Fieldwork Blog

Captain John Boats did a precedent setting, first whale watch trip in March (30th).  We went out Sunday morning in a brisk NW wind (wind chill was 15F/-9C), seas were 3-6’ (1-2m) and the group was from Missouri (about as landlocked as you can get in the middle of the country- i.e. not a lot of experience being on the water).  

If you don’t spend a lot of time on boats- it’s hard to imagine what “clearing the dash� means- but imagine putting loose objects on the dashboard of your car and then driving erratically on a really bumpy road and stopping abruptly.  As you can imagine- things go flying.  Well, we cleared the dash on the boat yesterday- anything not bolted down, had some air time.  

Aside from some of the group getting sick, I actually thought it was a much nicer day out there, for sea conditions, than they had forecasted.   

The good news, for me- is we saw right whales!! Well, what you can see of a right whale from a half mile away in big seas- but they were there and I saw them!  It’s always a rush to for me to see one, not on a beach, not entangled, but alive and feeding and doing what right whales are supposed to be doing.  We also had some amazing looks at several fin whales- it’s truly incredible to watch them glide through the water in huge seas so effortlessly. In fact, they went under the boat at one point and we could see them on the fish finder.

One of the finners had a scar on its back, looks like a rope mark- am going to check with the Disentanglement Team to see what they think.  We also saw harbor porpoises- can’t see those damn things on calm days yet we saw a couple of groups of them!  A good sign the herring runs should be starting up soon!  

 

There were at least 15 seals on the rocks when we got into the harbor which was a great way to end the trip.   

All in all, the group was glad they went, well most of them were- and Captain Johnny did an awesome job- I know I was so happy to be out on the water- there’s nothing like it.  And an added bonus was the group had lunch catered but most of them weren’t all that hungry after spending time clearing their systems, so I had a great sandwich on the way back in too!

 

In earlier blogs, I have tried to acknowledge all the people and organizations who have provided support to our project. What I have learned is the phrase, "it takes a village" doesn't just apply to raising children - it apply to every aspect of living within a community, especially on an island.

Environmental protection is not a new concept by any means. There are generations of advocates that have come before us, advocating for the need to conserve and to protect the very things that sustain life on this planet. Well, historically, society has never embraced these people; it's not easy to hear how your actions are heating up the globe, killing off the coral or harming whales and dolphins, much less do the hard work of changing how we live. But all those years of speaking out are starting to make a difference, people are now much more educated about sustainable living and being green is even where it is at these days.

And again when living on an island, where resources are limited, you quickly learn about the need to conserve and protect. The Turks and Caicos children seem way ahead of the curve when it comes to knowing the importance of the environment. I know because I was privileged to be allowed to speak to three different schools about whale and dolphins.


A joint education outreach project was put together by myself and Lucy Wells of the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) in which we went into three primary schools on Grand Turk and Salt Cay to talk about coral reefs and whales. We all learned from the experience!

Lucy talked to them about coral reefs, the importance of the reefs to the Turks and Caicos, and the organisms living on the reefs. I talked about the whales and dolphins they see right off their shores, why the whales are there and what we, WDCS, have learned since beginning our study in TCI waters.

The coolest part was when we started asking them questions. Lucy asked the children what they could do to help keep the reefs protected and the entire classroom raised their hands. Everyone had answers from not polluting and beach clean ups to making sure that no one walked on or threw an anchor on the reef. And when it was my turn to ask questions, the children turned the tables around on me and asked one great question after another. We were so impressed with what they already knew and their desire to learn more, more, more.

On Saturday morning (February 16th) Vale and I participated in a TCI Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) reef restoration project on Grand Turk. We, along with 26 other volunteers, helped to transplant stressed coral to two new artificial reefs. It was a great experience; feeling part of a community giving back and working to protect the sea and it's inhabitants. The reef project is headed up by Lucy Wells of the DECR. The Biorock® reefs have a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode running a low voltage electric current through underwater structures of construction steel. Biorock® underwater photo ©Lucy Wells

This causes minerals to crystallize from seawater onto structures. I can vouch for this mineral crystallization, because our job on Saturday was to dive down to 30 feet and scrap off the minerals deposited on the steel so that corals could be attached to the exposed and charged metal.

From Lucy, I have learned the immense benefits of Biorock® reefs. For starters because the coral on the Biorock® gets help from the structure in building it’s calcium carbonate bases it doesn’t have to spend as much energy creating it’s own limestone and have been shown to grow 3-5 times faster then natural coral. They also heal up to 20 times faster and the corals can survive higher temperatures, 16-50 times higher, a very important benefit in light of global warming and increases in sea temperature.

