On the trail of the blue whale - off Sri Lanka

Fishing boats in Galle Harbour

Sri Lanka has become famous for the accessibility of its blue whales. During my recent brief visit this week, I was in a group taken out to sea by the Sri Lankan navy to look for these ocean giants.

Previously their boat, the Princess of Lanka, was used to move security personnel and now, post-war. she has been put to work in the service of taking people to the whales.

We set off  for the deep sea from the port of Galle. Here are some views.

Galle is on the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka some 74 miles from Colombo. We pass the fort and lighthouse 

A small fishing boat heads in.

Little terns on a marker buoy.

A distant Buddhist temple on shore.

Alert whale watchers with a senior member of crew.

A small flotilla of whale watching boats out on the high sea

Small whale watching vessels and a container vessel.

Customers on the rear deck of the Princess of Lanka

A blue whale - its back curving as it dives.

Blue whale at the surface 

Our boat: the Princess of Lanka back in port.

Further to the sperm whale strandings....

Further to the recent sperm whale strandings in the North Sea, I have just published an article on the Huffington Post site giving a little more information.

Its HERE.

And to compensate for all those recent images of dead and dying sperm whales that we have been seeing in the UK and the rest of Europe recently, here are a couple of live sperm whales off Kaikoura in New Zealand.

In the first the sperm whale is at the water surface to the right of the whale watching boat - you can see his blow hole on the far right and the 'little' bump of his dorsal fin to the left. The second shows him 'fluking up' as he commences a deep dive.

Would you eat an alien? Well would you?

I'm recommending this BBC Radio 4 series - which explores our relationship with animals in an accessible and inspired manner - to all friends and colleagues.

What does it mean to think? What does it mean to be social and self-aware and how does all of this relate to the way that we treat animals raised for food and others. My colleague Christine Nicol at the University of Bristol Vet School did a great job with this and for all overseas who cannot hear it (because the BBC does not allow this), I know she is working on making it more widely available.

Click HERE to access the four episodes.

Favoured Photographs

Find seven nature of your best nature photos said the challenge.

So I looked through my photo files from the last few years and here they are in one place with some 'runners up'.

Might cheer up a wet and windy February!

First the 'runners up'.

Mother and pup grey seal play in the seaweed: Bardsey Island

New Zealand: Spotted shags - parents with two large (and demanding) chicks

UK: Watersmeet in Devon: Dipper

Galapagos Islands: Blue-footed booby.

Floreana, Galapagos Islands: Giant tortoise has a snack 

Floreana, Galapagos Islands: Marine Iguana basking

Bath, UK: my backgarden: Starlings in the Hawthorn

Stourhead, UK: young mute swans in the Autumnal reflections

And the seven I chose (in no special order):

Bardsey Island, UK: grey seal newborn pup.

New Zealand, Banks Peninsula: Hector's dolphin (an endangered species)

New Zealand, Kaikoura: a sperm whale sounding

UK, Exmoor coast in Devon: Eurasian wren

Galapagos Islands; Santa Cruz: Giant tortoise

Galapagos Islands, Santa Cruz: Sally Lightfoot crab

Galapagos Islands, Santa Cruz: diving brown pelican

I have been very fortunate to see so many amazing animals and one lesson from this is that there are fantastic animals neat to home too - if we take time to look.

Midwinter: don't forget the little guys!

It's cold. Much of the UK has a blanket of snow. Out in the cold tiny little bundles of feathers are currently trying to survive in sub-zero temperatures. The smallest birds need to find in the region of a third of their own body weight each day to stay alive. They also need to drink.

So, especially if you usually put food out for the birds, don't stop: keep the feeders topped up and, from time to time, break the ice on your bird baths or melt it by adding some warm tap water.

Birds also cannot find food under snow, so brush it off bird tables and feeders and you may like to consider putting food out on the ground on top of the snow on old tray, bread board or similar to help them find it. This is especially helpful to the birds that usually forage on the ground.

Many of our once common birds are now in decline. Let's help them along a little especially through the very cold periods.

(All images show long-tailed tits - below left with great tit and right with blue tit.)

A Festive Mid-winter Roost

Bath Weir in the early evening

In the busiest part of the new Southgate Shopping Centre in Bath - and right next to where Santa's grotto was until very recently - stands a slim tree adorned with lights and silver baubles. The lights are tuned off but something still shimmers in the branches as night overtakes the late afternoon. More than a hundred little birds have chosen to make this their communal roost. They could not have found a busier part of town.

The little birds are pied wagtails. They are famous for their communal roosting in towns (and at Heathrow airport) and this is the first time that they have added to the Bath town decorations. High in the tree they are reasinably safe from the shoppers (and for the revelers who will come later this Saturday night) and the high building around will give some respite from the strong winds that have been blowing. It will also be a little warmer in the Southgate square than the surrounding countryside to which the robust little birds will disperse in the daytime.

Here they are:

Here is the tree.

And here is Bath Abbey 

Favourite Blogs and Such of 2015

Not sure why I started this short annual review-type thing, but given the growing breadth of means by which people now update themselves on issues, I have broadened it for 2015 to look at some other means of communication too.

The most redoubtable of wildlife authors is Erich Hoytt. HERE he is writing in Hakai online magazine and giving a view that only he can on the evolution and role of photo-iD work in marine mammal research and conservation. It's an excellent piece.

