The Anamorphosis of Marine Mammal Rescue

Readers may realise that I occasionally post talks here that would otherwise be lost. Following is a short slightly-edited presentation that I gave to open the workshop on mass strandings at the Society of Marine Mammalogy conference in Dunedin in December.  

The Anamorphosis of Marine Mammal Rescue

Ko nui nga mihi

I some ways I follow my ancestors in that I come to these shore of New Zealand on business that relates primarily to whales.

But unlike those who first came here from Europe to exploit these waters and their steep volcanic slopes:

• I do not seek the liquid gold found in the bodies of whales;
• I do not seek crew or shore-workers for my vessels;
• nor do I want potatoes to address the scurvy in my crew after its long journey here;
• I don’t even want the cheese and other dairy products that the early settlers here sold to my whaling fore-fathers (although – to be honest - I don’t mind the odd piece of cheese).

Instead, I come to learn and I come to share.

And I start in this way because it is perhaps wise to remember that we see our world in many different ways – ways that vary between cultures and over time.

For example, there were once whalers here. Here is a shore-based whaling station on the Banks Peninsula. The early photograph shows it in dereliction and surrounded by whale bones. The bones were probably all from the southern rights that were whaled-out here in a period of only about 30 years.

Whilst I was in Bank’s Peninsula last week I also met George Mason. One of many whalers who came from far away and then worked on this east coast; he worked first for Captain Hempleman at the famous Peraki Bay whaling station and then moved across the mountainous peninsula to set up house with his Maori wife on the far northern side in beautiful Okanes Bay. George’s view of whales is probably very different to mine.

Now an anamorphic image is one that you can only see clearly if you take the appropriate point of view or look at it through an optical device: a mirror or a lens.

[You can see some examples HERE

 My point is that there are many different ways to view stranding events – many different lenses to look through. Historically, many coastal peoples around the world will have viewed them as a blessing: a source of meat and other useful materials. There is evidence of this in Scotland for example.

There is also evidence that strandings could be terrifying.

Here in 1577: a unual stranding of 13 sperm whales on the Dutch coast shows the locals fleeing for their lives from the monsters. Such events would have been very rare on North Sea coasts.

However, in places where mass strandings regularly occurred, some also learnt how to ‘encourage’ the whales onto the shore in order to gain their meat– again the islands to the North and West of Scotland were examples.

Pilot-whaling like this went on in Scotland (if you look carefully into this stranding image you will see lances being deployed to release the spirits of the whales in the background).  The practise as you know sadly, continues in the adjacent Faroe Islands (now aided by motorised vessels and phone and internet coordination).

(Sea based whaling came later and was probably shared across Europe by the Vikings, but I digress.)

The value of stranded whales was recognised by the British crown as early as 1324

and they became (and remain) Fishes Royal: royal property. Many sovereigns enjoyed whale meat in their day including Henry 8th.

The curious but important legacy of this is a system in the UK where strandings are recorded and many are examined and there is a history of importanta dedicated research associated with the Natural History Museum which eventually became the Queen’s agent in whale-matters which would fill another talk.

World-wide mass strandings are still regarded as mysteries – in my days with WDC I probably took more calls seeking explanations of strandings than any other issue -  and they bring urgent requests for a humane response.

The view that we now take of these events is affected by a lens that typically sees the animals concerned as intelligent, frightened and suffering but still generally fails to understand how their biology makes them vulnerable to coming ashore en masse. Our lens is shaped by our own perceptions of how animals behave which is dominated – entirely reasonably - by our own behaviour. We get that a mother might not leave her calf (something which the old boat-based whalers effectively exploited) but not that a whole social unit would choose to stay together and perish rather than splitting way from the pod or school. We would not behave like that in the same circumstances.

We also now have the added problem that some strandings are natural events; others are not.

But whatever the cause – should we intervene to try to help the animals?

