Voyage of the Odyssey
“No other organization has even undertaken what Ocean Alliance has delivered—a global view of the toxicity of whales. This is one major nail in the coffin of the ‘we need to eat whales’ argument. Incredibly, while everyone wants to ‘save the whales’ from the likes of Japan, precious few groups offer new data that helps actually save them. Ocean Alliance does.”
- Carl Safina, President and Co-Founder
Blue Ocean Institute, 2009
Our Ocean Research Program has the following objectives:
1. Determine baseline levels of pollutants in the ocean environment
2. Investigate sperm whales' diving, feeding and migratory behavior using multi-beam scanning sonar and satellite tagging
3. Conduct bioacoustic research and develop methods of acoustic census taking
4. Create a digital database of photo-identified whales to share with cetologists and oceanographers worldwide
Why is this research crucial?
Research is crucial for implementing appropriate policies and actions that ensure healthy oceans, conserve whales and educate people about the issues facing the marine environment. If humans are ever to create conservation policies that have a chance of maintaining healthy oceans and preventing the extinction of whales they will be based on research.
Due to their long lives, whales present a particular problem since it is generally accepted that in order to understand the life cycle of any species it must be studied for a minimum of two generations. However, right whales may have very long lives.
In the past two decades, some six stone harpoon heads have been found, buried under scar tissue in the blubber of bowhead whales that were killed in the course of the Inuit subsistence hunt for Bowheads. As stone harpoons have not been used for at least 150 years this suggests that we will need to observe and study bowhead whales for about 200 years if we are ever to understand their full life cycles. But bowhead whales are very closely related to right whales, which suggests that right whales may also live for very long periods.
Benign Research
Traditional techniques for assessing populations of whales have relied on whale carcasses provided by the whaling industry. Even though this method continues to be used in some parts of the world, it does not yield much of the information needed for management of stocks, such as critical habitat and social behavior patterns. Observations of individuals are required over several years in order to gather such data.
With Dr. Payne at the helm, Ocean Alliance has revolutionized cetacean research by introducing and refining benign research techniques. These techniques eliminate the need to kill whales in order to study them, thereby preserving the pod and providing an opportunity for long-term evaluation. Marine biologists worldwide now utilize the benign research techniques developed by Ocean Alliance.
Bioacoustics
Dr. Payne, along with colleague Scott McVay, discovered in 1967, that humpback whales sing songs. This important discovery jumpstarted biouacoustics research. Dr. Payne determined that these songs often include rhyme and meter, and he developed a system for transcribing them. Recent data from the US Navy confirms Dr Payne's 1971 theory (with Douglas Webb) that some whale species make sounds that can be heard over hundreds or even thousands of miles.
Recent analysis of low frequency sonar data has proven that Payne and Webb were correct: by utilizing the special acoustic properties of deep water, the sounds of whales can carry for great distances. Such long-range signals may serve as beacons when whales are trying to find each other or their isolated breeding grounds. Unfortunately, the invention of propeller-driven vessels has probably interfered with whales' long-range communications.
From our research vessel, Odyssey, Ocean Alliance is extending its study of whale bioacoustics. Using hydrophones and two acoustic arrays towed beneath the vessel, Institute scientists digitally record whale vocalizations. With software developed by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University, each vocalization will be converted to a spectrogram and catalogued in a database. These spectrograms may then be compared to those of whale vocalizations recorded in regions throughout the world.
The towed arrays make it possible to count the number of vocalizing whales heard from the vessel. Comparison of this number with the number sighted will enable Ocean Alliance researchers to calibrate the technique of acoustic census taking by comparing the number of whales heard with the number sighted.
DNA Fingerprinting
With DNA fingerprinting, Ocean Alliance scientists will be able to determine unambiguously the identity of right whales and other focal animals, as well as their relatedness to other individuals. This relatively inexpensive technique, using small samples of tissue, will make it possible to determine how closely related whales from different oceans are. Such information gives the strongest insights into stock boundaries. The tissue samples will come from the same samples used for research on ocean toxins.
Satellite
In 2003, Ocean Alliance planned to use satellite transponders to track the movements of right whales when they leave Peninsula Valdes. The whales are believed to travel from the nursery grounds at the Peninsula to their summer feeding grounds. There has been only one re-sighting of a whale from this Peninsula; that was on a feeding ground off the island of South Georgia in the middle of the southern Atlantic. Satellite tracking will allow Ocean Alliance researchers to follow right whales along their migration routes. Following the whales may help us learn what clues they use to find their feeding grounds each and every year.
Photo Identification
In addition to benign research methods, Ocean Alliance monitors individual whales with photo–identification. Photo IDs are used for comparison studies and will eventually be contributed to identification catalogues for each species. Ocean Alliance created the main southern right whale catalogue of photo-identification shots. This information is available to other researchers.
