Spectacular Days for Whale Sightings and Weather

Friday, May 18: It was a magnificent day out at sea.  We had our first right whale sighting at 11:30, launched the small boat, and did not return until 5:30.  The two-meter (about 7 feet) high swells made it a significant feat getting in and out of the small boat, but once it departed from the Delaware II , the water was like glass almost the entire time.  After following five right whales, we seemed to have found ourselves in the middle of an excellent feeding site. We suddenly were surrounded by a dozen feeding sei whales, skim feeding in every direction.  There were several right whales skim-feeding with all the seis, and on the outskirts were a few basking sharks. All in all we photographed 11 right whales, and biopsied one sei whale.

Saturday, May 19: Rough morning seas this Saturday did not look promising, but after having a known mom and calf come along side the boat, and a few other individuals after, we launched the small boat and found ourselves in yet another amazing feeding ground, with sei whales, right whales, and basking sharks in every direction. There was a group of 5 right whales echelon feeding, with sei whales and basking sharks all in the same circle. And for the most exciting news: we believe we found a new calf, and are awaiting for ID confirmation from the New England Aquarium, which maintains the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog!

A new calf with its mother? (Photo credit: Jennifer Gatzke, NEFSC/NOAA)

Sunday, May 20:  Another beautiful day brought us to our most successful day yet.  We came across at least 30 different right whales today, and managed to get a biopsy from one of our “wanted” lists.  There were many whales feeding in groups today, once again mixing with sei whales.  The small boat was launched by 8:30 in the morning and not brought in until 6 PM.  We’re heading back towards Provincetown before lunch today to anchor for some bad weather heading our way on Tuesday, but should be back in the right whale rich waters come Wednesday.

Genevieve Davis
NEFSC’s Protected Species Branch

Right whales and the ship’s last cruise

It was a great first day (May 15)  for the last cruise leg on the Delaware II.  Calm seas and clear visibility brought us many right whales, sei whales, fin whales, a few humpbacks, and several basking sharks.  We launched the small boat and were able to photograph 5 right whales, one of which is entangled in fishing gear.

With rough weather today (May 16), we anchored off of Provincetown.  The water is calm enough for us to do some small boat practice around the Delaware, but we’ll be back on course tomorrow, heading North to continue the cruise effort.

One of the  scientists aboard, NOAA’s Teacher-At-Sea Ellen O’Donnell, is keeping a blog which you can follow for more information at http://tiny.cc/atsea.

More soon,
Genevieve Davis

NOTE:  More information about the entangled right whale sighted on this cruise, and how disentanglement team members from the Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester  who were invited to join the cruise worked closely with NEFSC  scientists and ship personnel, visit: http://www.nero.noaa.gov/nero/hotnews/rwrc/.

Right Whale Cruise March 2012

Right whale high skim feeding at sunset. (Photo credit: NOAA/Pete Duley)

Overall we had a very successful cruise given the time of year it was conducted. March on the open North Atlantic is not usually very inviting. We spent the first two days, which were also the roughest, deploying MARUs (Marine Autonomous Recording Units aka pop-up buoys) along the edges of Georges Bank. Those buoys will sit on the ocean floor collecting acoustic data until they’re retrieved on the June cruise. We then began visual surveys for right whales in earnest, going to all the areas where right whales have been seen historically in March. Apparently this year was not typical. We surveyed the western and southern parts of the Great South Channel to no avail, though there were large groups of humpbacks and finbacks to be seen. We did find a handful scattered around Stellwagen Bank as well as south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The deck crew ran CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) casts every night throughout the cruise to gather oceanographic data.

Three right whales skim feeding by Race Point off Provincetown, MA. (Photo credit: NOAA/Tim Cole)

The bulk of the right whales were concentrated around the tip of Cape Cod, in an area well surveyed by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies (PCCS). Knowing that those animals were going to be well documented photographically by our PCCS colleagues, we spent just a day there and focused on collecting any biopsy samples from animals that we still need genetic data on. PCCS had seen approximately 13 animals in Cape Cod Bay to date that still need to be sampled. Alas, none of the 30 or so whales we photographed that day were ones that needed to be biopsied, but we had a glorious day right off the beach of Provincetown.

NOAA Fisheries PSB reasearchers Tim Cole, Allison Henry, and Pete Duley documenting right whales by Race Point off of Provincetown, MA (Photo credit: NOAA/Keith Hernandez)

Though the weather was better than we expected, we still had some rough days due to high winds. We spent 2 days at the dock about halfway through the cruise to wait out an offshore gale and cut the cruise short a day due to worsening conditions. But the good weather outweighed the bad and, all in all, it was a successful March cruise!

