year as a calf. There is a 70% sight fidelity level in the Gulf of Maine – meaning as far as we can tell 70% of the calves who’s mothers brought them to the Gulf of Maine in their first year will continue returning to the Gulf of Maine throughout their lives. We also think that all of the different feeding stocks go to the same general winter breeding grounds in the West Indies. Notice I said think…

Other things we know because we can identify individuals - humpbacks become sexual mature and can reproduce as early as 4 years of age for females. We don’t know when they stop reproducing. Salt, so named because she has white on her dorsal fin – looking as if it was covered in salt, was the first whale individually identified in 1976 because of her unique dorsal fin. We have seen Salt in the Gulf of Maine every year since, and this year she is back with her twelfth recorded calf. But there were a few years – 7 in fact – when we saw her without a calf, so we started thinking that maybe she had reach the age of on longer being able to reproduce. Then in 1998, Salt returned to the Gulf of Maine with her eighth calf. And she has continued to have four more.



And we certainly don’t know how females choose whom to mate with. Originally this was thought one of the purposes for the 30 min long, complex song the males sign. Hopefully you have heard the humpback song! No female has ever been recorded singing and once it was thought the males only sung in the breeding grounds – so you will excuse researchers from assuming the song was how male humpbacks attracted females. However, when researchers played the humpback whale songs to humpbacks it was not the females, but the males who responded. This, in addition, to the fact that humpbacks have now been recorded singing off the coast of Massachusetts when we never thought they sung in their feeding grounds, leads us to the understand that humpbacks, like all of nature, is more complicated then we originally thought.

One of the things we are hoping to better learn in the future is the life span of humpbacks and large baleen whales. Currently, our best guess is 60 to 80 years, but this is based on whaling data. It’s much better for us to see calves with their mothers in the year of their birth – know how old they are, follow then throughout their lives, and when we see entire age classes start to naturally die off we will know better.

Being able to recognize named individuals also helps people identify with the whales, which in turn increases the public’s desire to help protect all whales. Since 1984 through the Whale Adoption Project people have been helping protect whales by adopting individual humpback whales. We have supporters who have been adopting the same whale for twenty–some years and very much look forward to hearing their whale has returned to the Gulf of Maine and what they are up to. We are continually grateful and indebted to our supporters who make our work possible and carry the message of whale and ocean conservation out into the world with them.

The humpback whale, possibly the most iconic of all species of cetacean, is the subject of this blog for the month of June! And the timing couldn’t be better. Work just published by Dr Christian Ramp and colleagues of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study group shows that female humpback whales develop friendships that can last over many years. The researchers have been studying whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence since 1997 and using photo-identification catalogues going back over 30 years, they have shown that the same female humpback whales reunite each year, having spent the rest of the year apart migrating and breeding. Somehow, each summer, individual females find each other again in the open ocean, and then spend the season together, feeding. The longest recorded friendships lasted six years, and always occurred between similar-aged females!!

Only weeks before, during a conference in Helsinki, Finland, experts covering various disciplines ranging from behavioural science to philosophy and international law addressed the question of whether whales and dolphins should be considered as non-human persons and granted special status. They discussed the increasing body of scientific evidence with respect to cetaceans, including emergent understanding of self-awareness, abstract thought and cultural complexity and concluded that all whales and dolphins have the right to life, liberty and well-being and established a “Declaration on Rights of whales and dolphins”.



So it all sounds like great news right? Wrong! June also heralds the 62nd meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) where humpbacks are once again back on the wish-list of whalers in Greenland and Japan. Despite not fulfilling their quotas of other species, both want to target the humpback, a species that has just been shown to exhibit strong social bonds. In the past over 100,000 humpback whales were killed and their numbers may only just be recovering, despite being listed as of “Least Concern” by the IUCN. Despite there being several different populations of humpback whales throughout the world’s oceans, there are currently no recognised sub-species, although the population in the Arabian Sea is non-migratory and has been shown to be isolated from populations in the southern Indian Ocean. In the coming weeks we’ll hear from humpback whale researchers around the world, as they share their work with us! During this time we’ll also learn the fate of the species at the hands of the IWC.



Be sure to keep up to date with everything going on over there in Agadir by checking out WDCS frontline blog and to read more and find out how you can help visit our Whaling site.

More from our humpback whale researchers soon …. !!

And finally ... to finish off the month of May (okay so i've strayed over into June) and the Irrawaddy blog, our final entry is from Danielle Kreb, studying one of the last remaining populations of freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins, in the Mahakam River here in the island of Borneo - although the Indonesian part, south of where this "blogger" is currently sitting (I'm north of there in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo). Before we get to hear from Danielle, who is also going to tell us about some of her coastal work in the region (where she spotted Irrawaddy dolphins, just the marine kind), let me update you to tell you that we too have been out, on the eastern side of Malaysian Borneo (and up a river) looking for Irrawaddy dolphins .... and much to everyone's surprise, we found some! More on these chaps at a later date as we're currently trying to see if we can kick start some long-term research in this area - more soon!

