Sperm Whales Return to the Bay for Third Year

Tail of a sperm whale seen in the Bay of Fundy July 21, Laurie Murison photographer

July 21 marked the beginning of the third summer sperm whales have been seen in the Bay of Fundy.  At least two males were seen in the upper Grand Manan Basin during a whale watch.  There have been squid at the wharf in North Head on Grand Manan Island since early June.  A sperm whale had been seen on an aerial survey for right whales in the lower Gulf of Maine in June and these combined made it likely that sperm whales would again be seen here.

In late August a dead sperm whale was found near Bar Harbor and was towed in to be necropsied.  A cause of death was not determined.  Sperm whales were not seen off Grand Manan after this time and the squid that had been at the wharves also disappeared.

Master Student First Impressions

The following are impressions and accomplishments of Masters Student, Zachary Siders, who spent his first field season in the Bay of Fundy off Grand Manan Island in August, 2011.  Zach is a Masters Student at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

As my first summer at the GMWSRS, I was unprepared for the extreme variation in the environment. Between tidal swings, fog banks, rolling swell, and varying chop the Bay of Fundy is always fluctuating.  Despite many days of rain, fog, swell, and chop we were able to survey for sharks, assist in whale poop collection, and help colleagues from Duke University deploy dive tags on fin whales. As part of the basking shark research group, my primary role was to help deploy seven satellite pop-up tags on adult sharks. With a cumulative of 255 hours of basking shark sightings we were fortunate to deploy six out of the seven pop-up satellite tags. These deployments are to provide information on migration out of the Bay of Fundy during the winter months. This effort was part of the station’s investigation of spatial and temporal patterns in basking shark movements.

Basking Shark, second largest shark and a filter feeder on zooplankton

As an active part of this investigation, I have been begun analyzing archival sighting data acquired by Laurie Murison, through Whales 'n Sails whale watching company. Fortunately, this dataset dates back 23 years and allows me to analyze how basking sharks spatial distribution has changed over time. Additionally, this dataset will be supplemented by a data request to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. Together, this data will be used in habitat modeling the spatial distribution of basking sharks across the Bay of Fundy. Modeling this information will determine how basking shark critical habitat within the Bay of Fundy has changed across time. With the increasing prevalence of remote sensing data and detailed oceanographic information, the environment features defining this critical habitat can be elucidated. All of this information greatly increases our understanding where basking sharks occur in the Bay of Fundy, a critical habitat for these giant sharks.

Another aspect, I have begun analyzing is the dive profiling movements of basking sharks acquired through our Temperature-Depth Recording tagging efforts. These efforts have been ongoing since 2008 and have acquired 22 days of dive profiling data. This fine-scale diving information can help us understand how basking sharks utilize the extreme variations in the Bay of Fundy especially tidal fronts, temperature contours, and depth profiles. Unlike other basking shark habitats, the Bay of Fundy is extremely tidally driven as well as a protected body of water. Understanding how basking sharks utilized the unique dynamic oceanographic features can greatly enhance our understanding the ecological flexibility of these cosmopolitan creatures.

Basking shark just under the surface with only the large dorsal fin above the water surface.  Basking sharks received their name from this behaviour of coming to the surface.

Most importantly, understanding how basking sharks utilize critical habitat and where these habitats are in the Bay of Fundy can be used to further the conservation of this vulnerable species. In particular, I hope to spatial modeling and diving behavior analysis to determine the ship-strike risk to basking sharks in the bay. As these sharks spend up to 80% of their time within the 12 meter draft of cargo vessels, they are extremely vulnerable to cargo traffic travelling through the Bay of Fundy. Determining these ship-strike risks is essential for conserving basking sharks within the bay and more so, globally.

The field work this summer could not have been accomplished without the advisement of Dr. Andrew Westgate and the help of the rest of the GMWSRS senior scientists. Additionally, the help of Jared Juckiewicz, a summer research assistant, was considerable throughout the field season. The continued analysis could not be possible without Dr. Westgate, Dr. Heather Koopman, and Dr. David Johnston, and I would like to thank them for their ongoing support.

Whale Pump Research

Discussions have been going on for a couple of years to begin a collaboration with Dr. Joe Roman.  Joe Roman is a researcher at the University of Vermont and the author of “Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act” (Harvard) and “Whale” (Reaktion). This summer saw all of that work come to fruition.  Joe has provided the background information about the project:

A few years ago, I was writing an article about the work that Scott Baker and his colleagues were doing in Japan, uncovering the sale of illegal whale meat in the marketplace using DNA. At the time, Japan was arguing for whaling, largely for two reasons. One, whales eat “our” fish, so they should be culled. And, two, certain whales, such as minkes, are so numerous that they are inhibiting the ability of rare species, such as fins and blues, to recover.

Dr. Joe Roman, University of Vermont

This argument might have been in the back of my mind while I was taking marine ecology one spring at the University of Florida. I was learning about one of the basic process in the oceans, known as the biological pump, which causes the downward flow of carbon and nitrogen and can reduce marine productivity. Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton at the surface at night and then migrate deep in the water column by day, presumably to escape predators. This movement, and the downward flux of zooplankton fecal matter, takes nutrients away from the surface, where photosynthesis can occur, to the bottom of the ocean.


As I sat in the back of the class, I drew a diagram based on what I had seen the previous summer in the Bay of Fundy. In contrast to the biological pump, right whales were diving deep to feed--they are sometimes observed with mud on their heads--and quite often defecating at the surface.