Here is an excerpt:

"If photo-ID has led to an understanding of cultural behavior in whales and to the quest for whale rights, part of that may also be due to certain shifts in human culture that began 40 years ago. A new generation of scientists started paddling out to see whales, to take photos and share information, and to develop ocean-wide photo-ID catalogs of various whale species that have become the cornerstone for much of what we’re learning about whales. Like the transmission of whale culture, there has been a transmission of whale researchers’ culture as these scientists pieced together the stories of whale societies literally one photograph at a time."

The media coverage of the recent departure of the Japanese whaling fleet for Antarctica was, in my view, very poorly done (Japanese whalers may have a different view). This might, in part, be because the departure coincided with the big Paris Climate Conference, where all the experienced environment journalists were (well almost all). Coincidence? No I don't think so.

However, there remains one journalist writing about whaling who can always be relied upon to report accurately and with excellent interpretation and he is Andrew Darby. HERE is a link to some of his contributions for the Sydney Morning Herald.

In addition here is Wayne Parcelle, the CEO of HSUS, talking about the positive aftermath to the shooting of Cecil the Lion. (One UK TV end-of-year-quiz rated poor Cecil as the second most talked about 'person' of 2015). HERE Wayne explains changes in US laws that will push back against the trophy hunting that led to Cecil's killing. HERE he reflects on the whaling issue back in October.
A theme further explored more recently by his colleague Michael Markarian (Chief Program & Policy Officer of The HSUS) HERE.

And not forgetting Naomi Rose's increasingly famous 2015 TED talk on the issue of cetacean captivity. You can find Let's Throw Shamu a Retirment Party HERE.

Finally, my personal prize for the most moving piece of animal-related campaigning this year goes to the Humane Society International-UK's little film about glue traps. In this the trapped and dying mouse is given a voice - the voice of a child - and it still haunts me weeks after I last viewed it, so please proceed with caution. Is this anthropomorphism? Yes. But does it provide us an insight into how the poor trapped and slowly dying mouse might feel. Yes.

Stuck to Death can be viewed HERE 

My own blogs on the Huffington Post can be found HERE.

That's enough - 2015 is put to bed!

A Christmas Visitor RETURNS

It's just a small garden in a small town on the Isle of Wight and, on a Christmas night illuminated by a brilliant full moon, long after all the party- and midnight-mass-goers have gone to sleep, there comes a dainty visitor.  

And he came again in the early hours of boxing day.

(This is the same garden from a different angle). 

He seems in good condition - lovely busy tail.

Favorite Photo of 2015

These birds are part of 'my' little starling flock sitting in an old hawthorn on the hedgerow at the end of my small garden. The one second in from the right still shows some juvenile plumage in his brown head.

The hawthorn is in berry; the sky is blue -it late summer and just below the honeysuckle is still in bloom. Later in the year, the same hawthorn broke in half when strong winds pushed on heavy ivy and honeysuckle and caused the trunk to snap. I think this is my favourite photo of 2015. Its colourful and bit busy and I can almost hear the starlings babbling.

But I also very much like my badgers of course.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.

SMM2015 Big Awards Friday (REV)

Phil Clapham with typical wit, good humour and precision tells us about the status of whales in the Pacific. On the screen is his collaborator (and wife),Yulia, is working through all those falsified whaling records (note the wonderfully well-ordered desk).


Then, after five more consecutive sessions jam-packed with information, on to the business meeting of the Society - expertly presided over by (from the right) Nick Gales - departing president, Jay Barlow, incoming president and the Society's Treasurer, Jim Harvey.

Jay announces that his main focus as the new president will be to establish an SMM conservation fund. He will be seeking sponsors and hopes to make a real difference.

The business meeting includes the announcement of the location of the next SMM meeting in two years and these two young folk in national dress (well woolly hats) will be hosting it in Halifax, Canada. (Full marks for enthusiasm and lots of pretty pictures of Halifax).

There are then various report-backs from the Society's committee's. Here Giuseppe Notabartolo di sciara  SMM senior member-at-large reports in.

Barbara Taylor gives the report of the Conservation Committee below and proposes to make the new conservation award permanent and that a major focus of new conservation focus panels should be bycatch.

James Mead

The onto the Society's Lifetime Award, which is presented to James Mead, Curator Emeritas at the Smithsonian and beaked whale expert. He take us through the history of his institution and its leaders. modestly including his own role in this in the third person.

The Smithsonian was founded  by a bequest from the Smithson family which in modern terms would be worth some $97 million. He is treated to a standing ovation on his conclusion  and pauses to shyly view the packed hall before leaving the stage.

One of the images of the early cetacean biologists
based at the Smithsonian shared by Mead - this is
Frederick True

James Mead with a younger James Mead - note that waistcoat wear - or for Americans 'vest-wear'  - has prevailed. 

A lengthy award ceremony followed and President Gales passed the microphone to Lindsay Porter (below) to deal with all the names whilst he handed out the prizes and gave handshakes and hugs.

Lindsay Porter in action

All in all, SMM2015 in the Union Square part of San Francisco has been an amazing affair. Very rich in information and a good way to discretely consider the main preoccupations of the scientific community (beyond where does my nest research grant come from). Major themes to my mind at this meeting were climate change and conservation,

In my opening blog I asked a few questions and there are the answers - firstly could we do something for the endangered vaquita? Yes we could, the opening session award to a consortium of Mexican heroes reached even the President of Mexico who is known to have retweated it.

Did I find the key colleagues (and friends) that I was hoping to meet and did the hard-working workshop organiser, Frank Cipriano, get lured onto stage - yes and yes (although only as the chair for the genetics session).

Oh and I did indeed find Naomi Rose.

Naomi Rose and Mark Peter Simmonds (Naomi is on the left)

And will we all get home for Christmas? Well let's see.