Whales are dying, but numbers are unknown. Coronavirus has stalled scientific fieldwork

By SUSANNE RUST, 

ROSANNA XIA

MARCH 28, 2020

7:53 AM

As gray whales began their northern migration along the Pacific coast, earlier this month — after a year of unusually heavy die-offs — scientists were poised to watch, ready to collect information that could help them learn what was killing them.

The coronavirus outbreak, however, has largely upended that field work — and that of incalculable other ecological studies nationwide.

A large network of marine biologists and volunteers in California normally spend this time of year keeping an eye on gray whales, documenting their numbers and counting strandings as the leviathans swim from Mexico to the Arctic.

Scott Mercer, who started Point Arena’s Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study seven years ago, said the watch was called off Wednesday, as he and his wife were told by a local sheriff to disperse and go home.

“I guess two people are now considered a public gathering,” he said, with a wry chuckle.

In Los Angeles, Alisa Schulman-Janiger said she had to shut her survey down March 20, meaning this will be the first time in 37 years that data on the northern migration will not be complete.

“We had to,” said Schulman-Janiger, director of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society. “We couldn’t hazard anybody’s health.”

Up and down the West Coast and beyond, field research on a variety of endangered, threatened and migrating species has ground to a halt. Plovers? Abalone? They are on their own now, as scientists are forced to stay at home.

Read more

Solar Storms Might Be Causing Gray Whales to Get Lost

By Kimberly Hickok - Reference Editor 10 days ago

Strandings of healthy gray whales increase with the prevalence of solar storms.

AUSTIN, Texas — Migrating animals that live in Earth's oceans may have a closer relationship with the sun than we thought. New research shows that healthy gray whales are nearly five times more likely to strand when there is a high prevalence of sunspots, and therefore high levels of radio waves emitted from solar storms. The researchers presented their findings here at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting on Tuesday (Jan. 7). 

"It's a fascinating finding," Kenneth Lohmann, a biologist who studies magnetoreception (or how animals detect Earth's magnetic field) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Live Science in an email. "There have been several previous reports linking magnetic storms to whale strandings, but this is a particularly well-done and convincing analysis," said Lohmann, who was not involved in the study.

Scientists are unsure if whales use magnetoreception to navigate, but migratory whales, such as gray whales, are likely candidates because the ocean provides few other navigational cues, said study lead author Jesse Granger, a conservation biophysicist at Duke University in North Carolina. 

Continued

Snapping shrimp may act as 'dinner bell' for gray whales off Oregon coast

Date:  February 13, 2018

Source:  American Geophysical Union

Summary:

Scientists have for the first time captured the sounds of snapping shrimp off the Oregon coast and think the loud crackling from the snapping of their claws may serve as a dinner bell for eastern Pacific gray whales.

     

Read on 

More gray whales are risking their lives for shrimp cocktail

By Elizabeth PennisiOct. 26, 2017 , 12:00 PM

HALIFAX, CANADA—Among cetaceans, gray whales are the curmudgeons: They’re often reclusive and set in their ways, spending much of their time nosing alone along the Arctic Ocean bottom for tasty invertebrates. But a dozen gray whales along the coast of Washington state are showing that even loners can get social. Using special suction cup tags with cameras and sensors—plus high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth—marine biologists have found that a small party of whales has started detouring 200 kilometers to feast on ghost shrimp during their annual northward migration—and that the party is getting bigger all the time. That behavior reveals that even gray whales can learn new tricks from their companions, the scientists say.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the whales are spending “a lot” of time together, said John Calambokidis, a marine mammal researcher at the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, here at this week’s biennial meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.

Continued

‘Unprecedented’ series of killer whale attacks filmed in California

May 1, 2017


by Chuck Bednar


A group of orcas was caught on video killing a gray whale calf last Friday – the latest fatality in what experts are calling an “unprecedented” series of attacks which were led by a group of nine related killer whales and which claimed a total of four victims over a seven-day span.

