Whalefest 2015 - more highlights, featuring Hal Whitehead and cetacean culture.

Look out its behind you!

I think it may be dress-down Sunday.... or maybe its the result of the night before (bearing in mind Brighton is party-central for Southeast England, and anyone under twenty did well to survive being out and about on the town last night), anyway, the prize for the tattiest old pair of jeans on  display goes jointly to Wil Travers, Monty Hall and that Bucanan filmaker bloke. What happened to the days when presenters turned up in smart suit and the better ones, a stylish bowtie? I guess it is chic not to be chic, but I digress and its not about the clothes is it.

Those coming to the Whalefest hoping to find some whale experts will have been both disappointed and satisfied. Disappointed because whilst there were not a lot of cetacean experts on display (although that young Stephen Marsh certainly knows one end of dolphin from another) there was one stalking the halls and stalls who stands head and shoulders over many.

It was always going to be a big highlight for me; the grand wizard of whales had been sighted all over the Whalefest for the last day and a half.... and finally it was time, late on Sunday afternoon, for him to actually speak. Confined to the small stage (big mistake Whalefest organisers) and  having to compete with the appreciable noise from the stalls and happy public outside, wizard Whitehead still provided an inspiring presentation on the issue of the era for whale conservation: 'cetacean culture'..

Professor Whitehead's talk began with a series of photographs showing Hal and his team at work on their small research yacht taken by Hal's partner Jennifer, a professinal photographer. The team were shown eating, sleeping, mending the engine, playing cards, biopsy darting, 'D-tagging', whale pooh scooping and diving into the water to retrieve equipment. (Looks like fun, mind you they did not show the rough days).

Then Hal got into the main focus of his talk: evidence for culture in cetaceans. He started with Roger Payne's recording of humpback whale song; the recognition that this was indeed 'song' complete with stricture and repetition (and that even the most skeptical critic of culture now accepted that the songs are shared through social learning). Humpback song evolve and new versions move curiously eastward across oceans and around the world.

Why eastwards? No one knows but Whitehead noted that human culture was a reasonable starting point for comparison. Once human 'culture' had spread from China westwards and then, later in a different phase, out from the west towards the east. Perhaps something similar was happening. Then be moved to the low frequency moans of blue whales - less complex but for some reason all across the world becoming lower and lower in frequency.

He said that the best examples of culture really came from the toothed whales. His next example came from Adelaide harbour and a bottlenose dolphin called 'Billie'. Injured Billie was taken into captive rehabilitation and later, after successful release, was seen tail-walking (rising up high out of the water and moving backwards as if walking on her tail.) This behaviour had previously not been seen in the wild. Billie learnt it from captive dolphins that had been trained to do it, and other wild dolphins then copied it from her.

Billie has now passed away but the Port Adeline dolphins are still tail-walking!

Hal also mentioned the 'sponging' behaviour of some Western Australian dolphins, which carry sponges on their beaks apparently to help them sweep the sea bed for food (perhaps to protect their beaks from the prickly sea urchins there).

He touched on orcas and the Antarctic marine mammal-eating group that famously washes seals off floating ice by making waves through synchronized powerful beating of their tails - another learnt and shared behaviour. And tagging studies have recently shown that these same orcas seen feeding in the pack-ice are now (most unexpectedly) known to move occasionally far away to the north to the warmer waters off Brazil. There is no specific rhyme or reason, time or season for this movement but Hal likened it to the occasional holidays to the warm that humans from our latitudes like to take.

The best studied orcas in terms of matrilineal (female-led) groups exhibiting differences in habitat, food and behaviour are those of the NW of North America, especially around Vancouver Island. Then, his final example came from his beloved sperm whales - a species divided up according to its calls and he spoke of the 'Regular Clan', which go clcik-click-click and the 'Plus One Clan' which goes 'click-click-click-pause- click'. He compared this to the habit in Canadian people of ending their sentences with 'ay' - a culturally learnt aspect of their accent.

He concluded with the following thoughts:

'Culture' can be described as behaviour learnt from others (through 'social learning') and passed on'.

'In some species of cetacean culture determines almost all behaviour'!

Culture also produces 'stupid stuff' and here he compared the (human) charge of the light brigade with the (cetacean) mass strandings!

A key to culture is society and the key to society is then mother-calf bond....

And .... following on the theme of this Whalefest... he emphasized how inappropriate it was to make other cultures subservient to ours!

He ended with this quote:

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” 
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

He received rapturous applause - even some appreciative hooting! (Not everyone gets hooting!)

Wizard Whitehead in action at the Whalefest.

I believe that Hal Whitehead is doing for whales what Jane Goodall has done for chimpanzees. Like her he goes out among them - as deep and as quietly into their habitat as it is possible to go - and in a mainly non-invasive way, he carefully gathers information and then relays it back to our species with enthusiasm and integrity. He's a great interpreter for them.

I wanted to ask him what he thought industrial whaling had done to whale cultures. (sperm whales for example were reduced to a small fraction of their original global population size in the 20th century nd the blue whales to 1% or so of theirs but he was whisked away to a book signing. I will ask him another day. .