Canadian non-lethal whale research

Two such organizations are the Ocean Research and Education Society (ORES) and OrcaLab, which study two of Canada’s well-known whale populations: the northern resident orcas of B.C., and the minke whales of the St. Lawrence-Saguenay region.

Orcalab 

OrcaLab is a small, land-based whale research station on Hanson Island in the waters of the inside passage of northern Vancouver Island in B.C. It was founded in 1970 by Dr. Paul Spong, a devoted early whale campaigner who inspired the first Greenpeace whaling campaign. The work of OrcaLab is centred around the philosophy that it is possible to study wild animals without interfering with their lives or habitat. A network of hydrophones, positioned around the orcas’ core habitat, helps monitor their movements day and night, year round, whenever orcas are in the area. Supplementing the acoustic data are visual sightings of orcas as they pass OrcaLab, and reports from other researchers and whale watchers during the summer season. Collectively, this information has enabled OrcaLab to compile a comprehensive history of the northern resident orca community since 1970.

Since 1994, OrcaLab has also operated a video monitoring station on Cracroft Point in Johnstone Strait. Located adjacent to a kelp forest, its purpose is the unobtrusive collection of surface and underwater images of orcas and other ocean life. Between 2000 and 2005 OrcaLab and Japan’s NTT Data corporation brought the everyday beauty of the orcas’ lives to the internet via a live webcast (www.orca-live.net) which attracted an audience from more than 70 countries around the world. An audio version of this webcast continues to stream OrcaLab’s acoustic data live to the internet. 

OrcaLab will also be closely observing the orcas over the coming months and years to evaluate the impacts of the 2007 diesel spill in Robson Bight. To learn more about the work of OrcaLab visit www.orcalab.org 

About the whales

The Northern Resident orca whales of British Columbia are designated as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and, along with the endangered southern resident orca population, have been the focus of a recovery plan initiated by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to assess the threats to the species. Orcas have become icons of the West Coast and are intriguing to researchers for their communal and cooperative lifestyle.

ORES 

The Ocean Research and Education Society (ORES) was founded by the Canadian zoologist Ned Lynas in 1978. The non-profit organization, based in Les Bergeronnes, Quebec, is dedicated to the study of free living rorqual whales (blue, finback, humpback and minke) visiting the summer feeding ground of the St. Lawrence estuary in Eastern Canada, some 800 kilometres from the open Atlantic. Under the supervision of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Parks Canada (Parc Marin du Saguenay-Saint-Laurent) the lead researcher Ursula Tscherter focuses on the minke whales that concentrate each summer in these protected waters. Scientific data is collected on the long-term distribution, population dynamics, habitat use, feeding ecology and photo-identification of these poorly known marine mammals, which are the main target of today’s whaling industry. Biologists, students and volunteers from around the world join the field courses offered by ORES to help collect scientific data by applying non-invasive or minimally intrusive methods. Today, ORES maintains the most comprehensive photo-identification catalogue in the world, holding more than 300 identified individuals, some with sighting histories of 15 years or more. Each summer 100 to 150 individual whales are sighted on up to 50 different days.

Based on the identification of individual animals, ORES has shown that minke whales concentrate in certain areas and develop strong preferences for certain habitats and even feeding sites. For instance, since 2000, several well-known individuals have moved into the Saguenay fjord where they have adapted their feeding strategies to the predominant and unique physical conditions which differ strongly from the open waters of the estuary. These specialists have developed novel feeding techniques not used in the adjacent waters and which have not, so far, been documented elsewhere in the world. They apply manoeuvres to first entrap (head slaps, under water exhales, and circles) and eventually to engulf their prey in different body planes (oblique, lateral or ventral). During such ventral manoeuvres, minkes often expose their genital slits which allowed determining the sex of more than 40 animals, all of which were females. This supports the general belief that minke whales segregate by sex in their northern feeding grounds, where males distribute in deeper offshore waters and females and juveniles concentrate in coastal waters. Coastal waters have the highest concentrate of the minke’s prey but also the highest rate of human activity. Thus, female minke whales and their offspring are highly exposed to negative human–caused impacts such as overexploitation of their prey species, entanglements, boat collisions, chemical and noise pollution, and climate change.

ORES is dedicated to work towards a better understanding of the lives of minke whales through scientific research which will hopefully lead to international conservation efforts to protect these fascinating marine mammals and the ecosystems they live in. The extensive knowledge gained is not only shared with the scientific community but also the public in order to raise international awareness and to make minke whales well-known and beloved. Visit www.ores.org to learn more about research results, course programs and to view unique photographs of the whales of the St. Lawrence.

About the whales

Although minke whales are found throughout the world’s oceans, they are not often studied or well understood. Minke whales are of interest because they are the primary target of commercial whale hunts and though the population found within the ORES study region is not targeted, many questions remain about whether minkes in these waters could migrate to hunting grounds.