This past week we’ve been working on our Deep Divers project – looking at the feeding ecology and diving behavior of three species of deep-diving odontocetes off Cape Hatteras: Cuvier’s beaked whales, short-finned pilot whales and sperm whales. The latter have yet to make an appearance, so we’ve been focusing on Ziphius and Globicephala. The pilot whales were referred to as ‘potheads’ by whalers because of their bulbous foreheads.
On Monday we had a DTag attached to a pilot whale briefly, but it did not last for the planned four-hour deployment. We were treated to several sightings of Cuvier’s beaked whales in beautiful conditions, however, and managed to obtain a biopsy sample from one of the animals thanks to Zach’s prowess with the crossbow. We also collected some excellent photo-ID images which Danielle will match to our catalog for this species. We were working with the beaked whales in the beautiful azure water of the Gulf Stream – quite a treat. Lots of time for idle discussion while the whales foraged a kilometer or more below us.
On Tuesday we brought Dr. Vincent Janik from the University of St. Andrews offshore with us. Our post-doc Nicola Quick did her Ph.D. with Vincent so it was great to see them together in the field again. We attached a DTag to a pilot whale at 11:30 and Vincent, Nic, Danielle and Heather followed it from the Exocetus for four hours. The whale was very metronomic – making long 20-minute dives, followed by 6-8 minutes at the surface before diving again. Nic was testing some new focal follow protocols to augment our regular data collection.
We had two good days in the field and then the weather turned – with rain and wind for the rest of the week. We hope to be back offshore next week to deploy more DTags with Vincent and Nicola and maybe do am little work with some of the pelagic bottlenose dolphins. The following week Daniel Webster will be back to deploy some more satellite tags (the seven we deployed on pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins last month are all still transmitting). Stay tuned…