Allison Henry

Fog, Fog and More Fog…and Some Whales

Delaware II returned to the NEFSC’s Woods Hole Laboratory dock on Tuesday (May 17), since it did not make good sense to sit at anchor in the fog just off of Nantucket for days. With promising weather in the forecast, we departed Woods Hole on Friday the 20th and steamed through the night to a point northwest of Howell Swell (an undersea feature east of Cape Cod).

Fulmars in the fog (Photo credit: Kate Sparks, Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GDNR)

There we sat all day Saturday in thick fog! We ran up to the flying bridge a few times during the day, hopeful that a new-found mile of visibility would soon open up. It never did. Inevitably it would close right back in to the 50 feet of visibility we were looking at for most of the day. The NEFSC’s twin otter tried to take a look around for us on their way to coastal Maine. They called and reported thick fog everywhere in the Great South Channel (GSC) region…so we sat.

Photo credit: Kate Sparks, Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GDNR)

The winds picked up just at sunset Saturday and gave us a fairly rough night. On Sunday morning, the skies were overcast but we had good visibility. We
surveyed about 120 miles of track line, zig zagging through Howell Swell
and southward. We encountered three individual right whales, all widely
dispersed. Our sea state started as a Beaufort 4 with about a six-foot swell and improved throughout the day.  Around 1930hrs (7:30 pm EDT) last night, we came upon about five right whales within a mile or two of each other.

This morning (Monday the 23rd) it’s blowing around 17-22kts (knots, or roughly 19-25 miles per hour) and the seas are building. We found a pile of right whales! Beginning where we left off last night, we scouted around a bit. Approximately 30 right whales or so in the area. We have a strong beaufort 4 and building, which prohibits any small boat work.

Sighting whales from the DEII, with some help from "the big eyes" at right. (Photo credit: Kate Sparks, GDNR)

We are about 50nm east of Nauset. We will continue to track south and see what we find until conditions are unworkable, and will head for cover tonight near Chatham. Tomorrow’s forecast is 20-25kts (winds of roughly 23 to 29 miles per hour), with some hope in Wednesday’s forecast of lighter winds.

Lisa Conger
Chief Scientist, DE 11-04
Large Whale Program, NEFSC
Woods Hole Laboratory

Three humpback whales, two minke whales, one sei whale, and a puffin as the bird for the day…

Saturday, May 14:

We woke to a consistent foghorn blowing from the NOAA Ship Delaware II. At 1100 hrs (11: 00 a.m.) the fog lifted enough and we returned to ‘on effort’ and our visual survey. Once on top of the fly bridge (or flying bridge, an elevated open area above the pilot house ) and sturdy behind “the big eyes” (very large magnifying binoculars mounted in an adjustable pedestal), we continued east/west tracks on the southern most end of the 50-fathom contour (about 300 feet deep) – an area historically known to have North Atlantic right whales.  However, history was not repeated on this day, as we did not come across any of our target species.

Despite the limited visibility and dearth of right whales, we were able to complete 4 tracks and recorded quite a few sightings. We saw a large group of Atlantic white-sided dolphins (~ 25 individuals), 2 humpback whales, 2 minke whales, 1 sei whale, 1 basking shark, 1 harbor porpoise, and a partridge in a pear tree… In addition to marine mammals, we also brushed up on our bird identification skills with a puffin sighting claiming the #1 spot for bird of the day.

Sunday, May 15:

We woke with the engines underway and an agenda at hand. We were steaming to Hyannis, MA, where we would perform a crew personnel transfer – swapping out deck crew and scientists Tim Cole and Eric Matzen for Beth Josephson and Kate Sparks.

After a successful transfer, Beth and Kate quickly jumped into rotation as we resumed visual efforts in the late afternoon. We continued to survey as the Delaware II transited back to the study area, cruising up the west side of the shipping lane. Shortly after suiting up in our mustangs (insulated work suit that also can floa), we stumbled upon a pile of humpback whales and with all eyes on the fly bridge – identified at least 23 big-winged New Englanders (otherwise known as 23 humpback whales, who haopoen to have long pectoral fins!)

Monday, May 16:

Excited for the prospect of another day, we woke instead to the return of the foghorn and a sky without a horizon. Currently we stand ‘off effort’ but will spend the rest of the day actively searching for open patches to work. And despite an unfavorable extended forecast, we remain hopeful that the fog will lift, the seas will lie down (meaning they will flatten or calm), aerial survey support will locate heavy concentrations of right whales, and we will productively work from the small boat! In the interim, we hope all those following along at home are doing well. Stay tuned for more stories from the DE II…

Sarah Mussoline

Wind, Waves and Lots of Whales: The 2011 North Atlantic Right Whale Survey Is Underway

Wednesday afternoon, May 11:

We departed Woods Hole Harbor at 2 p.m  into Vineyard Sound, headed southwest for a bit and entered Buzzards Bay through Quicks Hole, a  passage between Pasque  and Nashawena Islands in the Elizabeth Island chain that separates Buzzard’s Bay from Vineyard Sound.  The wind had whipped up Buzzards Bay, but we entered a calm Cape Cod Canal that evening knowing Cape Cod Bay, to the northeast at the other end of the Canal, would likely be worse.