Some say that nature should take its course, but irrespective of whether it is nature or not, we now look through a widely-shared lens of empathy; seeing that a distressed and suffering animal deserves to be helped; indeed it calls on our humanity to be humane. And then all too often (especially in Europe where the majority of strandings feature old and infirm animals) this extends to that most difficult of options – euthanasia. Deciding when an animal should be refloated and when it should be euthanized has become the important focus of rescue work; and associated with this is how to euthanize humanely and how to explain these actions to a watching public.

When we were trying to unite the UK’s strandings workers in the early 1990s, we looked to the example set by Project Jonah here in New Zealand. Indeed we imported sets of rescue pontoons but were only allowed to do so if a trainer came with them and so I went on a WDCS-sponsored journey around the UK with PJs Tania Jones and – as an added bonus Fernando Trujillo from Colombia. He is now one of the world authorities on the Boto and a big university professor these days; but I digress.

Several other times we have turned to New Zealand since then for advice – the most recent being the IWC workshop earlier this year looking at whale euthanasia – because you guys of course have the only SWEB [Sperm Whale Euthanasia Device] and the largest of the toothed whales offers us a mammoth problem when in strands. Others I am sure will speak to this.

The best iteration of the UK’s current rescue policies honed over the last decades can be found in the rescue handbook of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR)

The latest, the seventh edition, published this year includes advice for rescuers and vets including detailed triage, born out of many years of experience. The rescue network in the UK also regularly trains and practices for mass stranding events.

Mass strandings are probably our biggest fear. They are rare but not unknown, including one featuring several dozen pilot whales in the very difficult waters of the Kyle of Durness on the North Scottish mainland in July 2011. But this is a story from someone else to tell.

2013 also saw the first Europe-wide meeting of people involved in rescue at the ECS annual conference in Setubal, Portugal.

Here we soon found that all the various rescue entities across this diverse region were experiencing similar issues. It did not quite turn into a therapy session but it might have. As important to the rescuers as techniques was how to deal with the watching public. I think this is true world-wide.

We agreed a series of principles at the workshop and its report will be published shortly – the top-line conclusions I have given in the abstract.

When the veterinarian Paul Jepson was striving to make decisions concerning the London Whale [the northern bottlenose whale that came up the river Thames]  – millions watched; many of them in real time.

And as I was writing this presentation over the weekend I was informed of a mass stranding of pilot whales in the Everglades National Park in the USA last week. I googled it, read the reports and watched the NBC podcast: and there are the usual comments like ‘veterinarians don’t know why the whales stranded’ and apart from the the fact that the response is led by a US agency (NOAA) which also provides some of the commentators – you can see the same issues in this event – the same questions, the same concerns that play out all around the world in the news reports.

Anamorphosis can have a different meaning. It can relate to evolution. Have we evolved our understanding and policies with respect to strandings?

Certainly they are now better informed by science and much of this science comes from the stranded bodies themselves. For example, we now have a different policy to stranded beaked whales in the UK.

And, in some ways, stranded whales have become the ‘canaries’ of the seas, shedding light on events and impacts not immediately apparent to ours senses, including chemical pollution, marine debris and noise: issues directly affecting them and other marine organisms.

In the last two decades or so - thanks to the efforts of Jepson, Fernandez, DeVille, Law,  Brownlow and others – strandings-related investigations have significantly helped to  show the significance of noise pollution; helped to identify levels of chemical pollution of concern and provides much information more generally about disease.

The latest mystery the strandings work in my part of the world is looking at is the horrific spiral injuries that have been seen in some animals both cetaceans and pinnipeds.

I will not say more [several talks at the conference addressed this issue] except that this latest series of observations, shows again the value of the UK's standings network in identifying issues in our increasingly busy seas.

 

So, these rather disturbing images conclude my short presentation on the anamorphosis of strandings.

Marine animal rescue is going to continue to challenge us, perplex the public and the media will continue to make news fodder of rescue efforts - whether we like it or not; whilst the rescues themselves will continue often be dangerous and always demanding. 

