Blainville's beaked whales seen during our February 2024 Kaua'i field project
We will be undertaking a 9-day field project off Kaua'i starting February 9th. This is project is primarily funded by the U.S. Navy as part of their Marine Species Monitoring Program and is timed to occur prior to a Submarine Command Course (SCC). Our primary goal is to deploy LIMPET satellite tags on one or more species of odontocete cetaceans prior to the SCC, to be able to examine their behavior before, during, and after the SCC. This approach has been very successful in the past as a way of examining how different species respond to Navy training activities including mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS).
This will be the 17th year we’ve worked off Kaua’i (our first project there was in May and June 2003), our 22nd field effort off the island, and the start of the 27th year for this study. In addition to our primary goal, these efforts contribute to our general understanding of what species of whales and dolphins use the area around Kaua’i and Ni’ihau, and photos obtained feed in to our photo-identification catalogs for many different species. The field team will include Colin Cornforth, Mark Mohler, Danny Barrios, Liam Hutcheson, James Fahlbusch, and Robin Baird.
Our work off Kaua’i in the past has really benefited by reports of whales or dolphins by local tour operators and fishermen - if you happen to be on the water off Kaua’i between February 9th and 17th and see any pilot whales, false killer whales, melon-headed whales, pygmy killer whales, killer whales, or sperm whales, please call us! If you don't have the cell number of our field crew, contact Robin Baird at "rwbaird" "at" cascadiaresearch.org and we can provide it ahead of time.
The most recent updates are at the bottom of the page
February 9th update
Our first day on the water was quite productive. The highlight of the day was a group of six Blainville's beaked whales, a species we always feel lucky to see. While we weren't able to get any tags deployed, we were able to get ID photos of all the individuals to compare to our photo-ID catalog, and also witnessed repeating breaching by one young adult male, a behavior we rarely see.
Early in the day our partners with the Navy monitoring the hydrophone array directed us to a group of short-finned whales. In addition to being able to get ID photos of the individuals present, we were able to get one LIMPET satellite tag deployed, our first for the trip.
We also had a number of encounters with rough-toothed dolphins - this is the most frequently-encountered species of whale or dolphin we see off Kaua'i. We were able to deploy one LIMPET tag on a rough-toothed - this tag (and most of the tags we are deploying this project) is a Wildlife Computers SPLASH10-F tag, that, in addition to locations through the Argos satellite system, also transmit information on dive behavior and Fastloc-GPS locations. This is the first SPLASH10-F tag we have deployed on this species.
The oval spots on the belly of this rough-toothed dolphin are healed scars from cookie-cutter shark bites.
February 11th update
The weather the last two days has been great, allowing us to work in deep water and far to the north. The highlight in terms of sightings was a mother/calf pair of fin whales! While this species is regularly detected acoustically in Hawai'i, sightings are infrequent - this is only the third sighting we've had of fin whales in our work
We also had our second sighting of Blainville's beaked whales, and were able to get good ID photos of about six individuals. This is a species that we are lucky to see once per trip off Kaua'i, so two sightings in the first three days is quite exciting.
During our work we also collect fecal material from whales when the opportunity allows. On February 11th we collected our second pilot whale fecal sample of the trip. This photo shows some of the floating fecal material - sometimes all we see is a "fecal plume" and bits are diffusely distributed in the water column, but both samples we've collected have been much more cohesive. These samples can be used both for identifying prey species, as well as examining hormone chemistry.
We've also continued to encounter groups of rough-toothed dolphins, and have now deployed three of the SPLASH10F LIMPET tags on individuals in three separate groups. This is the first time we've had three rough-toothed dolphins tagged simultaneously.
February 12th update
An interesting encounter today with a lone rough-toothed dolphin interacting with a pufferfish. As has been reported with dolphins elsewhere, it is possible that some species of dolphins will mouth pufferfish to get small doses of the toxins they produce. This dolphin seemed particularly intent on mouthing the pufferfish (see photos below).
Rough-toothed dolphin mouthing a pufferfish
Today we also encountered our 8th species of cetacean for the trip (not bad given it is Day 4!), a group of pygmy killer whales. This is a rare species for Kaua'i - this was only our fifth sighting of pygmy killer whales off Kaua'i or Ni'ihau. The photo above shows the entire group (just five individuals) resting motionless at the surface. Pygmy killer whales spend the day resting and socializing and feeding at night, and this logging behavior makes them very difficult to detect.
We have a photo-identification catalog of pygmy killer whales and will be comparing these individuals to the catalog, but they are likely part of an open-ocean population. Off O'ahu and to the east there are resident groups of this species, but all of our previous Kaua'i and Ni'ihau encounters have been new individuals, suggesting they are not resident to the area. If you want to learn more about this species, check out our pygmy killer whale web page.
End of project update
We made it out eight of the last nine days, and covered over 1,100 km of trackline, with 51 sightings of 11 different species of whales and dolphins. We saved the best for last, on February 17th we encountered a small group of false killer whales! We were directed to this group by our Navy collaborators monitoring the hydrophone range, and we were able to deploy two LIMPET satellite tags, collect one biopsy, and got ID photos of the three individuals we encountered. We have already been able to match two of the individuals to our catalog, and they are part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands population of false killer whales, a group we rarely see. If you want to learn more about false killer whales in Hawaiian waters, check out our false killer whale web page.
We also had our first (and only) sighting this trip of bottlenose dolphins - normally we see this species fairly regularly in shallow water, but the weather was so good this trip we spent most of our time in deep water. More information on bottlenose dolphins is available on our bottlenose dolphin web page.
We also had just our second sighting of spinner dolphins for the trip, a group heading in towards one of their day-time resting areas.
The map above shows the movements of the 10 different individuals from four different species (four pilot whales, three rough-toothed dolphins, two false killer whales, and one Blainville's beaked whale) that we are currently tracking. In addition to Argos locations, these tags transmit Fastloc-GPS locations and dive behavior information, so we are excited about seeing both where they go and what they are doing!
If you want to see how different species use the area around Kaua'i and Ni'ihau, we've posted animations of movements of some of the individuals we've tagged in previous years on our Hawai'i Tag Animation page