My Icelandic orcas' experience

Commentary by Julie Beesau

Julie Beesau spent 2 fieldseasons volunteering with us at the Icelandic Orca project in 2013 and 2014. This blog post is about her own experience working with Icelandic orcas.

I have spent two months in Iceland, in Grundarfjörður, during winter fieldwork twice (in 2013 and 2014) with all the Icelandic Orcas' team. It was such a great experience for me. I've always wanted to see orcas in the wild and study them. I learned many things on their social and feeding behavior, and I could also enjoy the magic of their acoustic communication.

I was in charge of taking pictures and acoustic recordings on the whale watching boat. It was also nice to discuss and explain to tourists what kind of studies we can do on orcas.

I remember one day we encountered more than 100 orcas in the fjord, it was just unbelievable. I think this day was my favorite and will be engraved in my memory forever.

Male orca. Photo by Julie Beesau.

Every day after the trip on the whale watching boat I would meet the rest of the team in our house where we shared our sightings and experiences on the boat and also a great meal.

Landscape of  Grundarfjörður. Photo by Julie Beesau.

I could also appreciate the magical landscapes of Iceland and sometimes the capricious weather.

It was a unique experience, rich in animal sightings but also rich in human contact. I met some absolutely lovely and very helpful people there (Icelandic, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Scottish, Dutch, German people).

Thank you to all the Icelandic Orcas’ team and also to Láki Tours, especially captain Gísli.

Do whales have culture?

Commentary by Sara Tavares

What is culture? Is culture something that makes us, humans, special?

This was the theme of the last Café Scientifique meeting I attended, a monthly evening public meeting in a café/bar where scientists are invited to talk about their work or another interesting topic. In the last one I attended in St Andrews, Luke Rendell talked about his latest book, co-authored with Hal Whitehead, "The cultural lives of whales and dolphins", on the theme of culture in cetaceans.

So, what is culture? 

How to define culture has been one of the biggest academic discussions. Culture is not genetic, is not in the DNA. Broadly, culture is the accumulation of knowledge that is passed across generations over time.

Different sperm whale populations have different codas (stereotyped pattern of clicks) and in the Pacific different social groups make different codas and some groups share the same dialect and temporarily spend time together. This is part of the cultural identity of these whales and is not genetically transmitted, since genetic studies showed a mix of genes between groups that mismatch the dialect pattern.

This is just one example for one species that shows the existence of culture in cetaceans. Culture is probably vital for highly social animals such as cetaceans. One of the stories presented in the Café Scientifique meeting as an interesting example of the importance of cultural identity in whales was the story of Keiko, the Icelandic killer whale. Keiko was captured when he was around 2 years old and kept for many years on his own in a small tank. 

 

The killer whale Keiko, star of the film Free Willy (source: Wikipedia)

When adult, Keiko was gradually freed in Vestmannaeyjar (where we conduct our fieldwork in the summer), first kept in a sea pen for habituation. In one occasion, when Keiko was accompanied by a boat with people involved in his re-introduction , he was approached by one killer whale that tried to interact with him going "belly to belly", a common social behaviour among whales . However, Keiko quickly swam away from the whale and "hid" behind the boat, possibly scared by that unfamiliar behaviour.  After full release, Keiko eventually swam to Norway where he was adopted by a fishing village and fed by humans, until he eventually died, probably from pneumonia.

Keiko couldn't be re-introduced in the Icelandic killer whale society because, after being apart from these whales since a very young age, he didn't know the culture.

Although this is just one single story of only one whale it can still suggest to us how important culture might be for cetaceans. So maybe the question shouldn't be how to define culture but how many forms of culture there are. Because human culture and whale culture are not the same, but they both exist and they are both unique.

Café Scientifique is currently active in more than 40 towns across the UK and in some cities in other countries. Check out on their website where and when is the next meeting in your town and join the discussions!

Goodbye 2015... Hello 2016!

Another year has passed... And what a year for the Icelandic Orca project. We had some amazing fieldseasons this last year, interesting findings about this unique population (you can get a full list of our project's publications to date here) and lots of new cool stuff for the project (new website, new logo and Mousa).

As "a picture is worth a thousand words" we selected some photos to share with you of moments to remember from 2015. 

We want to thank everyone who collaborated with and supported the project and that was involved in making 2015 a year full of great developments!

Thank you for the support during the past year. We are looking forward for a 2016 full of new discoveries about Icelandic orcas and to share them with you all!