Collective Nouns for Marine Mammals

I learnt something this week.

I thought that I knew what the collective nouns for marine mammals were but then a friend told me that a group of seals could be called a 'pod', a term I thought reserved for some cetaceans, but friend was correct.

So here is what I think the collective nouns are now:

Pod is the terms used for whales (usually a small group) and seals. I believe it is most correctly used for orcas and pilot whales rather than other species. It is sometimes also used for other animals and in particular hippopotamuses and whiting (a species of fish).

Herd can be used for sperm whales and others.

School can also be used for a group of whales as can gam (which also indicates a social gathering of whalers at sea).

Grind is another collective noun for cetaceans, apparently specific to northern bottlenose whales and the term used for a hunt in the Faroe Islands.

Porpoises (which I suspect includes dolphins in this respect) have four collective nouns associated with them: school, herd, pod and gam.

Seals have three: herd, pod or rockery (although hitherto I thought rockery applied to the haul-out site rather than the collection of seas).

Anyone know better? 

Some other collective nouns:

Parrots: a company.
Otters: a bevy.
Nightingales: a watch
Monkeys: a cartload
Hummingbirds and finches: a charm
Badgers: a cete
Kittens: a kindle.
Gorillas: a whoop

Sources: various dictionaries and Stephen Palin's beautifully illustrated 'A Murmuration of Starlings - The collective nouns of animal and birds.' Published by Merlin Unwin Books.

On the Trail of Ancient Whalers.

Ancient harpoon heads

This is an epilogue to my visit to New Zealand. As I traveled around South Island I was frequently standing in the footsteps of the whalers of the nineteenth century; the simple reason for this being that these same places, particularly the Banks Peninsula, Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula, were (and are) places where marine mammals can be found and exploited. Now that exploitation is limited to nature tourism but once it was far bloodier.

George Mason whaler and settler

The first major expeditions of westerners came to New Zealand to harvest the local marine mammals; this was New Zealand's first industry and whilst I will focus here on whales, the New Zealand fur seal and Hooker’s sea lion were rapidly decimated and remain endangered to this day. Whalers entered the waters of New Zealand in their great (and sometimes leaky) sailing vessels relatively late in the history of sail-boat whaling, and only after they had already exterminated the more easily caught whales in the waters nearer home. When they first arrived, the right whales were numerous and their populations pristine but it appears that it took only some thirty years for the New Zealand population to also be reduced to a level below which it was no longer economic to hunt.

The whalers came in their ships from Europe and America. They caught the whales using relatively small rowed vessels that set off from the mother ships or from the land stations. When the westerners arrived, New Zealand was, of course, already inhabited and the local Maori tribes soon came to to barter with the whalers, sell them rights to their lands and even exploit them in their inter-tribal battles. The Maori had not traditionally hunted whales but had utilized stranded animals and New Zealand then (as now) would have seen plenty of these at certain sites now notorious for mass standings. Some Maori were also recruited to work as whaling crews on boats and at land-stations.

Whaling was dangerous; many died onboard the whaling vessels. (An old whaling log book that I saw during my travels attested to this. In the margins of its pages –on a horribly regular basis – are drawn the outlines of a coffin containing a stickman and a number marking a death.

New Zealand was also pretty much as far from home for those from Europe and America as it was possible to go and whaling expeditions were away from their home ports for several years. So what drove people to join them and what did they do when they reached the verdant islands of the Long White Cloud?

Making money is an obvious motive. The fat-rich tissues of the right whales (and the sperm whales that were hunted further offshore) yielded the oil that was helping to fuel the industrial revolution in the whalers distant home lands. It was very valuable and provided the main incentive for prospectors to travel far and wide to find it. Indeed, Dunedin, the home of New Zealand’s oldest university, was partly founded on the ‘liquid gold’ coming from the whales, but then mineral gold was found nearby and a more conventional gold-rush followed.

