"It came within inches."

Photo by Brian Skerry

National Geographic photographer, Brian Skerry, recounts his experience photographing right whales. No, this is not new news, but this picture always takes my breath away. My favorite part of the interview is when he describes how it felt to be so close to such a creature...

It was amazing. I mean, I have to tell you there were days when I was at the bottom at 70 feet, and here comes this bus swimming down. I’m standing on the bottom, and as it comes down, I get on my knees, lean over backwards—my scuba tank is now digging into the sand. And of course their eyes are on the side of their heads, so it had to turn and look at me. It came within inches. Here’s this softball-size whale eye looking at me. But then it stops—stops on a dime. It’s just hovering there, and literally one flick of its tail, and it would have crushed me like a bug. But it doesn’t. It was just highly curious.

Skerry's photo above shows his assistant with a right whale. Quite close. Can you imagine being that assistant in that moment?

Are We Listening?

The bioacoustics research program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a snazzy site that's all about listening for right whales in an effort to protect them from ship strikes. Once the buoys detect the sound of a whale -- including rights, humpacks and fins -- the recordings get sent back to Cornell where software and researchers identify the sound. If the sound is indeed a whale, ships in the area are notified and encouraged to slow their speed to avoid an unfortunate situation.

It's important for us to listen to the whales, especially if it helps us to understand them and avoid unnecessary injury and/or death. It's too bad, then, that this project is facing a budget shortfall and has had to pull the buoys that record the sounds. Hopefully this is not the end of the program. Only time will tell if the future will bring additional funding.

I wonder if we will see an increase in ship strikes now that the buoys have been lifted?

Right Whales, Blue Whales, and Orcas; oh my!

Right whales got some CNN love with the help of the New England Aquarium's Right Whale Aerial Survey Team. Check out the team's blog for more on their visit with CNN. Apparently the whales were called "ugly" by CNN, but I don't think that's true at all! Right whales are very, very pretty. Don't you think?

Blue whales were featured in an article in the latest National Geographic magazine. The article -- called "Still Blue" -- takes readers on a journey to the Costa Rica Dome, an area of the ocean which, due to upwelling, brings the thermocline and lots of tasty critters up to the surface. The blue whales come to feast on nutrient-rich phytoplankton, and the researchers come to feast on knowledge. It's a win-win situation for all.

The Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) passed by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center last Tuesday. Coincidentally, I was teaching a class of third graders about sound underwater and, as we listened to our hydrophone, we heard the orcas and reported to Orca Network. Since we were the first to report, we were even mentioned on the evening news! See the Port Townsend Marine Science Center's blog for more information on the experience.

Whew! How's that for your cetacean news download for the day?

121 Years

Is it really 2009 already? I've been so swamped with work lately, writing curricula on orca communication and sound underwater, that I've hardly had time for anything else. As I type this I'm catching up on all my favorite marine science blogs and watching the live dissection of a great white shark. (Have you watched that yet?)

Philip over at the New England Aquarium's Right Whale Aerial Survey Blog reports that a North Atlantic Right Whale has been seen in the Azores by biologists at the University of the Azores Dept. of Oceanography and Fisheries. This observation marks the first time a right whale has been seen around there since 1888. That's 121 years since the last sighting! Also, it turns out that this specific whale had been seen and cataloged by the folks at the New England Aquarium as recently as September of 2008. Whoa. So cool!

As exciting as this news is -- and it is very exciting -- I'm even more impressed with the Right Whale Catalog that the New England Aquarium has put together. Maintaining this resource must be a huge undertaking, and I'm glad to see it readily available online. You know what they say: "Sharing is caring!"

Disentangling Whales

I love the Internet. I love awesome websites. What I love most is when people on the Internet send me awesome websites. So, when Jives over at The New Blue sent me the link to the New England Aquarium Research Team site, I was pretty darn excited! Here's a group of people, so driven to help protect Right Whales, that they get out on the water and disentangle fishing gear from the whales. Let me say that again, they disentangle fishing gear from whales. Wow! How do I get a job like that?

With so many human-created dangers out there, it's a wonder the worldwide whale populations are not even worse off. With abandoned fishing gear littering the ocean and starving Southern Resident Orcas, there is so much set against the mystical megafauna. I'm thankful that there are people making an effort to even out the playing field. One whale at a time is much, much better than nothing.