Entries by Sue Rocca

Today we are highlighting Sundance the dolphin, another adoptable dolphin from the Moray Firth in Scotland. To keep up with all the sightings updates for this population check out Charlie Phillips' blog.

Sundance (ID#105) is 20 years old this year and is a big, confident, fully grown male dolphin who is competing with other big males over territory and access to females. This is really showing in the amount of new dorsal fin and body scratches that he is picking up year on year.

Whenever Sundance arrives in the area you can really feel his “presence” such is his attitude, size and confidence. Although for years I would see him hanging out a lot with Moonlight, a lovely female, he also enjoys the company of other girls as Moonlight has another set of friends that she spends time with. He often is in the company of younger male dolphins who he has great fun with, showing them just what being a wild, free powerful dolphin is all about.

He is still the most exciting dolphin to have around – I have some great photographs of him enjoying social time with other dolphins, he has a great sense of humour and never passes up an opportunity to tease the other dolphins with a big fish or have a game of chases to prove how powerful he is. A wonderful dolphin and of the very few dolphins in this population that can make me laugh out loud at what he gets up to.

Like Salt, Pepper was named in 1976 because in that first year she was seen often with Salt – so they became Salt and Pepper. Thus Pepper was the second humpback to receive a name. Pepper is a female, a mother of nine and as of 2008 she is also a grandmother. Here’s her family tree.

Other similarities between Salt and Pepper is that like Salt often hooks up with Cardhu at some point in the season, Pepper often can be seen with a whale named Nile – another reproducing female. Nile was born to another of our adoptable humpbacks, Mars, in 1987. Unlike Salt and Pepper, we saw Nile as a calf in the year of her birth so we know how old she is and can follow her throughout her life. Nile also has a distinctive dorsal fin, it’s extremely sickled with a white slash at the base on the right side. In this photo Nile is in the front and Pepper is behind her.

Salt and Pepper also have their differences. Pepper is more surface active then Salt, you might even see her breach. And if you do, make sure you check out her jaw line – on the left side you will see jaw scuffing. This wearing away of skin along the jaw line occurs, we believe, when humpback scrape their jaws along the seafloor to force the sandlance into the water column where the humpbacks can eat them. Sandlance are small schooling fish that migrate up and down in the water column, sometimes burrowing into the sandy substrate. Most humpbacks have these jaw scuffing scars on their right side – while Pepper appears ‘left-handed’ with her scuffing on the left side.

In 1996 Pepper gave birth to a calf later named Zenith. While most calves stay with their mothers for only one year, Zenith was with Pepper when they returned in 1997. They stayed together the entire summer that second year, and at the time Pepper was pregnant with her 6^th calf, Bishop. Zenith and Pepper parted ways that fall, but this was not the only time Pepper was to be seen with one of her calves in their second year. In 2000 Habenero was born and like all calves spent her first year with her mother, but unlike most juveniles Habenero spent the spring of her second year with Pepper. While Habenero did not spend nearly the amount of time with Pepper in her second year as Zenith did – it was cool to see this rarity occur (even if it was to a lesser extent) twice with Pepper’s calves.

Unfortunately Pepper’s life and family tree have also been marked by human impacts. Remember Zenith who back in 1997 spent her second feeding season with Pepper? Well towards the end of her third summer in 1998 Zenith was mortally wounded by a ship strike. And in June of 2009, Pepper herself was entangled in fishing gear. After becoming entangled we did not see Pepper again until May of this year….yet fortunately when Pepper was resighted she was gear free.

While we see Pepper a lot in the Gulf of Maine, she’s also been seen in the Bay of Fundy. You can follow Pepper on twitter for real-time sightings of Pepper every time we see her. And of course Pepper is adoptable.

More on our adoptable animals...This time Charlie Phillips tells us a little more about 'Kesslet the dolphin'. To keep up with sightings updates of all the adoptable dolphins of the Moray Firth in Scotland check out Charlie's blog. And remember you can always give the gift of adoption for the holidays.

“Kesslet” (ID# 433) was born in 1994, daughter of the late Kess (ID#85) (who sadly died in 1998) and little sister of “Friths Bro” (ID#84). Kesslet was left motherless at the young age of 4, resulting in a bit of a tough upbringing – having to fend for herself at such a young age. And grow up she did, and what a fantastic dolphin! Ultra fast, incredible manoeuvrability and clever hunting tactics have made her into a formidable predator – she never, ever, misses a fish. After leading the carefree, somewhat precocious life of a single girl for ages she eventually gave birth to her first calf in September 2007.