The project is funded by the DECR, and supported Carnival Cruise Line, Oasis Divers and Grand Turk Diving. The project was a huge success thanks to: Oasis Divers and Grand Turk Diving who provided boat, staff, and diving equipment and of course all the volunteers who volunteered their Saturday. A few of the volunteers worked so long we had to pick them up off the dive boat on our way out to go whale watching in the afternoon. The rest of the coral volunteers who stayed on the boat and didn’t go whale watching with us were able to do a bit of whale watching right off Grand Turk with a pair of humpbacks that we started our whale watching trip with and then turned over to them.


We went on to see 3 different mother and calf pairs around Salt Cay. So plus the pair of adults off Grand Turk, 8 whales total. Pretty good day by anyone's standards, but a great job of finding whales considering how the seas had built up and made spotting blows even more challenging then normal.

We have begun seeing some rowdy group behavior. Vale has witnessed rowdy behavior on two different occasions now, where as I have only seen it on one trip. Rowdy groups consist of males trying to get next to the female in hopes of being the male that she chooses to mate with. How does she choose? Well, that must be one of the more frequently asked questions by people witnessing the aggressive displays and I truly believe the answer falls into the “you have to be a whale to know" category. But nonetheless, it is truly an impressive thing to witness. We spent an hour and a half traveling with two males vying for a female.

For us whale watchers, it was a great day because the three whales were spending much of their time at the surface and only going on short dives. They were also only traveling about 2 knots so it was easy to idle right along with them. We traveled with them for about 5 miles, watching their amazing behaviors of creating bubble curtains and displacing quite a bit of water as they surfaced.


The bubble curtains are thought to be aggressive display maybe to intimidate one another or "shield" a female from approach by a challenging male.


The other really great aspect of rowdy groups is that the whales engaged in this behavior tend to fluke up more then the whales not in rowdy grounds. And here in their breeding and calving grounds we see substantially less fluking then in their feeding grounds, so we were very happy to get some photo ID shots while documenting this amazing behavior.

I am not sure if you ever get used to riding your bike down the road next to donkeys, cows and chickens; having flying fish zoom by while looking for whales; or saying hello to everyone you pass – but I hope not! And that is what life is like on Salt Cay, so very special.

The Turks and Caicos, in general, is an amazingly beautiful and diverse island chain, you could spend many years exploring the 40 different islands and cays here in the TCI. If you would like to stay a lifetime then come and get to know the people, an equally enjoyable endeavor. Over the past few days I have had the opportunity to get alittle further afield then the two islands Vale and I have been using as our bases. One of the smaller uninhabited cays, Gibbs Cay, has curious stingrays hanging out in the shallows.


The waters here are staggeringly beautiful and the islands so distinct and interesting. Over my two-day field trip exploring 5 new islands and the waters around them for whales, I have gained an extraordinary new appreciation of the extent of diversity. You can do any number of activities from just doing nothing and being completely pampered and catered to - to hiking and exploring a tiny island that makes you feel as if you are the first person to set foot upon it. For me I enjoy the latter, and always have. And I worry about all the development that has already sprung up and the scores more that seems to be planned for the future.

Providenciales, Provo for short, is where most people fly into when coming to the Turks and Caicos and for some it is the only island they ever see, which is unfortunate because there is heaps more to this island chain. However, on Provo many high-end resorts have sprung up along the beaches over the past 10 to 15 years and some say have changed the character of the island. I can’t really speak to changes in the island’s character because I have only been visiting for two years now. Provo still seemed like a very nice place to visit to me, but I was happy to come back home to Salt Cay. There is such a different feel to these smaller islands, where life is simple and sweet. And everyone knows your name, or if they don’t they will soon enough.

On both Grand Turk and Salt Cay we have met wonderful and generous people who are interested in our project and want to do everything possible to help. It is a marvelous feeling of community on these islands, especially on Salt Cay; where the community really works together to ensure that visitors are having good experiences and that their neighbors are well. One of the main sources of entertainment on Salt Cay is Porter and Haidee Williams who own Island Thyme Bistro and run the Greenflash Café. If ever in Salt Cay – both a must to visit.

Greenflash Café sits right at the dock and about 300 yards away you can often see whales all along the western side of the island where the wall drops of to deep water. At the Greenflash, Porter and Haidee have installed a new horn to alert everyone when they spot whales off the wall.

We have had a little break in the weather and were able to go out whale watching two days in a row, February 4th and 5th. Both days we saw a pod of dolphins and a mother and calf humpback pair. The absolute most exciting part for us as researchers is that we were able to identify the mother as Pinball. Pinball is the daughter of one of our adoptable whales, Liner. Liner gave birth to Pinball in 1989 and in her 19 years of life Pinball has had 5 calves, including this years calf. It is always wonderful to see whales you know, but even more wonderful to see them with their babies and know that the population is continuing to grow. Of course seeing calves is great because they are cute and little and sometime doing really fun things. For example, Pinball’s calf breached a few times on the 4th and then tail breached and flipper slapped on the 5th. But just the fact that this new calf exists is the best part from a population standpoint because humpbacks are endangered; so reproducing females like Pinball, who keep adding to the population, are critical.