Motives for the men who joined (rather than ran) whaling-expeditions were I am sure as mixed as they are for those travelling far and wide today. Some would have been seeking adventure, some escape from something at home, but all would have found life hard on board the cramped sailing vessels that conveyed them and it is perhaps no surprise that many stayed in New Zealand when they got there.

Famously, in 1837, Captain Hempleman, a German whaling captain, settled at Peraki Bay on the Bank’s Peninsula, there transiting from being a ship-based whaler to running a terrestrial whaling station. The Banks Peninsula formed by the actions of two volcanoes sticks out into the Pacific on the east side of South Island. Its position meant that it intercepted the migration north of the right whales in winter and its bays were used by the whales as calving grounds. Its collapsed calderas also formed the main harbour for Christchurch and also Akaroa harbour. Both are deep and well protected and there are many other radiating bays. Peraki appears to have been a particularly useful one for the whalers. Deep enough for whaling boats to enter but also close to the open sea and also blessed with a high vantage point from which the sea could be viewed for some distance. Other whalers followed Hempleman's example and the suitable bays around the Peninsula were shared out among them. Hempleman remains the most famous because he maintained a log* that was later transcribed and published (and he and his wife were also the first German settlers in New Zealand). The ‘Peraki Log’ recounts the day-to-day activities on both Hempleman's whaling vessel and then the land station.

As the years went by, exhausted whalers coming to New Zealand, many suffering from scurvy after long journeys with poor nutrition, would have been able to find settlers who would trade with them for potatoes (rich in vitamin C and thus a treatment for scurvy) and dairy and other products. Britain also claimed New Zealand during this same period (in 1848) and just weeks ahead of the arrival of an expedition from France which had planned to do the same. The French settlers still stayed, and they formed a community at Akaroa where a distinctly French flavour still prevails. 

Akaroa, now an important tourist hub, still has tripots (the great cauldrons in which marine mammal fat was rendered down to release its oil) on display on its seafront. Relations between the French, the British and the Maori were evidently mainly friendly. By the 1850s and 1860s the New Zealand whaling stations were operating only sporadically and their time was almost over. (Later whalers would return again to New Zealand with motorized vessels and their attention would then focus on the swifter humpback whales but this phase of whaling in New Zealand, which coincided with the arrival of western settlers ended at this point.)

Whaling tripots on Akaroa seafront

The Okain's Bay Museum on the Bank’s Peninsula helps shed a little more light on what became of one of the men who first arrived in 1837 as a harpoonist on a whaling vessel: George Mason (pictured at the top of the page) was born in London in 1810 and reached Bank's Peninsula, which was to become his home, in 1838 and first went to work with Hemplemen at his shore station. He moved on to work elsewhere, was briefly held as a prisoner by the local Maori tribe (for reasons unknown) and, in 1850, he moved across the mountains of the Peninsula to buy land in the pretty and fertile valley of Okain's Bay on the north coast. Here, with his wife (and there is some confusion as to whether his wife was a Maori or the daughter of another settler) he farmed until his death in 1889. George Mason started his dairy farm with a share of 50 acres. His son, also George Mason, subsequently farmed some 700 acres.   

With the whales gone, the ex-whale men who elected to stay obviously had to find a different way to make a living and New Zealand with its rich soils, abundant fish and timber (and relatively friendly locals) formed a welcome home for many. 

Did these men (and the whalers were typically all of this gender - although as the presence of Frau Hemplemen at Peraki Bay shows some captains did take their wives and families with them) concern themselves about the cruelty of their hunts and the nature of the animals that they killed. We shall never really know; what we do know is that they were very efficient in their work and whilst there are signs of recovery, the right whales remain very rare and the bull sperm whales that now form the focus of the whale-watching industry at Kaikoura (previously home to a whaling station) number only a few individuals. 

*Poem from the Peraki Log:

With whalers and whaling there is always complaining,
Like a boat or a mill out of tune ;
While the whales are in the Bay the men run away -
And we will have a clear stage of it soon.