The baby dolphin was soon identified through one of my photos as a boy and now he is three years old and almost as big as his Mum. He has been called Charlie (ID#1025) and is now as fast and as cheeky as his Mum was at the same age. It can be quite emotional watching the two of them together in the Kessock Channel sometimes as Kesslet takes Charlie to the same places and does exactly the same things as her mother did with her

 I sometimes have to remind myself which dolphins I am watching. Her dorsal fin is relatively unmarked with no big nicks or deep scratches but is very re-curved and she can be recognised by this even at a distance. Charlie, however has picked up an impressive array of nicks and scratches for such a relatively young dolphin – a typical boy really.

This year we have been dedicating each month to a particular cetacean species - bringing you blogs from all over the world for a deeper and better look at our 'Species of the Month'. However, for the Holidays, we thought we’d get a bit more specific and rather than highlighting a species, we are going to highlight some very special individuals- our adoptable whales! And who better to start with than the first humpback whale ever named - Salt!

Salt was named because it looks like someone sprinkled salt on her dorsal fin. She was one of the first individual whales studied by researchers based on her unique natural markings. A technique researchers continue to use to track individual animals over the course of their lives, and thus also be able to track generations.

Since 1975, Salt has been seen every year off the coast of Massachusetts and her history is tied to the whale watching industry. She was given her name by Aaron Avellar, a captain and a founder of the Dolphin Fleet whale watching company. Aaron's dad Al Avellar, a fishing captain, noticed that his fishing passengers would stop and watch whales whenever they were sighted, leading to the beginnings of East Cost whale watching. Because of this connection the Avellar family, Chad Avellar, Aaron’s son, has been passed on the privilege of naming Salt's calves.... and there are a lot of them.

Here's her family tree.

Most of Salt’s calves have names either based on some derivation of Salt or another condiment (Aaron was a condiment connoisseur!). In fact only one of Salt’s calves was not named with a form of salt or a condiment- Thalassa. Thalassa was a primordial sea goddess and the mother of all the fishes in the sea; quite fitting as Thalassa the humpback has had seven calves of her own so far, making Salt a grandmother many times over. Thalassa is the calf of Salt that we know has gone on to reproduce. We were fortunate to see Thalassa feeding on our research cruise last month.

Some of Salt’s calves are almost as famous as she is. Her first calf, Crystal, was born in 1980. There is a book written about him called, Crystal: The Story of a Real Baby Whale. And an exact replica of her second calf, Halos, hangs inside the New England Aquarium for all to see.

Although we do not know Salt’s exact age because we never saw her as a calf or juvenile, we do know a lot about her because of the 34 years of data collected aboard whale watching vessels. Another wonderful benefit of whale watching. We know that she has been documented in the breeding grounds of Dominican Republic, and she has had 12 calves, and that she’s a grandmother.

At one time we thought Salt was providing us some insight as to when baleen whales become senescent (reach menopause and stop reproducing). If you look back on the family tree you’ll see Salt had a new calf every other year for a decade ending with the birth of Salsa in 1991. For the next seven years we say Salt every year, but each year she did not have a calf with her. No one knows if baleen whales get to an age where they stop bearing calves and perhaps Salt was about to help us find out. But in 1998 she returned with a calf and the question of senescence remains unanswered. She continued to have six more calves on her every-other-year schedule, exactly like before her seven year hiatus.

Salt also teaches us a lot about associations. We consider the longest association between baleen whales to be between mothers and calves – and that’s not even a full year. When we see other humpbacks hanging out together we generally consider those association to be fluctuating and transient - lasting an hour, or day, or week. However, Salt and Cardhu (another adult female) have a history of hanging out together, it seems particularly when Salt is pregnant. These extremely long lasting relationships, also known as associations, we thought, were uncommon among baleen whales. Yet they have been documented in other populations of humpbacks as well.

A few other things that generally you can count of if you see Salt is that she’s not going to be acrobatic – we hardly ever see her breach or tail breach. Unless of course, she is with a calf, then there’s a slight chance of seeing her breach or flipper slap- perhaps teaching her calf the ways of the world. She seems to be the Queen Bee of the group as well, and And if she’s in a group feeding, she is typically the first to dive and resurface – with the rest of the group following her lead.

While we still have many unanswered questions about the culture and life history of humpback whales, Salt has certainly been a great teacher- and we look forward to learning more from her for many years to come. You can help by adopting Salt.