Keeping an EAR on the whales

In the last winter season sometimes it really felt like the whales were playing tricks on us! One day we went early in the morning for our daily morning check to see what the weather looked like and whether there were any whales in the fjord. As soon as we arrive at the viewpoint, perched high above the inner part of Kolgrafafjordur, we spot the whales! The weather however is not good so we can't go out, but at least we can try to photograph them if they come close to shore, for example to go under the Kolgrafafjordur bridge. We come back home to tell the rest of the team what the plan is, fetch the photo-id camera and head back to the fjord. The whole round trip must have taken 15 minutes, we go back and the whales are gone! This happened not just once but on a few occasions.

The view from Kolgrafafjordur viewpoint. In the centre you can see the bridge separating the inner fjord from the outer part of the fjord. A great place to spot the whales!

A common sight last winter: people waiting at the bridge for the whales to go under. It did make for a spectacular show particularly when the whales had to cross against the strong current.

Luckily this year some of the hard work was done for us. Better yet, we could keep track of the whales for 24 hours a day and even in stormy weather! We had an autonomous acoustic recorder called the EAR (Ecological Acoustic Recorder). Thanks to Dr. Marc Lammers, from the Oceanwide Science Institute, we deployed an EAR in late February on the inner part of the fjord where the whales spent most of their time. It stayed in the fjord for more than one month, recording the sounds in the environment for 5 minutes every 10 minutes. This meant that by the end of the season we had more than 400 hours of recordings to go through! But because the EAR was there for such a long time it provided us valuable information about when whales were present in the inner part of the fjord, as long as they were producing sounds.

Deploying the EAR buoy

400 hours may sound like a lot, but going through all these recordings has been fascinating. We have learned that the whales came to the fjord to feed often during the night! This type of information would have been impossible for us to gather with our usual methods, as we cannot work during hours of darkness.

But it is not like the whales were only feeding at night. Or for that matter it's not even like they would be there every night. So what is it that determines their choice of when to go feeding in a particular area or when to leave? Our photographic records seem to suggest that the whales may come to the fjords for a few days but then leave and only come back a few days (or weeks) later. Where they go in the meantime is unknown. But it certainly looks like they are constantly on the move!

It is not uncommon for killer whales to move around. Our recent post about the movements between Iceland and Scotland is a testament to just that and long movements are known also in other populations. But we are still far from understanding the finer details of what drives killer whales to move between areas or to temporarily leave what seem to be good feeding grounds, as they do in Iceland.  

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Update on IF-4

Since the last post we have received new pictures of the sighting of IF-4 in Caithness and the news is not good...it is now possible to see that she looks very emaciated, that is, in poor nutrition condition which indicates she hasn't been getting enough food for a while...

This could be a result of having made the long journey from Iceland to Scotland and feeding little during the journey, but if she has reached this state of poor condition the prospects for the future of this 'old lady' are not good...on the other hand, if she finds a regular and plentiful supply of food in Scotland she might just recover! Our knowledge of how these whales cope with periods of low food supply is limited, to say the least, but going through these periods may actually be more regular than we think.

It just goes to show how much we can learn from the pictures you take and provide to our research. We will keep an even sharper eye next winter and hope to see the familiar fin of IF-4 breaking the waters of Kolgrafafjordur, but in the meantime if you have any sightings of her or any other whales near you do please get in touch!

From Iceland to Scotland!

We have just heard the breaking news! IF-4, one of the old timers of Iceland, first identified in the 1980's, has been seen off Caithness, in the North of Scotland by the Caithness Seacoast tour company just a few days ago. But here's where it gets interesting, just a few months ago we were sailing the waters of Kolgrafafjordur following this female up in Iceland! So this is exciting stuff, these whales do go far for a bit of food. Check out their facebook page where you can see a picture of the right side of this female and look below - see if you can spot the similarities!

Left side of IF-4

Right side of IF-4

We are conducting a study gathering all our years of photographs from Iceland to look at the movements of orcas around these waters, and relating it to other locations where they might be found, such as Scotland. So contributions from local tour operators and the public are crucial to our understanding of where these whales go throughout the year. So if you see whales near you get in touch.  