...

My 2015 SMM conference experience report

Commentary by Sara Tavares

The Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) held its 21st Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals 1 week ago in San Francisco, California (USA). The theme of the conference was "Bridging the past with the future", focusing on the past and future of marine mammal science in a changing world. This SMM conference was the biggest so far, with 1,536 abstracts submitted and over 2,200 registrants!

There were workshops, oral and poster presentations on a great variety of themes: conservation, distribution and abundance, behaviour, polar ecology, health, population assessment, ecology, climate change, acoustics, physiology, foraging ecology, human dimensions, population biology, genetics, biology, anatomy, evolution and education and communication. All the invited plenary talks were brilliant and very inspiring. Also, during the whole conference week there were a variety of art work in exhibit and special events to join.

SMM San Francisco City Hall birthday celebration (photo by Tomoko Narazaki)

Personally, it was my first SMM conference and I absolutely enjoyed it. It was overwhelming the size of the conference, with so many people attending and so many presentation sessions at the same time. But it was also great opportunity to see friends and colleagues, meet so many interesting scientist and discuss your work with others. We had the chance to choose which presentations to attend from a variety of highly appealing options of topics, species and locations around the world. We got to see fascinating research about orcas in various subjects from acoustics to interactions with fisheries and genetics.

Sara Tavares's oral presentation "The social structure of the Icelandic killer whale (Orcinus orca) population" at the 2015 SMM conference

It was very gratifying to be able to present part of my PhD study on the social structure of the Icelandic orca population. Thank you to the SMM organizers for making this such a great meeting of marine mammal scientists. This was an amazing and fruitful experience  that I hope I can repeat in 2 years again!

The herring

To better understand the orcas we also have to understand their environment and, specifically, what they are feeding upon. And in most places where we study them their main prey is an abundant silver fish: herring.

Photo by Filipa Samarra

Herring is the unsung hero of this ecosystem. It supports the whales; in groups the whales encircle schools of herring and using their tails they slap a bunch of herring that gets stunned allowing the whales to feed on it one by one. But not all the stunned herring is eaten by the whales, so when the whales are feeding some uneaten herring floats to the surface. Seagulls and fullmars are quick to catch these and take advantage of the whales' work.

Photo by Sara Tavares

Then there are the beautiful gannets. They wait until the whales have rounded up a nice ball of herring and then plunge the water in pursuit of some fish too. It is an incredible sound hearing a group of gannets simultaneously diving into the water. And we always wonder how they don't hit the whales and well...sometimes they do!

Photo by Sara Tavares

And of course there are also the sea eagles we see in the winter and the skuas we see in the summer. But it's not just birds, we also see white-beaked dolphins and seals in the area, which are probably also getting their fare share of the silver prey. And there's also all the unseen fish, like cod, preying on herring.

Photo by Leticiaà Legat

Photo by Miguel Neves

Photo by Marjoleine Roos

Photo by Sara Tavares

Although many different species can depend on herring, the herring itself is a tricky prey and this year we have seen how the herring distribution can quickly change. Up until 2014, there was a huge amount of herring overwintering in the fjords of Grundarfjörður and Kolgrafafjörður. But this year although the herring stock estimates indicate it is still quite a healthy stock, the amount of herring present in this area is much smaller. This is because the majority of the stock is spending the winter in the offshore waters further West. In fact the herring only started coming to this area in large numbers in 2006, following yet another shift in its distribution (see this study for more information). 


It is quite a mystery exactly why herring shifts its overwintering location. During winter, herring doesn't feed and it is mainly trying to avoid spending energy or being predated, and it often chooses coastal areas to do so. It is not possible to predict how long the herring will remain offshore or even what proportion of the stock will do so. It could be that in the winter of 2016, a large proportion of the stock once again travels to the fjords to overwinter, as it did in the last few years. 

Interestingly, it seems that it is during winter that the herring aggregates in higher numbers in relatively small areas. Throughout the rest of the year, the stock can be much more dispersed. And with the herring come the whales, so it is no surprise that it is in the winter months that we can see the largest aggregations of whales too. In fact, it is only in winter that some individuals can be seen around Iceland, as it seems that during summer they go elsewhere (see our post about matches to Scotland). So there is a lot that can be learnt about orcas by having the herring in accessible locations during winter, as only then can we follow the lives of some whales. 

So we keep our fingers crossed that this has been an odd winter, and that next year the herring return to familiar shores!

