THE GENTLE GIANTS FEED AND HAVE THEIR BLOWS COLLECTED
Our week 6 guests hailed from Massachusetts, Alaska and Australia. All were part of the Ocean Alliance team that was here to collect whale spouts or “snot” from drones for processing in a lab to learn about what we can learn from the snot of a Blue whale. Perhaps this work will show us that more invasive forms of gather genetic material from whales such at biopsies will no longer be necessary? We all worked in conjunction with a film crew from the United Kingdom which was here filming part of a National Geographic Special. Maybe some good exposure will come from that as well?
The whales and weather cooperated and we had two nights this week where the sea was erupting with krill, small fish and whales feeding on the bounty. It was a beautiful sight to see the water alive and the whales gorging themselves. This sea seems healthy to the point of bursting with life this year. It offers us all hope to see a charismatic species which is so very endangered like the Blue whale, here in such numbers and gorging themselves on the oceans bounty.
Yes we collected whale snot and although our whale identification work took a back seat, it ended up being a most successful week indeed.
As we focused solely on blue whales we did not travel as far and wide so other sightings were limited this week. It will be back to normal for week 7 which will be our final week of this 2017 season.
Michael Fishbach
