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New J pod Calf!

J49 - 2 month old J pod baby boy!

SRKW BABIES

Dolphin Communication Diplomacy

Tonal whistle sounds allow dolphins to stay in contact with each other, and to coordinate hunting strategies. The burst-pulsed sounds (which are more complex and varied than the whistles) are used “to avoid physical aggression in situations of high excitement, such as when they are competing for the same piece of food. Dolphins Use Diplomacy in Their Communication

Pacific Whitesided Dolphin Burst Calls - Orchive

- recording by Orcalab

242A Calls

There were 61 northern resident discrete calls identified for tape 242A (August 5, 2004, 19:30 - 20:17). The majority of calls were; N4 (40%), N16 (20%), and N7 (15%) respectively. The A12s were identified at Cracroft Island where the majority of calls were heard.

Endangered orcas’ habitat scheduled for seismic tests on June 11th, 2012

Even though Columbia University’s Earth Observatory sent in their application for “Incidental Harassment Authorization to take marine mammals” last January, the permit was granted at the end of April with a 30 day comment period – but no notice was sent, other than in the Federal Register. Now, with just days to prevent this, scientists and advocates are scrambling to block the seismic exploration before the orcas (along with nearly two dozen other species of whales and dolphins) are exposed to sound levels believed to have caused the mass death of thousands of dolphins in Peru.

242B Calls

There were 80 discrete northern resident calls identified for recording 242B (August 5, 2004). The majority of calls were N4 (41%), N1 (31%), and N5 (14%). A1 and A4 pods were identified, whales were rubbing on pebbles at 20:29.

New Calf for L Pod

L119 was born recently to 25 year old L77 and is the second documented calf for this whale. The first was seen in 2010 for just one day. L pod is part of the southern resident killer whale endangered population now totaling 89 animals (CWR).

Fetal Mineralization of the Tympanic Bulla

Early mineralization of the tympanic bulla allows immediate sound conduction in the aquatic medium and consequently holds potential importance for mother-calf relationship and postnatal survival. Deposition of bone mineral in fetal and newborn specimens of the fin whale Balaenoptera physalus is remarkably higher in the bulla tympanica than in the adjacent basal skull or in the rest of the skeleton. The evolution of the cetacean skeleton followed a path that differentiated this group from other terrestrial mammals about 50 million years ago.

Paper - Fetal and Early Post-Natal Mineralization of the Tympanic Bulla in Fin Whales May Reveal a Hitherto Undiscovered Evolutionary Trait

Whales Have a Sensory Organ Unlike Anything Ever Seen

The biggest of the baleen whales are known as rorqual whales, a group that includes humpback whales, fin whales and, of course, the blue whale — the largest animal to ever live. Scientists have discovered a grapefruit-sized mass of vessels and nervous tissues located in whales' chins, and they believe it's an entirely new kind of sensory organ. It's possible the organ is what allows these massive creatures to eat using a lightning-fast mouth movement called "lunge feeding."

Quiet Recordings

Tapes 230A to 250B recorded by Orcalab in 2004 were analyzed for relatively quiet and loud ambient sound levels for computation by UVIC's Orchive program. This will allow researchers to organize and sample the large database of information for future studies.

Bottlenose Dolphins use Greeting Calls

In cases where dolphin pods joined and swam together, the researchers found, such meetings were preceded by one dolphin in the group producing a signature whistle and another dolphin in the second group answering. When dolphin groups swam by one another and didn't join, these meet-and-greet whistles were absent.

Live Science

J26 Tagged

The southern resident killer whales are an endangered population of 85 animals. J26 / Mike (male b.1992) was satellite tagged on February 20, 2012. This research is being conducted by NOAA to track movement patterns, habitat use, and feeding behavior of this population of 85 animals.

