Living near Whales
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I
spent two summers at Mount Desert Rock.
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Mount Desert Rock is a special island far out in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. No one lives in the old lighthouse tower anymore. The lighthouse runs automatically. But the “Rock” can be a great place to study whales.
I spent two summers at the Rock studying whales with other research scientists of our crew—Kim, Tim, and Stephanie. I had studied a number of other animals, including elephants, koalas, and gorillas. I wanted to study whales because they are among the world’s most mysterious animals. Several whale species are facing extinction. If scientists can learn enough about how they live, maybe we can help save them.
The
Rock
The
island is called a rock because there’s almost nothing
growing on it except seaweed and algae. It’s a giant
boulder with ocean all around.
On a clear day we could see for miles and miles--nothing but ocean. Usually we could not see even the closest land, Mount Desert Island, which is twenty-five miles away. So we felt as if we were a long way away from the world. When we ate dinner, our company often consisted of whales swimming by or a group of dolphin or porpoise leaping through the waves.
We were scientists from Allied Whale, which is a research group at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. The goal of Allied Whale is to learn about and help protect the whales of the world. Volunteers come from different parts of the United States to join in the work and fun.
Snapshots
One
of the specialties at Allied Whale is photo-identification
(photo-ID for short) of whales. Just as each human being
has unique fingerprints, so each whale has distinctive markings.
Scientists use photographs of these markings to identify
and keep track of whales. In fact, the research group has
a big catalog of whale photo-IDs, which they share with
other scientists to see what the world’s whales are
doing.
We studied mostly humpback and finback whales. Humpback whales have markings on the undersides of their tails, or flukes. When one of them dives, it often lifts up its flukes. Then you can see its patterns and colors on it. If you’re quick, you can take a photo.
Finback whales hardly ever lift their flukes, but they do have chevrons, which are distinctive patterns on the sides of their bodies. Again, if you’re fast with the camera, you can photograph the markings.
Allied Whale has in its catalog about 850 finbacks and more than 5,000 humpbacks. To keep track of all these whales, we gave them names.
Their names usually were suggested by the whales’ markings or behavior. There are whales swimming in the Gulf of Maine with names like Lunch, Raggedy, Tiger, Hurricane, Snowdrop, Orbit, and Freckles! Lunch, for example, has a big bite taken out of the fin on his back, as if he were almost somebody’s lunch one day.
We also collected samples of whales’ DNA, which is the genetic material that all living things inherit from their parents. We used a special crossbow to take a sample of the whale’s skin. The sample is tiny, and taking it doesn’t hurt the whale.
In the laboratory, one of our scientists looks at this skin sample under a microscope and examines the chromosomes, which carry the whale’s DNA. That sample tells whether the whale is male or female and whether it is related to other whales in our catalog.
An
Early Start
A
typical day at the Rock started at about six o’clock
in the morning. Tim or Stephanie climbed the stairs to the
top of the seventy-foot-high lighthouse to begin the daily
lookout for birds, seals, and, of course, whales. On clear
days, they could see nearly fifteen miles of open water.
Whenever Tim and Steph saw some whales, they would call down to Kim and me. We would quickly get the two boats and the gear ready. Then the four of us would jump into the boats to go out to the whales.
There can be a lot of action when you are in a fourteen-foot rubber boat next to a seventy-foot whale. Sometimes one will jump all the way out of the water. When that happens, the splash it makes when it comes down can get you completely wet.
First, I would steer one boat close to one of the whales, and Tim would take its picture. From the other boat, Stephanie and Kim would use the crossbow to take a skin sample.
I have
studied animals all over the world, from the high mountain
glaciers of British Columbia to the lowlands of Africa.
Working at Mount Desert Rock gave me opportunities as a
scientist that I hadn’t had anywhere else. Living on
that sliver of land out in the ocean made me feel like a
visitor in the home of the whales.
