Diving Thoughts

The Guardian has got some great photos of humpback whales feeding off Chatham Strait in south-east Alaska. You can see them on Guardian’s website.

According to the New Zealand Herald, 63 pilot whales beached themselves at Colville Bay on the Coromandel Peninsula on Sunday.  Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers managed to get around 2/3rds of them back out to sea, but the others died on the beach. These are being buried by Maori from a local iwi.

105 long-finned pilot whales died at Farewell Spit, which is in the north of the South Island. A tourist plane reported seeing them, but 2/3rd of them had already died by the time Department of Conservation people got there, and the others were in such a bad way that they had to be euthanised. Since it is part of a National park, these will be left to decompose.

Presumably local authorities are expecting an influx of Japanese tourists, or maybe their whaling fleet will be recalled from the Southern Ocean to take advantage of this unexpected bounty! All in the name of scientific research of course!

The full story and more photos are on the New Zealand Herald’s website.

Last week some New Zealand divers doing a navigation training session got a bit more than they bargained for when a large orca and a calf swam into a reef channel near where they were.  The larger one was apparently a whale that was 7 metres long and it came within touching distance of instructor Jim Kahukoti of  Adventure Dive Gisborne.  He described it as the highlight of his 3,000 dives.

A ranger from the Department of Conservation thinks that the male  may have been teaching the calf to hunt stingray.

There’s some good photos and a video on the New Zealand Herald’s website.

World paddleboard champion (what’s a paddleboard?), Jamie Mitchell, was being filmed for a documentary when a pod of humpback whales began playing around him. There were about 4 whales, presumably migrating to warmer waters around northern Australia for calving.

You can find out more from Times Online’s website, where the above photo comes from.

Fish eating killer whales (Orcinus orca) in the Avacha gulf off the coast of Russia tend to live in pods of 10-20 whales. But scientists have now observed 8 such pods coming together to form a super-pod of over 100 animals. This behaviour has also been seen in other parts of the world, such as Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia and Iceland.

Observations have now shown that the whales rarely forage or feed in these large concentration, and since they have very few natural predators, it is unlikely that they are gathering for mutual protection. Instead it seems that the whales are using these large groups to socialise, and perhaps to assess potential mates.

The above photograph comes from this BBC article.

A couple of days ago, SCMP were reporting that a dead fin whale was spotted on the bow of a cruise ship as it arrived in Vancouver last Saturday. An investigation is now under way to try and find out if it was killed by the ship, or whether it was already dead when the vessel hit picked up its unexpected passenger.

The Princess Cruise Line, owner of the Sapphire Princess which is the ship involved, claim to have a strict whale avoidance policy, and the company said that there were not reportings of whale sightings as they came into Vancouver.

The photo above comes from the SCMP’s website, and if you are a subscriber you can read the article here.

A pod of orca are hunting near Auckland’s Tamaki Drive, attracting crowds of onlookers. Two adult orcas and 3 – 4 juveniles are believed to be hunting stingrays, which they are throwing into the air and eating.

New Zealand orcas are the only known group that eat stingrays as a staple food. This often means they come into shallow waters, which may be a reason that they have the highest rate of beachings in the world.

The story is from the New Zealand Herald, which also has some subscriber photos.

More on whales, this time Minke whales. Australian have used an infra red camera to find whales that have dived under the surface of Antarctic waters. The camera is mounted on an aircraft flying over the pack ice and is able to identify trails of warmer water that are left behind when a whale breaks the meniscus on the surface. In sufficiently calm conditions, the whales bring up slightly warmer water from below and the infra red camera is able to see the resulting trails.

Scientists hope that they will now be able to get a more accurate count of how many minkes are in Antarctic waters. Current surveys rely heavily on statistical formulae to include whales that are under the water and therefore unseen.

There’s more information in the Sydney Morning Herald.

According to the Standard this morning, the Hong Kong Humpback has moved slowly from the Lamma channel to Po Toi (perhaps lured by the excellent seafood restaurant that we were at 10 days ago).  According to the article, experts now think that it may be a confused juvenile. It’s probably confused because it’s wondering what happened to the visibility and where all the fish are! Anyway the theory is that the whale has lost its sense of direction and is confused by the shallow water and heavy sea traffic.

Hopefully in a couple more days it will have got back to open water and be able to reorient itself and head to the Arctic feeding grounds.

The 10 metre humpback whale that was spotted in the East Lamma Channel was yesterday off Cape d’Aguilar. Dr Hung, director of the Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project, believes it is swimming normally and is hopeful that left to its own devices, it will make its way out of Hong Kong waters and find its migration route to the Arctic feeding grounds. It is likely that the whale became separated from its group near Hong Kong.

One cause for concern is the risk of collision in the busy shipping lanes, sthe o Marine Department have issued a warning to shipping to be cautious and sail at a safe speed. Another worry is that the whale will be inadvertently harassed by sightseers, which is a potential problem with the weekend coming up.

On Monday a humbpack whale was spotted in the East Lamma Channel by Marine Police, who alerted the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. This is the first record of such a creature in Hong Kong waters. It is possible that humpback whales could pass close to Hong Kong  as they migrate between their breeding grounds in the tropics and feeding grounds in the Arctic. The suspicion is that this individual just got lost.

At the time of the SCMP report, the whale was just “milling” around in the area. Dr. Hung, from the Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project, is hopeful that it will find its way out of the channel and continue its journey. We can only hope that it doesn’t meet one of the true leviathans of the seas around Hong Kong – a container ship.

And some more good news, Japanese whalers have not yet arrived!

The photo above is from this article on the SCMP’s website (subscription required).

(John Nievaart of Narcoopa Holiday Cottages)

Earlier this week about 200 whales beached themselves on the southern end of King Island in Tasmania. The good news is that rescuers have managed to help get 54 pilot whales and 5 dolphins back into deep water, but these were the only survivors.

Tasmania is on the migration path for many whales coming up from their Antarctic feeding grounds, so seems to suffer more than its fair share of strandings.

You can read more from ABC News, and there is more information here.