A few years later, Jim McCarthy, at Harvard, and I put together a model that showed that whales could have an impact on primary productivity in coastal waters. They increase nutrients at the surface and enhance the growth of algae. This summer, I finally got back to the Bay of Fundy to study the right whale, which forms feeding aggregations just to the east of Grand Manan in an area called the Basin. Of all the ways to collect poop--we typically used a plankton net, patiently following whales until they defecated--perhaps the most dramatic is skirting the edge of a right whale courtship group: one female and several males actively swimming and roiling in the waters. It seemed almost inevitable, the female while swimming on her back would release a thick brown or red fecal plume. We’d wait for the group to swim off--the whales were much larger than our boat--and move in with our net.

Patch of reddish-brown defaecation from a fin whale. 
The colour indicates the whale was probably eating krill. 
Greenish defaecation is most likely from fish consumption.

Two colleagues from Harvard helped analyze the data. John Nevins, a researcher at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, examined the nitrogen levels, and Annabel Beichman, an undergrad, prepped samples to later uncover the microbes that live in whale gastrointestinal tracts. Heather Koopman, of University of North Carolina, lead the search for whales at the wheel of the research vessel Phocoena.

Annabel Beichman, Harvard University

What we have found is that whales, along with seals and seabirds, play an important role in recycling nitrogen in the Gulf of Maine. They release more of this nutrient into the gulf than all rivers combined and even more than point source pollution from sewage effluent. By excreting nitrogen at the surface of their traditional feeding grounds, whales play an important role in maintaining prey aggregations, such as copepods, krill, or herring, which, in a positive feedback loop, supports their tendency to aggregate in feeding areas. They are not eating our fish, as whaling nations claim, but helping increase productivity in areas where they are found. We can have more whales, and more fish, copepods, and krill.

Mola mola (Ocean Sunfish)



Ocean sunfish or mola mola lying on its side, just under the
surface.  The head it toward the top right corner. 



Ocean Sunfish or mola mola are the largest bony fish reaching up to 3.3m (11 feet) and the heaviest over 2300 kg (5000 lbs).  They are disc shaped with two large fins, the dorsal and anal fins which they use to propel themselves through the water.  They are flattened vertically.  Their tail is a long, wavy structure.  They feed on jellies, comb jellies and other plankton.  They come to the surface and often lay on their sides giving them their name, ocean sunfish.  The French name is actually moon fish, poisson lune.  The surface behaviour has been suggested as a method to warm their bodies after spending time as deep as 600m.  Frequently those observed in the Bay of Fundy have their mouths open so perhaps they are also feeding close to the surface.  Most years we see only the occasional ocean sunfish but in the last two summers, multiple sunfish have been seen some days.  The ocean sunfish this year also seem much larger than the ones seen in other years.  Why have the numbers increased in recent years?  It is unknown but some years warm-core eddies break off from the Gulf Stream and get swept into the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy carrying with it species that are usually seen in warmer waters.  This could be the case or other forces were in play bringing these huge fish into the Bay.



Ocean sunfish or mola mola lying on its side at the surface.
Its mouth is open.  These fish feed on jellies.

They are slow moving but can manoeuvre out of the way of oncoming vessels if the vessels aren't travelling quickly but are at risk when they are at or just below the surface since they are difficult to spot until nearly on top of them. They can also breach or leap out of the water. Inshore, however, their ability to navigate leaves much to be desired. 

On the evening of September 10, two friends of the GMWSRS out for a drive had stopped at the fishermen's wharf and found a stranded ocean sunfish.  It was up against the wharf and was bumping into boats, piers and the shoreline.  They tracked us down and we rallied a few people to help, some of whom had never seen an ocean sunfish.  We tried to herd it out from between the floating wharf and the fishermen's wharf using a small inflatable and oars but to no avail.  The sunfish would not go back under or between boats or piers.  It was difficult to judge how heavy this sunfish was but it was at least 2 m across, not including the fins, the same size as the inflatable. We were quite concerned because the tide was beginning to recede and we didn't want the fish to completely strand. 

Finally we decided to grab the sunfish by its dorsal fin when it was up against the shore and try to tow it out.  A friend, who is also a whale watch captain, and the fellow who spotted the sunfish got into a much larger, motorized inflatable and were able to get the sunfish away from between the wharf and the floating wharf but lost their grip before they could get it around the end of the wharf. The fish blundered into a row of boats tied to the wharf before they could grab it again.  It was amazing to watch the sunfish try to swim away from them, jetting water out through its gills as a type of jet propulsion to increase its speed.

Pectoral fin of an ocean sunfish as it lays at the surface.

The second time they got the fish to the end of the wharf but they again lost their grip and the fish got away, this time heading off through the boat moorings but away from the wharf.  It was not seen again and, hopefully, headed out to deeper water with fewer obstacles.  The rescuers did not go unscathed because sunfish skin is like sandpaper, cover by a mucus layer, and they had several scrapes on their hands and arms.  Gloves would definitely be in order next time.

Here are some other articles about stranded sunfish this summer, the outcomes deadly for the sunfish, despite valiant efforts:

http://www.digbycourier.ca/News/2011-08-03/article-2690151/Two-sunfish-photographed-in-basin-before-stranding/1

http://www.souwester.ca/News/2011-08-03/article-2688691/Sunfish-stranded-on-mudflats-of-Moose-River/1