You’ve got whale: Coast tag discovery
A WORLD-first trial of tracking migrating humpback whales by using a suction cup is providing real-time data on the giants of the ocean.
And it was developed on the Gold Coast.
Using a Customised Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) suction cup tag, which temporarily adheres to the whale’s skin, Griffith University’s Dr Olaf Meynecke deployed tags in the Gold Coast bay regions to track whales in real time using GPS and global systems for mobile communication.
“Normally, satellite relay tags are used to transmit location data, simply because they work in remote locations, but they are very expensive,” said Dr Meynecke, of the Coastal and Marine Research Centre. “However, because migrating whales stay close to shore most of the time, our tag works well.”
Suction cup tags do not have to penetrate the animals’ skin and can be used for short-term deployments (hours to days), which makes them applicable for finescale, habitat-use studies such as this.
Dr Meynecke said information on the fine-scale habitat use of aquatic mammals could provide important insights into habitat preferences and sensitivity to environmental drivers, as well as anthropogenic impacts.
“Ideally, for future studies we would like to modify the tag so that the antenna is out of the water enough to transmit after the tag comes off the whale, and extend the tagging time and focus on resting whales in the bays to study their behaviour further,” he said.
It comes as the city’s whale-watching season ramps up, with plenty of humpbacks spotted in only the second month of migration.
The migration runs from May to November.
A SeaWorld Cruises spokesperson said humpbacks left Antarctica in age cohorts, which meant cruises were seeing last year’s mothers come through with their yearling calves.
“It has been a great season so far,” the spokesperson said.
“Shortly, we will start to see the big boys (adult males), and then the larger, heavily pregnant adult females.”
SeaWorld Cruises said it had taken a hit in passenger numbers with the Victorian lockdown but “locals are taking advantage of calm seas and plenty of whales”.