A whale not seen for 20 years!

We were amazed this summer when we photographed an adult male we didn't recognise and after some searching realised he had last been seen in 1994! Yes, 20 years ago! 9459 is the code it was assigned when first seen and added to the catalogue of Icelandic killer whales existing at the time. Since then it had never been seen again until our first day out in the water this summer. There he was, in a large aggregation of whales just off Geirfuglasker in Vestmannaeyjar.

9459 seen in Vestmannaeyjar.

This incredible sighting shows us some interesting things. First, it tells us he is an old male! Most likely he is at least in his 40s, since he was already a fully grown adult male when first identified in 1994. Second, it shows how little we still know about this population. Unlike populations in other parts of the world, there haven't been dedicated long-term efforts following Icelandic killer whales. Studies first started in the 1980s by the Marine Research Institute, but much of what has been studied about these animals since then has come from opportunistic studies or short-term studies, with dedicated effort for a few years.

Much of the difficulty of studying killer whales in Iceland comes with unpredictable changes in their distribution as they follow their herring prey which changes its location throughout the year and between years. And of course, many locations where whales occur are difficult to access or exposed to weather making working conditions, well, unworkable! This is why it is so important to have as much help as possible! Sighting reports from anyone out at sea that comes across killer whales makes it possible to understand which whales go where.

Of course some animals may be only occasional visitors in Iceland and so will not be seen for long periods of time simply because they are elsewhere. But we don't know if this is the case! Long-term studies and wide coverage make it possible to have an idea of the residency patterns of whales in Icelandic coastal waters that help us answer questions such as that.

And it is not just knowing the whereabouts of whales. By regularly following who is around we can better understand birth rates, mortality rates and we can even estimate how many whales are likely to live in Icelandic coastal waters. All this information help us understand if the population is doing well or is facing any threats. As top predators, these whales play a very important role in the food chain so knowing more about them is crucial to our understanding of the whole ecosystem.

Find out below how you can help!

Thank you team!

This summer we went back to the beautiful Westman islands. For most the weather was terrible in the Southwest of Iceland, but somehow on 'killer whale land' things seemed to work out! We had beautiful weather to start and to end our season but a variety of weather conditions in between. Yet luckily the whales changed their distribution throughout July and came ever closer to Heimaey, the island where we were living. In the last two days the whales were just hugging Heimaey's west coast (we could see them from the window of the house) and made for a spectacular sight to all the locals that went out to see it. It is not often you get such calm waters in Vestmannaeyjar as we had in our last couple of days (see video), what a nice way to say goodbye to this wonderful place.

The slow change in the location where whales were found made it possible for us to make use of short weather windows to go out in the water. Key to this was searching from Heimaey's weather station. This is the highest point on the island and it has incredible views over the southern part of the archipelago. It allowed us to check what the sea state looked like in different parts of the archipelago and, most importantly, spot where the whales might be! In fact going to the weather station to spot for whales was a daily routine and helped us make sure we could quickly get to where the whales were. Time was of the essence when high winds were fast approaching!

The team (David, Filipa, Gaëtan, Katy, Leticiaà, Paul, Sara and Volker) at the weather station looking at a passing humpback whale. A great place to see all the islands and spot whales!

Dr. Volker Deecke and PhD student Leticiaà Legat from the University of Cumbria joined us this summer and with them brought a towed hydrophone array. With this we were ready to multitask! We could use the towed array to make acoustic recordings while on the move following whales to get photographs for photo-id. Whenever possible we also attempted to collect skin samples which will be used for studies on the whales' diet, genetics and pollutant levels. The only thing the short weather windows did not allow us to attempt was tagging. This was because the tag, attached with suction cups, stays on the whale for a few hours during which we follow the whale to then recover the tag once it comes off and floats at the surface. But getting the tag on is anything but easy and so requires a longer day out in the water.

Despite the weather we managed to collect enough data to end with a very happy smile in our faces. But none of this would have been possible without the rest of the team: Katy Gavrilchuck, David Gaspard and Gaëtan Richard. Katy and David were the skilled skippers and Gaëtan helped with everything from acoustics to biopsy sampling. The next few months will be spent analysing all the precious information we collected and we will keep you posted on our findings. But in our memories will remain the good times we spent in Heimaey with a great bunch of people!

Thank you everyone for making this a fantastic field season!

Adult male surfaces with Heimaey in the background (photo by Sara Tavares).