Over to Danielle .... and i'll be back soon with the next species of the month - the humpback whale ... very topical as the member nations of the IWC meet this week in Morocco to decide the fate of the world's whales - at least when it comes to commercial whaling!


The freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin population in the Mahakam River is isolated from coastal populations through evolutionary separation events. This symbol species for East Kalimantan Province is protected in Indonesia and has been classified as “Critically Endangered” in 2000. Most recent population estimates from 2007 based on Petersen Mark-Recapture Analysis indicate a population size of 87 individuals (CV=9%; 95% CL = 75-105) and 91 individuals based on the total number of individuals identified during that year. The major threat involved direct mortality, which was largely caused by gillnet entanglement (74% of all deaths). Mean annual mortality between 1995 and 2007 was four dead dolphins per year. Other threats are habitat degradation through sedimentation, which is reducing the depth of lakes and reducing fish resources; noise pollution because of high-frequency boat propellers and high decibel producing tugboats and barges for coal transport; chemical pollution, mainly from coal and gold-cleaning waste; prey depletion due to illegal and unsustainable fishing methods (electro-fishing, poison and trawl, non-sustainable aqua-culture practices using fish breeds that feed on other fish). Dolphin core areas include the “Muara Pahu – Penyinggahan sub-districts area” where 57% of the total number of 91 identified dolphins in 2007 were observed in this area, whereas in the second largest core area “the Pela/ Semayang –Muara Kaman area” 46% of the total identified dolphins was observed. The first core area obtained official protected status at district level in 2009 and encompasses 4100 ha of river, tributary and freshwater swamp habitat. Regulations still need to be legalized. Multi-stakeholder workshops and community assessment surveys were conducted several times in the core areas to assess community opinions towards area and dolphin protection and community needs. Environmental education courses were implemented at a combined total of fifty-five high- and elementary schools in the Middle Mahakam. Sustainable aqua-culture (using herbivorous fish species) support is being provided to sixty fishermen in the protected area that subsist on gillnetting to reduce fish pressure and dolphin entanglements. Mitigation of unsustainable fishing techniques and pollution reduction (due to chemical waste and boat noise) remains an important component for the survival of this critically endangered freshwater dolphin population.

Marine mammal observation surveys were conducted in Balikpapan Bay in East Kalimantan in 2008 in order to obtain information on cetacean diversity, total abundance, distribution patterns and threats. A total of 985 km of line-transects were surveyed in 84.9 hours in 16 days during three surveys in May, June and November 2008. The surveys were compared with the results from two surveys in 2000 and two in 2001, which were conducted during similar seasons to assess changes in abundance and distribution. Three cetacean species, i.e. Irrawaddy dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris, Finless porpoise, Neophocaena phocaenoides, and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops aduncus were encountered during all surveys as well as dugongs Dugong Dugon. The finless porpoise and bottlenose dolphins occurred in low densities in the outer coastal bay segment, and dugongs in several bay segments in very low densities. Irrawaddy dolphins were the species most commonly encountered but were almost exclusively sighted in the upper parts of the bay in 2008, whereas during 2000 and 2001 they also significantly occurred in the lower bay segments downstream of Tanjung Batu and near coastal area. Individual dolphins also show a high site-fidelity throughout the seasons. Best estimates of mean abundance in 2008 were between 67 and 140 individuals based on the Burnham & Overton mark-recapture- and line-transect density analysis, respectively. No significant changes in mean abundance were found between 2000, 2001 and 2008. The disappearance of Irrawaddy dolphins in the lower bay segments is likely caused by increasing boat traffic and industrial activities in the lower segments, as well as increased sedimentation impacting on fisheries in these areas due to mangrove conversion. The preservation of mangroves of the upper bay segments, above Tanjung Batu, and prevention of industrial activities in these segments including prevention of bridge construction plans in this segment, is essential for the preservation of the Irrawaddy dolphins and dugongs in the bay. Since the dolphins live in close contact with the human population in the bay, increasing awareness is similarly important.

Since the project our organization has done many lobby activities against the construction of the bridge joining forces with other local NGOs. Now it seems that national government decided not to go ahead with financing this bridge. So this would mean good news for the environment. However, current piling activities have been done by an irresponsible company. After they got summoned by the environmental department after our complaints they now are willing to cooperate with installing a bubble screen and having monitoring being done by our survey team. This will happen by end of May until piling is finished for one month at least.