Luckily, Cape Cod Bay wasn’t as bad as expected, so we steamed across and anchored up in the lee  of Provincetown, protected from the wind and waves,  for a peaceful night at anchor.

Thursday morning, May 12:

We peeked around the corner of Race Point to find a leftover six-to-eight-foot swell running in the bay.  There was some urgent work to be done, so we headed out from shelter to retrieve 10 acoustic pop-up buoys, used for localization and distribution purposes,  that were scheduled to “pop-up” soon –  whether we were ready to retrieve them or not.

Due to the skill of the officers and crew of the Delaware II and Protected Species Branch acoustician  Sarah Mussoline’s knowledge of the pop-up retrieval process, the day was a success with all 10 buoys retrieved by quitting time.

"To catch pop-up, one must think like pop-up - Adrian. " Crew member Todd Wilson follows a colleague's advice to become " one" with the pop-ups. (Photo Credit: Adrian Martyns-Fisher, NOAA)

We were close to Wednesday night’s anchorage, so we decided to give ourselves another night’s sleep out of the swell.

Chief Scientist Lisa Conger checks the pop-ups, officially known as marine acoustic recording units or MARUs, on the deck of the NOAA Ship Delaware II after retrieval. (Photo credit: Sarah Mussoline, NOAA Fisheries Service)

Friday morning. May 13:

The visibility was good and the sun was shining, so we lined up on our first visual survey transect to the south.  There was some lingering swell, but it wasn’t long before we got into some serious whale action with congregations of humpback, fin and sei whales, and mixed bird species feeding.  By the end of the day we had logged approximately 227 individual marine mammals sighted, mostly humpback, minke, and fin whales.

Saturday, May 14:

As I write this, the sun is burning off the dense fog and we are gearing up for another potentially productive day on the DEII’ s 2011 North Atlantic Right Whale Survey.

Eric Matzen
Protected Species Branch
Woods Hole Laboratory

May 17th, Our Best Day Yet!!

If you’d asked me last night if yesterday could be topped, I would have said, “no way.” We worked around forty right whales and got three biopsy samples. At the end of the day, I would stand corrected.

Tagging crew aboard Boo Radley. Photo by Allison Glass/NOAA.

We were on watch by 0600 and launched the little gray boat and Boo Radley from the back deck of the Delaware II(DEII) by 0730hrs.  We’d returned to the same area that we were working yesterday, near the “BC” buoy just east of Chatham, MA. From the flybridge of the ship, we could see the water towers and make out houses on the beach.  So, ahem, being near the “BC” buoy means, “in the middle of the shipping lanes.” Uugh. During our few days with whales in this area, the ships coming through seemed to be complying with the 10kts. speed restriction.

Calf of right whale #2460. Photo by Beth Josephson/NOAA.

The seas were a bit choppy in the morning, making it sort of difficult to work whales. But by lunch time, we’d worked about seven right whales. Seas calmed in the afternoon, and we worked another handful of right whales. We decided to do a little survey expedition to the south, east, and north of the concentration of whales. We picked up one outlier to the south. As we headed east, it became clear that there we no whales close in that direction. We headed north, past the concentration, veered westerly, and came back into the area that the DEII was working from the north. We picked up a mother/calf pair that had already been sampled this winter but had not been seen yet in the Great South Channel. Then we picked up our second biopsy target for the day, Eg#1326, first seen in 1983, but never sampled.  As we got closer to the DEII, we had another hour and a half before we needed to get the Little Gray Boat loaded back aboard. We decided to continue a bit south, back into the fray of right and sei whales from that morning.

The elusive right whale Eg#1715 high skim feeding. Photo by Beth Josephson/NOAA.

As we neared the area, it was a sight to behold! The sea was flat calm, and there were right whales high skimming everywhere! They were fairly easy to work, as they fed through a patch of copepods in one direction, showing us one side of their head, and then made a 180° turn, showing us the other without us having to maneuver the boat hardly at all. A photo-ID person’s dream. Curiously, they were all different individual whales from the ones we saw that morning. We worked one, then another, and another, and then as we approached the next, it became clear to us that it was Eg#1715. We danced a little jig on the boat.  We’d seen her one afternoon in really choppy seas but didn’t realize that she needed to be darted, and we’d been kicking ourselves ever since. The crossbow came out, and we sampled the third whale of the day, all three whales known since the 1980s and never before sampled! OK, now THIS was our best day yet!