A study on pigmentation of killer whales

A new study has recently been published looking at the pigmentation features of North Atlantic killer whales. Pirjo Mäkeläinen from the University of Helsinki and her colleagues analysed photographs of the saddle and eye patch patterns of whales from Norway, Iceland, UK, Spain and Greenland. Both the saddle patch (the lighter grey area found behind the dorsal fin) and the white eye patch are commonly used to help identify individual killer whales.

This study found that throughout the North Atlantic there is little variation in saddle patch shapes, but more variation in eye patch shapes. However, a small group of whales found in the Hebrides (UK) stood out from the rest due to its unique downward sloping eye patch shape. These results suggest that this small group of whales is reproductively isolated from the rest of North Atlantic killer whales, which adds to existing concerns over the future of this community. If you would like to read the full study please go here.

Sinking Tango, damaged cars...

Yes, the final weeks of our field season had their troubles! Following one, if not THE, worst storm we had during our 2 month stay in Grundarfjordur we woke up to a damaged car. Our car had been damaged by a piece of metal that in the super high speed winds had been lifted off the ground. As the morning progresses and we try to deal with the logistics of this incident we get a phone call from Gisli, the whale watching boat captain: "Tango is sinking! Come quick!"

We arrive at the harbour to the harbour master and some other local fishermen looking at our boat, like us, in disbelief of how full of water it got and wondering how to solve this now...the boat was so heavy with all the water inside that now the stern was also underwater, which meant water just kept coming in and we feared soon the boat would go under. The harbour master had an ingenious solution! "Lets all stand in the bow and use our weight to push the stern up just enough that we can keep water from coming in and then we can use the buckets to take all the rest of the water out". It worked! It took a while to get all the water out and once that job was done there was all the maintenance checks to make sure nothing had been damaged by being soaked. The Tango was back in business for the last few days.

Just in time! The last days were magic, like the Grundarfjordur we remembered of 2013! Whales everywhere! Perfect weather! There were even whales we hadn't seen in a long time, like one particular male we hadn't seen since 2011 so these were days of plenty indeed. It was a wonderful way to say goodbye to Grundarfjordur. We are now getting ready for the July season in Vestmannaeyjar, it's coming soon and we can't wait!

What a day!

It was around 8:15am when we got the call from Cathy Harlow, one of the Discover the World guides. Whales had just gone under the bridge and were in the inner part of the fjord! The news we had been waiting for. Just the previous day Julie and Miguel from our team had been onboard the Laki Tours boat and saw a group of whales outside the fjords. So it looked like after a short trip outside the whales were back in Kolgrafafjordur.

Check out this video taken by team member Miguel Neves of the whales going under the bridge.

We got ready to go out and soon were deploying the Tango. Bjarni, the farmer from Eidi farm, has been helping us this season picking up and deploying the Tango every day we go out with his tractor. With his help we were out in the water and ready for some work again! Conditions were good, not so much wind and no rain or snow. So we start by doing some photo-id to identify which whales were around. The whales seemed spread out, with smaller groups in different locations, so we took the opportunity to do some acoustic recordings with a hydrophone array that allows us to locate where sounds come from. This way we could tease apart which of these smaller groups was producing sounds. Between photo-id and recording sessions the morning went by and with the sun out and warming us (slightly!) we had lunch. It was a quiet and perfect morning, just what we had been craving for after some days without whales.

The Tango being deployed in Kolgrafafjordur by Bjarni.

Out of the water and ready for the next time the whales show up!

After lunch the whales started travelling and moving out of the fjord. We followed them, the weather was not too bad on the other side of the bridge and we could attempt some biopsying. This year we are trying to collect biopsies of identified individuals to investigate their genetics, diet and pollutant levels. It is incredible the amount of information we can collect with such a small sample of their skin and outer blubber layer. We try to be very careful to only biopsy whales we haven't sampled yet and soon we managed to sample one of the adult males we needed. The whales kept travelling slowly out of the fjord but the weather was deteriorating. Wind increased, it started snowing and continuing work was becoming a challenge. Even seeing anything was a challenge when snow was hitting our eyes! We managed to get one more sample and we decided to stop then and come back home. It was the right decision; the weather kept getting worse and worse and for the rest of that day and the following day it was impossible to work even though the whales were back inside Kolgrafafjordur.

These two days have lifted our hopes that the whales are around and maybe we will get some more chances to work before the end of the season...today there have been no sightings but the weather is not very good and a storm is expected tonight. So again we wait for nature to give us one more chance to have another incredible day.