Epic Humpback Whale Battle Filmed

Here is the video containing said footage for the BBC “Life” series, narrated by David Attenborough (one of my favorite people, really):

I’ll let the BBC news article do the excellent job og explaning this:

It is the greatest animal battle on the planet, and it has finally been caught on camera.

A BBC natural history crew has filmed the “humpback whale heat run”, where 15m long, 40 tonne male whales fight it out to mate with even larger females.

During the first complete sequence of this behaviour ever captured, the male humpbacks swim at high speed behind the female, violently jostling for access.

The collisions between the males can be violent enough to kill.

The footage was recorded for the BBC natural history series Life.

“Even though this is one of the most common of the large whales, very little is known about its actual sexual behaviour,” says Life producer Dr Ted Oakes.

“One of the most interesting things is that humpbacks have never been seen to mate.”

But what has been filmed is the epic battle between males to get mating access to the female whales.

Up to 40 males swim behind a single female at speeds of up to ten knots, each jostling to obtain a dominant position.

“It’s the closest we’re ever going to get to dinosaurs fighting. It’s the largest battle in the animal kingdom and it feels like something out of Jurassic Park,” says Dr Oakes.

 

Sperm Whales Get a Bum Rap – Who are you, the carbon police?

Okay, so just a warning, the first half of this post is a mini-lesson on carbon in the ocean for those over achievers who just need to know. To get to the Sperm whale nitty gritty, jump to the section after the asterisks.

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So the name of the game with this climate change thing is carbon – the movement and interchange of carbon in and out of major reservoirs.

This ocean is massively important in the storage of this life sustaining element, and serves mostly as a sink for carbon (in terms of carbon, sinks are where it goes, and sources, where it comes from). It can hold roughly 50 times the amount normally held in the atmosphere.

There is however is robust carbon interplay between the ocean and the living things in it. All the living “stuff” in the ocean can be both sources of carbon (Respirers, like the creepy heavy breather on the other side of the phone line…) or can help move it along into deeper ocean depths where it tends to stay for an extended vacay. The movement of carbon to the ocean bottom is called the biological pump (note, I describe this in simplified terms. Carbon can take little forays off of this cycle – to see what a full cycle looks like, search for biological pump in google images).

Generally, plankton (oh yes, I know there is a definite possibility you are now picturing an ugly, one-eyed bad guy from the enthralling world of sponge-bob, but these are actually real, not just animated-real), the minuscule  plants and animals in the ocean, drive the pump. Copepods, tiny planktonic crustaceans, release feacal pellets (read: poop) after eating that hopefully sink to the bottom. Also carbon can help increase plankton populations, and when plankton die (I wish I could insert a clip of taps that played right when you read this…), they sometimes sink to the bottom as detritus, moving alot of the carbon that was just hanging out in the surface down to the sea floor. Carbon in deep waters has a residence time of approximately 1000 years. For it to stay longer, it needs to actually be sequestered (fancy word for “buried”) in sediments, which happens to less than 1% of the carbon entering surface waters. (Note: it’s been suggested injecting carbon into the deep sea or sediments can solve our human carbon-emissions problem, but it comes at a price. See my post on ocean acidification, or my upcoming article on the subject that will be in the spring issue of the online Gulf of Maine Times.)

So, now you know…

And knowing is half the battle….

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According to this article – Sperm Whales as Carbon Sinks -, there were rumors going around that Sperm Whales were respiring out a large amount of carbon being introduced into the Southern Ocean.  So they were essentially playing the role of carbon source rather than sink while oblivously swimming around and doing that whale thing they do.  But as often happens, we’ve allegedly gotten better at the math, and now it appears they may be more helpful than deleterious in keeping the carbon where it’s supposed to be. When they dive into colder,more nutrient-rich waters to eat squid (See my blog entry on squid, it’s rockin) they bring some of the nutrients back with them which stimulates plankton growth. When the plankton die and sink (or release feacal pellets that sink), they’re setting the balance right and bringing carbon way down deep.

And the best part is these mammoth creatures glide about in their day to day lives, blissfully ignorant of their role in life, the universe, and everything.

Cetaceans… the loudmouths of the sea

I am currently writing a couple science-based articles, one of which is focused on noise pollution which has a good dose of info on the nature of sound in the sea, some comments on natural sources of ambient marine noise, etc.

I am including some stellar online resources and can’t help but post a few of these here as I go along.

There is a spectacular website called “Voices of the Sea” with recordings of multiple species of cetaceans and pinnipeds available to listen to. The website is visually very slick and the sound files play effortlessly. There are also various videos with more info on species. I also like how they show the sound spectograms while the calls are playing to let you know the frequencies of the sounds you are hearing. (Just an FYI, it is somewhat likely at least a couple of these calls have undergone some audio manipulation to bring them within the range of human hearing….).

Cornell University, who hosts a well-known bio-acoustics program, hosts a Right Whale Listening Network , and their research has been essential in the study and protection of these very endangered animals.

During a right whale ecology cruise I was part of, I’ve also been able to view the deployment and retrieval first hand of some of their pop-bouys which are used for acoustic research. It’s pretty interesting business. The buoys are deployed with sandbags to keep them weighted down. They are retrieved at night (for the sake of making them easier to find, once at the surface they employ a sort of strobe light). Once the ship is close enough, a researcher sends them a “burn” signal which is a communication with the buoy telling it to release anchor (i can’t quite remember the specifics of hot the buoy does this…) and pop-up to the surface. The ship then unceremoniously navigates close by and they’re grabbed with a long hook (think of the kind of hook you’d envision really terrible preformers being pulled offstage with). On the same cruise I was also able to hear some recordings of Atlantic white-sided dolphins captured via hydrophone.