The attacks have taken place in Monterey Bay, California, and the most recent occurred on Wednesday and was filmed by Nancy Black, a marine biologist at Monterey Bay Whale Watch, according to reports published by The Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle. The video shows the group of nine orcas separating a gray whale calf from its mother and killing it over the span of just 20 minutes. Earlier attacks had involved as many as 33 killer whales, said Black, but the same group of nine orcas, related across four generations and led by a matriarch.

Orca attacks often take hours to complete and are unsuccessful, the biologist explained. But the efficiency of Wednesday’s kill was “like a record,” she told The Guardian. “I’ve been studying them for 30 years... [and] this has really never happened before... It’s pretty unprecedented just because the same group of killer whales has been feeding on them each time.”
Delayed start to hunting season likely to blame

In a typical killer whale attack, Black told the Chronicle, the mother gray whale uses her tail in an attempt to fight off the predators, and will also roll over, belly-up with her calf on top. But in Wednesday’s attack, she said, the mother and calf were skinnier and likely weaker than typical gray whales, making them easier prey for the hunting orcas.

 
Read more at

For the second year running record numbers of whales spotted off the coast of Southern California

Grey whales are among the species that seem to be very much on the increase in California waters

The number of whale sightings off the Southern California coast are up considerably on normal counts, reports the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Sightings of gray whales — about 20,000 making their annual migration from the Bering Sea to Mexico — were headed for a second record December in as many years, while orcas and rare blue whales also arrived on the Los Angeles coast as Christmas week visitors.

The marine mammal explosion for the second year running has aroused great excitement in the marine community.

Scientists can’t explain the reason for the increase, but speculate on warmer waters, more food in the Arctic, or even possibly more citizen scientists combing the seas for sightings.

Even with a fading El Niño, the waters off the Pacific coast are warmer.

continued ...

Gray Whale Population Up to 5 Times Larger Before Whaling, Study Finds

The population of eastern Pacific gray whales shows a huge dip at the same point that whaling increased in the early 20th century, a new analysis of acient whale genes shows.

Eastern Pacific gray whales are a subspecies of grey whale that lives in the Pacific Ocean, migrating from the Arctic to Mexico yearly. Their population is currently estimated to be around 20,000. They are up to 46 feet (14 meters) long and weigh up to 99,000 pounds (45,000 kilograms).

While scientists have known that commercial whaling decreased whale populations, the specifics of the population prior to whaling has been uncertain. To get a better understanding of the pre-whaling numbers for one subspecies of gray whale, the researchers used DNA samples from the bones of eastern Pacific gray whales that lived between 150 and 2,500 years ago and compared the results with the genomes of modern whales.

"In this case, we were able to look at pre-whaling specimens of gray whales, and found that the genetic data are consistent with a sharp and recent bottleneck — very likely the result of commercial whaling," study researcher Elizabeth Alter, of City University of New York, York College, said in a statement.

Read more:  http://www.livescience.com/20199-whale-population-ancient-dna.html

Unusual Amount Of Gray Whales Spotted Of California Coast

Whale watchers are saying that migrating gray whales are swimming through Southern California waters in record numbers this winter.


The Los Angeles Times said on Wednesday that whale watchers at Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes have recorded a record 163 sightings in December so far, which is the most that have been logged at this location in 28 years.

At this time last year, observers logged 26 gray whales. The previous record saw 133 of the mammals in 1996.

“I’ve seen some pretty good years but never anything like this,” Joyce Daniels, a volunteer in the whale census, told the LA Times.

“We had whales everywhere. So many I was having trouble figuring out which whale was which,” she said. “It’s a real adrenaline rush to have so many whales.”

Over 20,000 gray whales migrate each year from the arctic to Baja California, where females give birth. The mammals then migrate back north for the spring weather.

California’s coast is not just accustomed to only gray whales. Last spring, hundreds of blue whales were spotted in the area. Humpback whales have also been seen off the Californian coast.

Researchers say they hope this means things in the whaling world are going good and the populations are becoming more robust.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112447067/unusual-amount-of-gray-whales-spotted-of-california-coast/