Map: National Marine Fisheries Service
A team of killer whale researchers is tracking J pod by satellite, after attaching a special radio tag to J-26, a 21-year-old male named “Mike.”
Brad Hanson, who is leading the research team from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said the tagging occurred Monday without incident as darkness fell over the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“This is really exciting,” Brad told me today by cell phone from the NOAA research ship Bell M. Shimada. “This is something we have been planning on doing for quite a few years now. Everything worked out to encounter the animals in decent weather condition.”
The map above shows where the whales have traveled since Monday afternoon. A website showing the tracks, including an explanation of the project, will be updated roughly once a day.
The goal is to learn where the Southern Resident killer whales go in winter, what they’re eating and why they choose certain areas to hang out. Until now, these questions could not be answered well, because winter sightings were fairly limited.
When I talked to Brad about 4 p.m. Wednesday, the Shimada was towing an acoustic array near Port Angeles, as the researchers listened for the sounds of killer whales that might venture into the strait.
J pod was fairly spread out Monday during the tagging operation, and visibility was low Tuesday during heavy rains. As the whales headed out into the ocean, the crew decided to stay in the strait to avoid 20-foot seas and heavy winds off the coast. They could have followed the whales out, Brad said, but the satellite tag allows the crew to keep track of their location. In rough seas, there’s a risk that the research equipment will be damaged.
“Everything is weather-dependent,” Brad said. “Our plan is to try to catch up with them as soon as we can.”
The goal is to collect fecal samples and fish scales — as the researchers do in summer when the whales are in the San Juan Islands.
“That data is extremely valuable in determining the species of fish,” he said, “and if it’s chinook, what stocks are important.”
The satellite tagging has been controversial among some researchers and killer whale advocates, but it was approved following a study of the potential risks and benefits. See Water Ways entries from 2010:
Orca tagging raises questions about research, Dec. 8,
2010
Orca researchers divided over use of satellite tags, Dec. 28,
2010
The researchers are scheduled to be out with the whales until March 7.
“We’re keeping our options open,” Brad said. “We will spend as much time with Js as we can. It looks like we could get one low-pressure system after another, as is typical for February, but we might get a break on Friday. Sometimes we’ll get these holes in the weather system.
“Right now, we’re basically hanging out in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. If other animals come in, we hope to detect that.”
The tagging permit allows for up to six orcas to be tracked each year, but nobody expects the number of tagged animals to be close to that.
Data from the satellite transmitter is relayed to a weather satellite as it passes over. The information is then transferred to a processing center that determines the location of the transmitter. Through the process, the information gets delayed a few hours.
Also on board the research vessel are seabird biologists and other experts taking samples of seawater and zooplankton and collecting basic oceanographic data.
UPDATE, Feb. 23
By Thursday morning, J pod had moved farther out into the ocean, then south along the Washington Coast. The map on this page updates their progress to 9 a.m. Thursday.
The satellite tag on J-26 transmitted for 3 days and then stopped transmitting on Feb. 23rd. Since it was successful for 3 days is it considered 1 of the 6 tags allowed and now they have only 5 left?
‘Fell off’ ‘stopped transmitting’ lots of implications to those phrases.
How much is all this costing the U.S. taxpayer?
:
As noted on the web page:
“Transmissions from the tag have not been obtained since the morning of February 23rd, probably due to loss of the tag or possibly due to a failure of the transmitter. The researchers will continue to visually and acoustically monitor the whales, and we will continue to post updated information as it becomes available.”
I will try to obtain more information from the researchers, but they are often out of cell phone range.