Also really important is that Pinball has a safe place to give birth and to nurse her calf and it seems that she might like it here in the Turks and Caicos. Once we figured out that the mother was indeed Pinball from the tail fluke, I went back and exmined the dorsal fins of our other mother and calf sightings from this season. From the dorsal fins, I was able to figure out that we saw Pinball and her calf on January 25th as well. In fact the photos in the January 25th blog are of Pinball and her calf too. So she has been in these waters with her new baby for more then a few days. All very exciting.

But from a research perspective our story gets better because we saw Pinball here last year. She was by herself, in that she did not have a calf with her last year (usually humpbacks don’t have calves in consecutive years as it is incrediably hard on the body). But there were five to six other adult humpbacks in the same area as Pinball last year when we saw her off Salt Cay.

So Pinball might just use the waters around Salt Cay as her breeding and calving grounds. Clearly, we need to do more research before being able to say conclusively, but what we have found so far is pretty exciting.

With a lot of support! I wrote a few blogs ago that we are only here because of alot of local support and also the generous grant of Change Happens Foundation. We have so much help from the dive companies, Oasis Divers and Salt Cay Divers, who have been working hard to organize whale watching trips for us to get out on the water. Which believe it or not is heaps harder then it sounds, as the weather has not been very cooperative. But in the trips we have been able to squeeze in, we have seen lots of whales.

I went out on Wednesday, January 30th, with Oasis Divers and we saw 6 different humpbacks, including our second mother and calf pair of our field season. Of course, it help to find whales when you have such experienced captains as the ones we are working with. Oli Bean of Salt Cay Divers on Salt Cay has been working on the water all his life and can spot a whale miles off. And Tye Talbot, of Oasis Divers on Grand Turk, has an amazing sense of the whales. We are so lucky to be working with such great captains, it makes all the difference in the world. In fact, before going whale watching it is important to do a little research into the qualifications and experience of the operators. Especially as ecotourism, and particularly whale watching, is growing and spreading; it is as important as ever to ensure that it is being conducted responsibly.

Not only can Oli and Tye find whales in the expansive sea, but they also are very respectful and if it seems like the whales want to be left alone - well then that is exactly what they do.

Our field season is also possible because of the hospitality we are being shown from local hotels like Osprey Beach Hotel, who have gone above and beyond by putting up with quirky scientific things like storing of water samples in their freezer and helping to fix hydrophones.

We are also indebted to Pat and Henry Coe who have donated their home in Salt Cay to us for two weeks. It is because of their generous donation that we can stay for an entire month. And Pat and Henry have also gone above and beyond in allowing us into not only their home, but also their lives and take such good care of us. I think Pat even did Vale's laundry, little do they know that if they keep treating us this good then we are going to be difficult to get rid of. And of course, it takes a village, so we are also thankful to all the residents who share their time and stories with us.

How does one start a field project, anyway? I guess it’s different for different projects but, sometimes, they literally find you. The Turks and Caicos project found us through the Malcolm family- Sue, Jagan and Jade. Spending part of their year in Canada, they also live part time in Salt Cay, an island of the Turks and Caicos. It's on Salt Cay where they ran Green Flash Café and Whale Watch Tours (http://saltcay.org/whales.htm) .

A number of years ago, I, serendipitously met them when they came to Plymouth, MA to whale watch. We chatted about humpbacks in their feeding and breeding areas. Over the years we chatted on occasion but it was in 2006 when Sue contacted me as they were getting ready to head to Salt Cay, and that is when this project really began. We chatted by phone about the possibilities of getting information about the humpbacks wintering off the islands and what we could do to help each other. Sue, Jagan and Jade made a pit-stop in Plymouth on their way south to pick up a digital camera and data sheets from WDCS. The conversation over dinner (which Jagan made, and is quite a good cook, if I do say so myself!) led to them generously offering someone form WDCS to go to Salt Cay and check out the place. That’s where WDCS biologist Sue Rocca stepped in and the pilot project began in February of 2007.

Sue M. and Jagan decided to stay in Canada this winter and leased their Cafe to Porter Williams (http://greenflashcafe.blogspot.com/). While still in Canada this winter, the Malcolm's have continued to work with whale watches in Canada during the summer and will return to whale watching in Salt Cay next winter. They remain a tremendous help to WDCS with contacts and information about the islands and the whales for which they care deeply.