From November 10-20 we'll be undertaking a field project off Kona. We have three primary goals for this project, and a lot of secondary goals. First, we are hoping to find and work with false killer whales, including both the endangered main Hawaiian Islands population and the open-ocean population, to deploy satellite tags to track movements and examine diving behavior. Second, we are also hoping to find and work with both Blainville's and goose-beaked whales (note: the photo above is a goose-beaked whale seen on November 9th, 2023, spyhopping in front of our boat), to deploy satellite tags to examine both movements and diving behavior. Third, we are hoping to deploy finmount satellite tags (deployed with the TADpole tagging system developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Brookfield Zoo Chicago's Sarasota Dolphin Research Program) on either bottlenose dolphins or pantropical spotted dolphins, to examine movements. Our secondary goals involve working with all the other species we encounter, collecting identification photos and for some species collecting biopsy samples for genetics and stable isotope studies. During the 11-day period we hope to be on the water 9 or 10 days.
This work is funded by a grant from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, a contract from the State of Hawai'i, and a grant from the Office of Naval Research. Our primary field crew will include Colin Cornforth, Danny Barrios, Shelby Petros, Robin Baird, and Annie Douglas, and we will also have a number of volunteers.
November 11th update
Day 2 of our field effort was another good day for beaked whales - today we had a group of eight Blainville's beaked whales! The photo above is an adult male, with extensive white scarring on the head from fighting with other adult males. The erupted teeth are covered in stalked barnacles, with the left tooth having a lot more barnacles attached, likely because a lot of the tooth is exposed due to fighting.
This is a photo of the same adult male Blainville's, a few seconds later, showing the extensive linear scarring typical of adult males. This individual is HIMd155 in our catalog, first identified off the island in 2009. In addition to ID photos of all eight individuals in the group, we were able to deploy a SPLASH10-F LIMPET satellite tag on this individual, to track movements and dive behavior.
In addition to the Blainville's beaked whales, we also encountered a mixed group of melon-headed whales and Fraser's dolphins! The above photo is of a pair of Fraser's dolphins, with the individual in the foreground a sub-adult male, starting to develop the strong black mask characteristic of adult male Fraser's dolphins. This species is very uncommon around the main Hawaiian Islands - this was only our eighth sighting of this species in our 27 years of working around the islands! If you want to learn more about Fraser's dolphins in Hawaiian waters check out our Fraser's dolphin web page.
The Fraser's dolphins were associated with a group of a couple hundred melon-headed whales. This group is part of the Hawaiian Islands stock of melon-headed whales, which roam widely offshore around the islands - check out our melon-headed whale web page for more information.
November 10th update
We had a good first day on the water, with two sightings of goose-beaked whales! We can sometimes go an entire project without seeing any of these deep-divers, so two sightings on our first day hopefully bodes well for encounter rates over the next nine days! The photo above in an old adult female goose-beaked whale - we identify it as an old adult based on the white pigmentation, and as a female based on the lack of any linear scars that are found on adult males.
One of the individuals in the first group, a sub-adult based on body size and on scarring, breached five times during the encounter. Goose-beaked whales acquire white scars as they age from cookiecutter shark bites, and this individual has relatively few of these scars, indicating it is still relatively young.
The individual above is also an adult female goose-beaked whale, albeit not a very old one. If you want to learn more about goose-beaked whales in Hawaiian waters, check out our web page on this species.
All photos on this page taken under NMFS Scientific Research Permit No. 26596. If you'd like more information on this project, contact Robin Baird (rwbaird "at" cascadiaresearch "dot" org)