NEPTUNE

Neptune Canada

Tracking Endangered Whales may Harm

Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbour, Wash., has seen other killer whales that were tagged off Alaska and is concerned. “They’re heavy-duty barbs, and the only way (the tag) comes off is tearing away flesh and leaving a golf-ball sized hole.” The current southern resident population is 89, assuming a young calf spotted Dec. 17 is still alive, Mr. Balcomb said. The whales travel in three separate family pods labelled J, K and L. The average lifespan of a female killer whale is about 52, but Mr. Balcomb said one of the females in J-pod is close to 100. Males don’t live as long, to an average of about 29, but a male in J-pod died last year at the age of 60. Southern residents spend their summers around Washington state waters and off southern Vancouver Island. In the winter, they’ve been spotted as far north as Haida Gwaii and as far south as Monterey, Calif. Mr. Balcomb, who’s been studying southern residents for decades, said his concern is the barbs could cause an internal infection, like the minor puncture wound that killed a 20-year-old resident whale a few years ago. “Because these whales live in an urban environment that has a lot of toxins and a lot of problems for their immune and reproductive system, they’re especially susceptible to these injuries.”

Mr. Hanson has tagged more than 250 whales from 15 different species and said there has been no adverse impacts connected to survival. “There’s been a lot of concern voiced about that. It’s one of these things where we feel this is within the range of natural sorts of occurring tissue impact that affect the animals.” Both Mr. Hanson and Mr. Balcomb agree the whales often have cuts and scrapes on their hides and have many scars. None of the resident whales have been tagged yet. Mr. Hanson is hoping to head out next month, but the residents aren’t easy to find and in poor weather, they may not be able to tag the animals. “They are sort of moving needles in a haystack,” he said.

The tag is about the size of a nine-volt battery and it would be shot from a cross bow or pneumatic gun into the dorsal fin. The tags can remain attached anywhere from three to nine weeks until they fall out, leaving the wound to heal on its own, Mr. Hanson said. “Obviously, the further out we go from the tag date the more interesting the information, the more valuable it is for these longer-term monitoring periods.” The transmitter could last about six straight weeks, but in order to stretch out the life cycle, they would turn off and on the transmitter, he said. Researchers hope to be able to follow the whales to collect samples of anything left of what the orca’s have eaten and any fecal matter to determine what they’ve been eating. While transient killer whales eat mammals, the diet of resident whales is mostly salmon. Mr. Hanson said they believe the whales eat Chinook salmon but that’s part of what he hopes the tagging process will help determine. A cross-border scientific panel is already looking into the possibility that limiting the lucrative Chinook fishery could improve the survival rate of the resident population. A decision from the panel is expected at the end of this year. Mr. Hanson said he hopes their research will be able to contribute some information for the panel, along with more data about where the whales hang out in order to designate critical habitat areas under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Globe and Mail

243A

The rubbing actively heard at RB (rubbing beach) during the beginning of the tape (21:07) was relatively quiet with N4 calls heard later at 21:12. The N4 call was heard with the most frequency (46%) throughout the recording. Whales identified were the A5s and A30s.



Call Types - N2 (n=2), N4 (n=11), N5 (n=3), N9 (n=4), N25 (n=4) [N=24]

Link - http://orchive.cs.uvic.ca/recordings/show/11922

A New Calf in J pod!

Slick / J16 was born in 1972 and gave birth to a new baby in Puget Sound on December 17th, 2011. Slick is mother to J26 / Mike, J36 / Aiki, and J42 / Echo.

Canada Should Cooperate on Climate Change

If Canadian representatives at the UN climate change summit in Durban, South Africa won’t commit to the Kyoto Protocol and contribute to global efforts to stop climate change, they should go home and stop impeding progress.

SIGN PETITION

Click to tell Japan, no disaster funds for whale slaughter!

Right now, the Japanese whaling fleet is hunting thousands of majestic whales -- guarded by a 30-million-dollar security force paid from disaster relief money! Meanwhile, Japanese children are stranded in radioactive areas with no funds to move away. Join the call to save kids, not whalers!

