Southern right whale makes remarkable journey

FOR the first time on record, a Southern right whale has been monitored on a remarkable journey from the coast of South Africa to Argentina, swimming over 10 000km.

The Mammal Research Institute Whale Unit at the University of Pretoria commenced its 42nd annual photo identification aerial survey between Nature’s Valley and Muizenberg to monitor the South African population of Southern right whales in October last year.

Out of the 414 Southern Right whales that were counted, four were tagged with satellite transmitters.

One cow-calf that was tagged in Walker Bay, made their way across the South Atlantic and is currently on the Patagonian shelf.

The tag had stopped transmitting on December 14 and came back online on Tuesday.

“This is unprecedented and has never been recorded so it exceeds all our expectations as researchers, the reason why this might be happening is because in the South African population we have been seeing strong changes such as changes in migration of where they go feed, a substantial decrease in body conditions of the females, they were getting skinnier and taking longer to reproduce, so instead of having a calf every three years they are giving birth every four to five years,” said Els Vermeulen, Research Manager at the Wale Unit.

Vermeulen added that it raises the hypothesis that the whale might be seeking food if it is not finding the food it needs in the South African feeding ground, due to all the changes they see it could be due to climate change affecting availability of food for these animals.

Vermeulen said the question now remains if this female is coming back to South Africa or will t go off to the calving grounds of Argentina.

“We are very much in need to get more data and more animals tagged because in the history of Southern right whales in South Africa, only ten have been tagged and this is the first one that shows this kind of behaviour.”

“More satellites need to be placed on whales to understand if this occurs frequently or just a random act, just because they are not endangered does not mean we should not be concerned, we need to keep an eye on them,” Vermeulen added.

With one whale tag costing about R80 000, Vermeulen said if they get enough funding they will hopefully get to place 10 satellite transmitters on whales come October.