ON REEF ENJOYING WHALE OF A T ALE

A JAMES Cook University research team has spent time diving with several hundred dwarf minke whales on the remote northern Great Barrier Reef.

The JCU minke whale project research team gathered underwater images of the species during the successful winter field season.

The long- running project saw several “old friends” that the team has known for 11 or 12 years return to the same area behind the Ribbon Reefs, near Lizard Island, for their annual gathering to socialise, court and mate.

The researchers spent most of June and July on dive vessels from Cairns and Port Douglas.

Adjunct Associate Professor in marine biology at JCU and leader of the minke whale project Dr Alastair Birtles said it had been a wonderful season.

“I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of several weeks at sea on my 22nd consecutive annual field season on the live- aboards ( boats) and spent almost 100 glorious hours snorkelling with over 200 of these marvellous little whales – and we’ve collected quite insane amounts of data,” he said.

“Our unique collaboration with the Queensland divetourism industry and their passengers has resulted in well over 40,000 images of whales for us to analyse from this year alone.

“Passengers on all the vessels in the fleet donate copies of their underwater digital images which help us to identify the individual whales in each encounter by their unique colour patterns – and in many cases to track their movements as they move around the aggregation area and visit different vessels.”

Three decades into the project, the team featured on last night’s episode of 60 Minutes, with much of the report shot by JCU Adjunct Research Fellow Richard Fitzpatrick.

“Our expedition with the 60 Minutes film crew gave me and our new Canadian PhD student Suzanne Hillcoat and her other supervisor from JCU marine biology, Dr Naomi Gardiner, the opportunity to spend another 19 hours recording the identities, behaviour and vocalisations of another 30 or so whales,” Dr Birtles said.

“They made a short film about our research which highlights the contributions that Suzanne’s PhD study is making to our understanding of the biology and behaviour of dwarf minke whales – and ultimately to the long- term conservation of this little known, and as yet undescribed, subspecies of whale.”