Adventures on the Atlantic

Clay on watch aboard the Delaware II

Seas were a bit lumpier than we’d hoped the morning of May 13th. We were in the same area that we ended the day before, with a handful of right whales around. We surveyed north, trying to find more of a concentration. Around 1030 hours, we got into an area with about a dozen or so right whales. It’s as far north as we’ve been during the whole cruise. Around position 41 51.5N x 69 28.0W (check the NOAA ship tracker for our location at all times). The seas calmed a bit, and we launched both small boats and got in about six good hours on the water.

In the gray boat, we biopsied another older right whale that had never been sampled!  In their trusty inflatable, BooRadley, Mark and Nadine had a good tag attachment, over three hours! The winds really picked up quickly, and it got snotty fast. Always seems like we are downwind from the ship when this happens and have to slog our way back into the seas. No matter though, it was another great day on the water and all back aboard by 1730hrs.

Beth and Grace doing small boat work.

We were not involved in the right whale disentanglement that day, but could hear a bit of it on the radio. For those of you who don’t know, NOAA’s aerial survey team located an entangled right whale off the coast of Chatham, MA, (about 30nm south of where we were working) and circled there, staying with the whale to assist the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies disentanglement response team in locating it as quickly as possible. The response team, with guidance from our aerial team, was successful in fully disentangling the whale.

Great Strides in Right Whale Research

Grace watches as they launch the little gray boat over the side of the Delaware II.

After 45 hours of tracking the RATS (Realtime Acoustic Tracking System) buoys, we were ready to retrieve them on May 12th. Around 0700hrs, Grace, Allison, Beth and Clay launched in the Little Gray Boat to work right whales in the area, and Nadine, Sarah, and Amalia went off in the inflatable boat, BooRadley, to pick up the RATS buoys.  They accomplished the pick-ups in a few hours, and Mark and Nadine began tagging efforts.

Allison successfully completes her first biopsy sample.

We found another mother/calf pair. The calf of this pair had not been sampled yet. Allison got her first right whale biopsy sample ever! She nailed it on the first try. We’ve now added two more calf samples to the tally from down south this winter.  These samples will contribute to the ongoing genetic research being done by colleagues in Canada. It’s important to sample the calves when they are still with their mothers.

It was a fairly cold gray day in the Atlantic Ocean, and around midday we were hopeful for a hot lunch. We called the ship, and our chef extraordinaire was going to put something together for us. What service– a quick drive by and we have a box of hot lunches…plates of shrimp no less!

Grace, Beth, and Clay pause for a lunch break on the water.

Back to the whale pursuit.  Seas picked up in the afternoon, but workable still. Getting a bit difficult to follow whales up sea … or a little wet,  I should say. Not too rough to recognize an old whale, #1056, who had never been biopsy sampled! This whale has been known to the catalog for thirty years, and no one had ever sampled it… until we did on Wednesday! It was a great day on the water!

Burning the Midnight Oil

41 33.05 N
69 22.87 W
12:30 AM

Rough seas on the Atlantic. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA

This is Nadine, writing to you during the night shift.  Although the Delaware II is far from quiet, (there are lots of fans and lights and instruments buzzing), it is peaceful in the usually bustling dry lab because most folks on the ship are sleeping.  Yesterday morning we awoke to the sound of the anchor chain being hauled in, and the Delaware II immediately began pitching and rolling in large waves and high winds.  The wind quieted throughout the day, and by late afternoon the waters were calm.  We were treated to a beautiful sunset and the ocean began to look more like it was made of liquid mercury than seawater.

Sun setting on the ocean, as viewed from the Delaware II. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA

We’ve been completing an anchor station over the last 48 hours, although the ship isn’t actually at anchor.  Yesterday morning we set 4 RATS (real-time-acoustic-tracking-system) buoys in a square array.

Mark deploys RATS buoy

Then the captain positioned the Delaware II in the middle of the buoys.  The buoys are recording whale vocalizations and other sources of noise in the water.  Aboard the Delaware II, while keeping in the center of the RATS array, we are collecting data about seawater, zooplankton, and whales.  Lisa, Alison, Beth, and Clay spent the past 2 days up on the flying bridge scanning for and counting whales around the ship.  They deserve a round of applause, because it has been very cold and windy up there!  Mark, Sarah, Amalia, and I took turns operating a small arsenal of oceanographic instruments that are housed in a large metal cage.  Every 30 minutes, we lower the cage to the seafloor, all the while measuring the temperature and salinity of the water, collecting a count of particles in the water column, and photographing zooplankton with an underwater microscope.  The wonderful and capable crew of the Delaware II helped us complete nearly100 casts with our cage at this station!

We have plans to launch Boo early tomorrow morning to pick up the buoys, but first we have a night of instrument casts to complete.

Bringing instrument cage aboard at sunset. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA