Tracking ocean giants: New whale research projects at CeNak

8 November 2018

Photo: Institut für terrestrische und aquatische Wildtierforschung (ITAW)

The best overview of whales in the Antarctic: Helena Herr conducting research.

Whales may be the world’s largest mammals, but they are not the easiest sea creatures to research. In several projects, some of which are funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC), CeNak whale expert Helena Herr wants to find out where whales go when they leave their feeding grounds in the Antarctic, where they mate, and where they raise their young. She focuses on razorbacks and their main source of food, krill. Herr also heads an international research expedition to try out new monitoring methods.

Up to 70 whales in a veritable feeding frenzy is not something that even a whale researcher sees everyday. Helena Herr, a whale expert at the Center of Natural History (CeNak), was witness to just such a spectacle on her last two research trips to the Antarctic aboard the Polar Star. “The water was really churning and spraying and it was impressive to actually see it,” Herr said. Krill are shrimp-like crustaceans. Birds and seals also like to join in the whale feast.

Less sea ice could affect whales

What is the exact relationship between the availability of krill and whale distribution? Bettina Meyer from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Sacha Viquerat from the Veterinary College of Hannover, and Herr are now evaluating the data from their last expedition. The Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund supported the project with €45,000. The researchers focused on the baleen whale population in the Antarctic Peninsula. “Climate change could affect the animals because melting sea ice could lead to less krill,” Herr explains.

Expedition to the Antarctic

“Which routes the razorbacks take to the Antarctic and the Southern Polar Sea and where they retreat after the Antarctic summer; where they mate and raise their young—this is all still quite a mystery,” says Herr. The researchers would also like to find out how many razorbacks there still are and how they are distributed throughout the Antarctic Ocean. Herr focuses on these questions in a new CeNak project with €291,000 in funding from the DFG. They will analyze whale migration patterns recorded by satellite and take population surveys by helicopter. Next year a research team headed by Herr will once again collect extensive data on a Polar Star expedition to the Antarctic and observe whales. The DFG project at CeNak will run for 3 years.

Recognizing whales

In 2020 Herr and a team of international researchers are scheduled to embark on a major expedition aboard the Maria S. Merian. As head of the expedition, Herr would like to look at the distribution of razorbacks and krill at the same time. To do so, the team will  navigate a zig-zag route that they have worked out in advance. “This is the best way for us to cover the area we want to analyze,” Herr says. They will record whale sightings along the way and regularly drop krill nets.

The researchers will also take tissue samples from the whales and conduct pollutant analyses to investigate population genetics. To do so, they will use a specially designed crossbow to perform biopsies from their ship or dinghies. The razorbacks will also be equipped with satellites so that researchers can follow their migration paths. The team will also use methods of photo identification on this expedition, an approach that has not been used much for razorbacks. They will photograph the animals, try as best as they can to identify individuals, and compare the photographs with other razorback photos: Essentially, this is face recognition for whales. The whale experts hope thereby to better understand the way individual animals spread over longer periods of time.

Using drones to observe whales

The first thing that researchers usually see on their expeditions is whale breath. What is known as “blow” is especially easy to see in the cold Antarctic air. How exactly the animals surface, their coloring, and how they display their backs all provide clues to the particular species. Researchers have an especially good view from the air. Unmanned drones are also being used increasingly to observe whale behavior and take videos. These are more flexible and less costly than helicopters. Herr hopes that they can make whale research both easier and more intensive.

The research team headed by Herr will study whale behavioral patterns using aerial cameras aboard the Maria S. Merian. Because drones can make a huge number of digital photos, the researchers also want to develop methods for automatically processing them and they want to find out if and how drone data can be used to estimate population. They also want to develop ways to use flights to observe whales over longer distances. The IWC will support the drone project with just under €35,000 and the Australian Antarctic Division will oversee it.

Has the whale population recovered since the whaling moratorium?

Since 2012 Herr has been an independent expert member of the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee. As such, she is responsible for preparing the annual scientific data for the IWC’s policy decisions. At the moment, one of her main interests is the recovery of the razorback population in the southern hemisphere. The IWC now supports one of Herr’s research projects within the scope of the Southern Ocean Research Partnership to the tune of €93,000.

An international research team is evaluating the data on the razorback population in the Antarctic Peninsula gathered over the last 20 years. They hope to find clues to the current population and its recovery since the IWC’s moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. “Before that, razorbacks were hunted so intensively that their population in the southern hemisphere fell to below 2 percent of its original size,” says Herr. The project should also lead to the creation of an international network on razorback research in the Antarctic. 

Further information

Department of Mamology Research at CeNak

International Whaling Commission (IWC):https://iwc.int/home

German Research Foundation:www.dfg.de

Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund:http://www.antarcticfund.org

Southern Ocean Research Partnership:https://iwc.int/sorp