Blue Whale Study Inc | Non-profit organisation

Blue Whale Study Inc

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25.01.2022 Our very own Dr Pete Gill was talking to Jeremy Lee on ABC South West VIC radio this morning about current whale activity off our southern coast. Did you know you can see humpbacks breaching off our Capes at the moment? Check it out here - 37 minutes in - https://www.abc.net.au//progr/breakfast/breakfast/12715976

24.01.2022 Between February and April this year, BWS admin manager Bec Hall sailed across Bass Strait each weekend as a cetacean observer on the Bass Strait ferry Spirit of Tasmania. We proposed to the company that we use the ship as a 'platform of opportunity' to search for whales along the its track across Bass Strait from Melbourne to Devonport during the productive summer months. They kindly agreed, and have been very supportive of the project. While no blue whales were sighted dur...ing the crossings, they were also very scarce in the Bonney Upwelling this season. From our own sightings and from acoustic logger recordings we know that blue whales from three separate populations (Antarctic blue, south-west Pacific pygmy blue, eastern Indian Ocean pygmy blue) may occur in Bass Strait, and many humpbacks also migrate through Bass Strait. Bec sighted two sei or Bryde's whales (similar species difficult to differentiate) on one crossing, as well as many sightings of common dolphin schools and some interesting seabirds. We hope to continue this interesting project next summer. https://www.themercury.com.au//0aa29dc00145ddc6b102a5f7703

24.01.2022 Winter Blues News - https://mailchi.mp/68bbf9b85184/winter-blues-news Catch up on our latest news and research.

23.01.2022 A blue whale good news story - there have been many sightings this year around subantarctic South Georgia Island, in the south Atlantic Ocean. South Georgia was the centre of Antarctic whaling between 1904-1923, and by the 1960s blue whales had almost disappeared from the region. Hopefully this means that Antarctic blue whales are slowly recovering. BWS scientist Pete Gill was lucky enough to visit South Georgia last month, but sighted no blue whales. He visited abandoned whaling stations at Grytviken and Stromness, where explorer Ernest Shackleton finally reached help after his Weddell Sea endurance epic.

22.01.2022 This footage comes from a camera attached to a feeding blue whale's back using a suction cup. The whale surfaces once or twice and then feeds - you can see its throat pleats balloon out and krill stream past, then the whale's throat slims down again as it empties its mouth of water and krill. Great footage. https://www.facebook.com/BBCWildAlaskaLive/videos/1482800158705649/

21.01.2022 One of BWS' long-term collaborators is John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research from Cascadia, Washington State. John is one of the most experienced blue whale scientists anywhere and has worked with us here in the Bonney Upwelling. This short film documents John's use of suction-cup-attached National Geographic Crittercams, filming blue whales underwater and recording their calls. Pete Gill was fortunate to be involved in this research off southern California in 2002. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8MTsgdWuU0

20.01.2022 This Sunday 23 June at 10am, Dr Pete Gill will share the latest information about pygmy blue whales in the Bonney Upwelling, as part of the Port Fairy Winter Weekends Festival. The venue is Charlie's on East Beach. . This talk was very well attended last year, so if you are in the neighbourhood, come along and help fill the room! There are also plenty of other things going on in Port Fairy on the day. https://www.portfairywinterweekends.com.au/weekend-2

19.01.2022 1983 was the Year that made Dr Pete Gill! Must have had something to do with whales! In cased you missed it - here is the interview link https://www.abc.net.au//the-year-that-made-me:-pe/12807648

14.01.2022 Twice lately, young blue whales have been attacked and killed by killer whales off south-west Western Australia. The first was inshore of the Bremer Canyon, a location well known for its killer whales, a few weeks ago, and involved a subadult blue whale. The second has just come in and involves a smaller blue whale, which looks like last winter's calf. While these events may shock us, this is the eternal fact of predation. Most of the time we might prefer to look away or pretend it doesn't happen - but this is nature in the raw, completely harsh and unsentimental but not deliberately cruel. This is what goes on out there and in our own backyards. https://www.whales-australia.com.au//BLUE-WHALE-GETS-EATEN

14.01.2022 How exciting! Tune in to ABC-RN Sunday Extra with Julian Morrow this Sunday at about 9am to hear Dr Pete Gill talking about ‘The Year that Made Me’! If you can’t make it then the recording will be posted here https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/. Hmmm ... what year made him?

13.01.2022 More images of the blue whale calf being attacked by a large group of orcas off southern Western Australia https://www.whales-australia.com.au//BLUE-WHALE-GETS-EATEN

11.01.2022 Thanks to Pete Garbett of Cetal Fauna for capturing this link to an interview I did this morning with Jeremy Lee of local ABC Radio. We talked about the seasonal movements of southern right, humpback and blue whales through south-west Victorian waters.

11.01.2022 It's National Science Week again. In a world in which political leaders all too often turn their backs on scientific evidence, it's important to develop trust in scientific method, scientific institutions and scientists themselves. It's particularly important that young people, our future, learn to trust science. Feeling more connected to our world is one of the consequences of learning from science. The National Science Week Challenge explores ways in which we can all connect to the oceans that sustain life on Earth https://www.csiro.au/en/Showcase/Challenge

11.01.2022 Recently during an aerial survey we sighted a Bryde's whale, a smaller cousin of the blue whale, in shallow water in Bass Strait, near where we had just sighted many swarms of baitfish in the surf zone. A clue to what that whale might have been doing comes from this wonderful drone footage from northern NSW of two Bryde's whales feeding on a baitfish school in the surf zone, which they were sharing with surfers and bottlenose dolphins - great stuff - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOfQL4KWFE0

11.01.2022 During recent weeks there have been many reports of many blue whales heading south along off the Western Australian coast - our colleague Chris Burton of Western Whale Research has had over 170 sightings - and I've wondered when the first blue would appear in the Bonney Upwelling. Today's the day! At 0915 at Cape Nelson lighthouse I saw a powerful blow (similar to this) and got a glimpse of the back of a blue whale in perfect viewing conditions. Despite the conditions I watched for another 30 minutes without seeing it again - a reminder of how easily these enormous animals can slip away. Looking forward to many more sightings between now and May!

10.01.2022 Today the ocean was kind to us as we carried out Day 2 of our Marine Science Youth Mentoring Program, searching westward into Discovery Bay west of Portland, where the Blue Whale Study began 21 years ago. The blue whales were not so kind - we didn't find any. It's a big ocean. As with our last outing, we had a memorable encounter with bow-riding common dolphins showing some very lively social interactions. There was a tiny calf in this pod, racing around the ocean with its elders. This time Lachy Lev and I had all four of our students with us. We are all hanging out to see a blue whale or two next time.

10.01.2022 This is belated video clip from our last mentoring day, when this common dolphin head-slapped repeatedly alongside. I don't know what it was 'saying', or whether it was directed at other dolphins or at our boat.

10.01.2022 We haven't been posting for a couple of months, because I have been away working as a guide on a tourist vessel to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands. These are extremely beautiful, powerful landscapes, which have been for eons the feeding grounds of baleen whales such as blues, fins and humpbacks. On my three voyages we were lucky to see humpbacks very often, and to have them feeding around our boats. We also had a wonderful encounter with feedin...g fin whales, racing from one prey patch to the next with powerful spurts of speed. Despite recent sightings of blues around South Georgia, we saw none. Antarctic whaling started at South Georgia and the South Shetland Islands in 1904, and we saw many relics of those tragic days, when blues, fins and humpbacks were hunted without mercy for their oil, which was a human staple prior to the use of vegetable oil. We visited the rusting remains of whaling stations at Deception Island and South Georgia, and found piles of whale bones at many sites on the Antarctic Peninsula. it was uplifting to see how humpbacks in particular have recovered from whaling in those waters. But the future is uncertain for baleen whales, with krill becoming scarcer in a warming ocean. Glaciers are retreating throughout West Antarctica, and we were rained on several times - something that never used to happen. Let's get our act together, humans, and look after this beautiful planet.

10.01.2022 Another seabird we sometimes see in the Bonney Upwelling is the northern giant petrel. These huge birds are about the same size as albatrosses and fly as gracefully. They breed on Macquarie Island to Australia's south, where they are both predators on penguins and other seabirds, and scavengers on dead penguins and seals. Closely related southern giant petrels breed on the Antarctic continent and have a greenish bill. Don't go to sleep on the beach if there are GPs about, they could peck your eye out. Just saying.

09.01.2022 There is some wonderful new technology out there helping us to understand our oceans and how they are changing. Something that really caught my eye is Saildrone, an autonomous sailing drone that recently circumnavigated Antarctica, collecting oceanographic data all the way. https://www.saildrone.com//unmanned-vehicle-completes-anta

09.01.2022 While blue whales are the loudest animals in the ocean, it's worth remembering that many much smaller marine animals are also very vocal. This story features research by our colleague Dr Rob McCauley of Curtin Uni, WA. https://www.newscientist.com//2106331-fish-recorded-sing/

08.01.2022 Today, after a break of several weeks, we went to sea in light winds but an impressive SW swell for the third day of our Marine Science Youth Mentoring Program. Although blue whales continued to elude us, the sea felt really alive compared to our past two outings. At times we were surrounded by hundreds of common dolphins, but more significantly, we saw numerous flocks of feeding shearwaters, key krill predators in this upwelling ecosystem, and a variety of other seabird species. This could be a sign that krill is finally becoming available to predators, hopefully including blue whales. Cross your fingers for our fourth and last Mentoring day, some time soon!

06.01.2022 Our main method for finding blue whales over the years has been aerial surveys. Fortunately these whales are the easiest of all marine mammals to find, because of their size, their strong tall blow, the white water they make when at the surface, and not least, because of their amazing colour when seen underwater. Their skin ranges from silver- to dark-grey, but seen through water they light up this wonderful blue or aqua-blue - hence the name 'blue whale' given by the old whalers. Sometimes as we fly along we catch a glimpse of something large and pale blue, sometimes many km distant, and know that we have found what we are looking for. This amazing colour is probably caused by refraction of light by melanin pigments in the whales' skin.

05.01.2022 The most important species in our amazing upwelling ecosystem is krill Nyctiphanes australis. Yet they are among the least understood. We have learned something about their distribution and ecology over the years through our blue whale research, but without comprehensive (and expensive) hydroacoustic (sonar) and oceanographic surveys, we will always be second-guessing how they respond to the variability that is the hallmark of upwelling. Of about 85 species worldwide, this is... one of a handful that is often seen at the surface - where they are readily available to feeding blue whales and other predators at little energy cost. They can also descend to depths where they are much more difficult, and more energy-expensive to hunt. Their movements are driven by temperature (they live in a range between about 12-18C), by predation, by the need to reproduce and by the size of the swell. In big seas they descend into calmer depths. Their surface swarms can range from less than a metre to more than 2km in length, and the bigger they are, the more chance that blue whales will be feeding on them. We have seen 13 blue whales feeding on a single large swarm about 2km long. See more

03.01.2022 https://www.facebook.com/SustainableHumanOfficial/videos/10154809382637909/UzpfSTUzMjY0ODU4NDozMDYwNjExMjk0OTk0MTQ6NzU6MDoxNTkwOTk0Nzk5Oi04MDEzNjI4NzU3NDY4MjM2NzE/ Many times over the years I've seen whales defaecating at the surface of the ocean. In the case of blue whales, their poo is orange like their prey, krill. In the case of sperm whales, it is dark brown, coloured by the sepia (ink) of their prey, squid. In recent decades it's become understood just how important this process of whales fertilising the surface of the ocean with their poo really is. This is a great little film explaining this...

02.01.2022 Over recent years we have been hamstrung by limited funding in our efforts to understand how blue whales are responding to changes in the Bonney Upwelling system that feeds them off southern Australia. Aerial surveys have been one of our main tools for doing this. This year, with funding support from Pacific Hydro, we were able to get into the air again to look for blue whales. In mid-March we surveyed the continental shelf between Warrnambool, Victoria and Robe, South Austra...lia, a region where we have recorded a total of hundreds of blue whale sightings over many years. During this survey we found only two adult blue whales, and no sign of krill surface swarms which in other years have been very abundant. This result added support to the hypothesis that subtle changes are occurring in the upwelling system, and it no longer appears to support as much krill, or as many blue whales, as it has done in past years. While this could be related to the late onset of upwelling this year, it continues a run of years in which blue whales appear to be in low numbers. Upwelling systems world-wide are undergoing changes due to climate change - we are yet to understand what the long-term effects are on the Bonney Upwelling and the Great Southern Australian Upwelling System. See more

01.01.2022 We have so many photos of amazing marine wildlife that never see the light of day, so I've decided to update our Photo Gallery page on the BWS website, and to post a few photos on facebook as well. The species of the day is the majestic wandering albatross, which has the longest wingspan of any bird on Earth, reaching 3.5m. Wanderers are truly great wanderers of the ocean, with one satellite tagged bird clocking up 120,000km in a year. Long-lived and monogamous, they breed on... a handful of subAntarctic islands including Macquarie, Crozet, Kerguelen and South Georgia. They feed on squid but also on baited hooks set by longline fishing vessels, which have decimated their populations. Scientists are working hard to implement solutions to this terrible problem. Wanderers visit the southern continental shelves of Australia but are rarely seen close to land. See more