SIGN PETITION

Killer Whale Salmon Diet Limiting Fishery

Experts look at killer whales salmon diet with eye on limiting the fishery

A cross-border panel will determine if the salmon fishery should be limited in order to increase chances of survival for the endangered whales. Huge chinook salmon are the most prized catch on the Pacific coast for fishermen on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, but they may soon have to share the bounty if a scientific panel links chinook and the survival of endangered southern resident killer whales. The independent, cross-border panel has recently completed the first of three workshops looking at studies connecting the abundance of chinook and the well-being of the rare killer whales. There's great interest from sport, commercial and First Nations fishermen in the recommendations because of the implications on the lucrative fishery, said panel member Andrew Trites. "Everybody is watching this very closely," said Trites, director of Marine Mammal Research at the University of B.C. Fisheries Centre.

Panel chairman Ray Hilborn said their job isn't to make a fisheries management recommendation but to evaluate the science behind an assessment that limiting the fishery will benefit the whales. The panel has about three dozen studies and reports to analyze before a decision is made at the end of 2012. Several studies have shown there's a correlation between poor survival of southern residents and low chinook abundance, Hilborn said. The professor of aquatic and fishery science at the University of Washington said both the Department of Fisheries in Canada and the Fisheries Service in the U.S. know a decision to limit the fishery will be controversial. "So if they're going to go forward with regulating these fisheries they want to be able to say, `You know it's not just our own scientists, we've had an independent panel review this stuff.'" William Stelle Jr., the regional administrator with the U.S. Department of Commerce, said in a letter issued earlier this year that if the panel recommends changes, the goal could be to implement the fisheries restrictions for the killer whale recovery plan starting as early as the 2013 salmon fishing season. Studies show that up to 90 per cent of the summer diet for the 88 southern killer whales is made of the large and fatty chinook and that a large percentage of those are returning to British Columbia's Fraser River.

Experts estimate adult orcas need up to about 290,000 calories a day. That's 10 to 34 salmon a day, depending on the size and species, or over 800,000 salmon a year. Lynne Barre, a marine biologist with the fisheries service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington state, said it's too soon to determine if limits would be placed on fisheries in order to protect the whales. "This is an impact we're considering," she said. "We haven't identified how or in what way a fishery would be changed in order to accommodate a need for the whales. We haven't gotten to that point." Barre, who leads the Orca recovery program in the United States, said the effort is part of an action plan to restore Washington state's Puget Sound by 2020. Plans are also in the works to keep the whales from oil spills and reduce contaminants. There's even a proposal to start tracking a whale with a satellite to see where the three pods winter. New regulations implemented this year in American waters limit the possibility of whale-vessel impacts. Limits were doubled to keep ships away from whales from 90 to 180 metres. Canadian no-go zones have been set at 100 metres. Barre said one of the most exciting proposals is an application by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to apply a small satellite tracking tag to one of the whales. Researchers are hoping the device can solve one of the biggest mysteries about where the whales travel in the winter. "It would increase our data with one deployment, to help us see how far off shore they're going, if they're staying in localized areas for extended times or if they're just transiting to and from feeding hot spots," she said. There are two different groups of resident whales off the B.C., Washington state coasts. The northern residents, which spend most of their known time in the waters off British Columbia, and the southern residents which split their time between Canadian and U.S. waters. The northern residents, with a population of about 200 whales, are similar to southern residents and have the same diet.

There are also about 500 other killer whales off the Pacific coast divided into transient and offshore groups that have a diet of mammals or sharks. Barre said helping the southern residents survive and thrive has been difficult. "It's definitely challenging because it is a trans-boundry issue because it covers a number of different types of threats, the prey, the contaminants and pollution and then vessel impact and sound." The population of the whale dipped dangerously low in the 1990s and while Barre said experts don't think it had anything to do with oil spills, they're working on a plan to keep the mammals away from potential harm. "We can use sounds, we can use these banging pipes, we can use a helicopter from the air to sort of encourage them to go in a certain direction. There's also these little underwater explosives that are generally used to keep seals and sea lions away." She said there's been plenty of concern this month about how to heard whales after several killer whales were spotted going up an Alaskan river. Three of them, including a pregnant whale, died.

Canadian Press

Griffin Photography