Whale of a mission for Banavie scientists in icy South Atlantic
THE ICY waters of the South Atlantic can be some of the most inhospitable and dangerous seas on the planet, but an eight-strong team of whale researchers, half of who have Fort William connections, is currently aboard a survey sailing vessel braving these hostile waters off South Georgia.
The international team, led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), is carrying out the first scientific whale survey since whaling stopped in the area in the 1970s.
The target of the five-week expedition is the region’s southern right whale populations which were decimated after nearly 300 years of hunting in the South Atlantic.
The team of eight researchers and three crew are aboard the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) research vessel Song of the Whale to investigate the health of the animals in their feeding grounds.
In addition, they hope to solve the puzzle of why large numbers of dead southern right whale calves have washed up on the shores around Argentina in the last decade.
The crew includes Banavie-based husband and wife researchers Russell Leaper and Susannah Calderan, as well as Inverlochy skipper Brian Morrison and engineer, Mat Jerram, who grew up in Fort William.
Russell will be known to many in Kilmallie as secretary of the community council.
A mathematician by profession, Russell, who grew up in London, has worked as a freelance consultant to the IFAW for the last 30 years and has been a member of the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission since 1996 and a long-time member of its UK delegation. He studied mathematics at Oxford University before first joining Song of the Whale in 1988 to study sperm whales. He initially worked on developing acoustic methods to study and count whales and his subsequent research has covered a wide range of marine mammal conservation and welfare issues with an emphasis on survey methods and population assessment.
More recently he has been working to address threats to whales from underwater noise and collisions with shipping and has authored more than 30 scientific publications and presented more than 50 papers at international conferences.
In the South Atlantic, photo-identifications and satellite tagging have revealed seasonal migrations of right whales between South Georgia waters and their calving ground at Península Valdés in Argentina.
However, this area has had notably high calf mortalities, and a growing body of evidence suggests that South Georgia environmental conditions directly influence the breeding success of these whales.
The team will locate the whales using advanced acoustics and, once found, will take photographs for photo-identification, collect skin samples, and attach satellite tags to identify and track the marine leviathans.
Team members will also fly drones over the whales to assess their body condition and general state of health.
The southern right whale is so-called as historically they were the ‘right’ whales to hunt owing to their slow swimming speed, inquisitive nature which
led them to commonly approach whaling vessels and because they floated once killed. Their oil was used by industry in a wide variety of products including lamps and vehicles, margarine and soap. The South Georgia Right Whale project spans two consecutive years and has two research aims. The first is the EU-funded SWIM project to carry out a health check of the southern right whales that use the feeding grounds around South Georgia and find out where they are feeding. The second, funded by Darwin Plus, aims to discover if the species is in recovery.
How a mathematician like Russell came to be involved as an international whale expert living in Banavie began with a life-long love of sailing.
‘I first got involved with the IFAW after it bought a sailing boat as a research vessel back in 1987, called Song of the Whale,’ Russell told the Lochaber Times during a break from packing for the trip.
‘I had done a lot of sailing before, so was interested in the sailing side as well as the science side, and I ended up actually skippering that boat for them for a few years, mainly in the North Atlantic. Spending such a lot of time at sea sailing, you often see whales and seeing them up close made me want to learn more about them.’
Part of that period in Russell’s life was spent working in the waters around the Azores, stud- ying sperm whales. The focus of those projects was the use of underwater acoustics.
‘Sound is the most important sense for whales and you can gather a lot of information from listening to them and you can do it remotely without causing disturbance to the animals. I am a mathematician by training which is really quite useful for this type of work because a huge amount of maths and statistics are involved in interpreting biologicial data. It has become my niche and with the acoustic work, you need a good understanding of the physics of sound.
‘When I went to university I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I’d always enjoyed maths and knew it would let me fit into a lot of other disciplines.’
The current Song of the Whale is the second IFAW vessel to carry the name and was custom-built to be one of the quietest boats of its type with even the engine and propeller designed to be muffled to prevent them disturbing the giant cetaceans.
Russell explained: ‘There is a lot of advantages to using this type of boat for this sort of project - as well as being quiet it has a very tall mast which is really important as it makes it easier for the radio aerial to receive signals from acoustic sonar buoys.’
On the growing concern over the last 10 years about the number of calves washed up dead, he said: ‘As a result of those deaths, scientists in Argentina and Chile got together a management plan through the IWC, so we are contributing to that and the first results of our project, once collated and analysed, will be presented to the scientific committee of IWC.
‘A lot is known about the breeding grounds of the species but very little on their feeding grounds and South Georgia is known to be an important feeding area for them.
‘Southern right whales and northern right whales are very similar. The northern population was heavily reduced by whaling and has never fully recovered. There are still only about 450 northern right whales but the southern species recovered very well and is growing at about six or seven percent every year since whaling stopped. It is only recently there have been some concerns because of these dead calves being found.’
Russell’s wife, Susannah, is a marine mammal biologist and world expert on whale acoustics and he says they have always enjoyed working together.
‘We work from home as there is a lot of data to analyse. We are trying to focus on addressing threats to whales. The fact that we can go on trips like these together is much better and we’ve always enjoyed working together. Generally we are on one trip to the Antarctic a year. There is quite a narrow window weather-wise and these trips take a lot of planning. Down there at the moment it is mid to late summer and probably the warmest time of the year – and hopefully the calmest as the winds round South Georgia can be very strong and that can be the biggest problem.
‘Susannah and I will be using acoustic equipment to try and locate whales. We’ve done that successfully with blue whales.
‘We are able to detect them from several hundred miles away and direct the ship to them.
‘The key thing is get photos of known individual whales so we can compare them with this well known catalogue of animals from Argentina.’
Susannah and I will be using acoustic equipment to try and locate whales. We’ve done that with blue whales ” Russell Leaper