Blogs of the Year: 2013 (concerning marine mammals)

There were many important issues affecting marine mammals this year. Here I select commentaries on four that I think were especially important this year: 

1. Whaling: For the first time in its sixty five year history the International Whaling Commission did not meet, as it has switched to a two-year meeting cycle. However, whaling remained at the focus of international dispute when the case made by Australia against Japan over its Scientific Whaling reached the International Court of Justice.

Andrew Darby – a distinguished Australian Journalist - wrote a series of articles published on-line around the whaling case some six months ago. We are still awaiting the outcome of this game-changer. Here is a link to one of these articles where he sums up the aspirations of the Australian side: XXX

2. Another development this year was some unfounded controversy in the press about dolphin intelligence and behaviour. Here is Philippa Brakes commenting on this in the Huffington Post: XXX

3. Some species are critically endangered. Erich Hoytt discusses the threat to New Zealand's endemic dolphin here: XXX

4. The keeping of cetaceans in captivity continued to recieve high public profile with the release of the film Blackfish', here Wayne Parcelle of the Humane Society comments XXX

The Mouse Choir of Olde Shanklin Towne

Happy Holidays

Bardsey Bull Grey Seal October 2013

Blatant Advert: Whales and Dophins of the World: CCC and HP

The Kindle version of Whales and Dolphins of the World: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions edited by Philippa Brakes and Mark Simmonds is now available.

Link HERE to find it on Amazon.

This book brings together experts in the relevant diverse fields of cetacean research, to provide authoritative descriptions of our current knowledge of the complex behaviour and social organization of whales and dolphins. The authors consider this new information in the context of how different human cultures from around the world view cetaceans and their protection, including attitudes to whaling. They show how new information on issues such as cetacean intelligence, culture and the ability to suffer, warrants a significant shift in global perceptions of this group of animals and how these changes might be facilitated to improve conservation and welfare approaches.

Contents

1. Why Whales, Why Now?

PART I
Whales in Human Cultures
2. Impressions: Whales and Human Relationships in Myth, Tradition, and Law
3. Whales of the Pacific
4. Whales in Latin America
5. Whales and the USA
6. Whales in the Balance: To Touch or To Kill? A View of Caribbean Attitudes toward Whales
7. The British and the Whales
8. Whales in Norway
9. Of Whales, Whaling and Whale Watching in Japan: a Conversation
10. A Contemporary View of the International Whaling Commission

PART II
The Nature of Whales and Dolphins
11. The Nature of Whales and Dolphins
12. Brain Structure and Intelligence in Cetaceans
13. Communication
14. Lessons from Dolphins
15. Highly Interactive Behaviour of Inquisitive Dwarf Minke Whales.
16. The Cultures of Whales and Dolphins

Part III
New Insights; New Challenges
17. Whales and Dolphins on a Rapidly Changing Planet
18. From Conservation to Protection: Charting a New Conservation Ethic for Cetaceans
19. What is it Like to be a Dolphin?
20. Thinking Whales and Dolphins
21. Acknowledgements
22. Authors’ Biographies

Reviews

"Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions is a very important book. It makes a compelling case for scientists, conservationists and animal welfare groups to combine to develop a new approach to the conservation of cetaceans." – Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder – the Jane Goodall Institute (www.janegoodall.org), UN Messenger of Peace

"I will be making several chapters required reading for my upper level undergraduate course in Cetacean Behavior and Behavioral Ecology." - Burnd Wursig, Texas A&M University, in Marine Mammal Science (April 2013)

"This book makes persuasive arguments for the uniqueness of whales and dolphins, and for their conservation. It will make compelling reading for anyone with an interest in these creatures." –  Bulletin of the British Ecological Society


And here two rare images of editors Brakes and Simmonds in the same place at the same time:

Stalking sealions in Sandfly Bay

Brakes is on the left.

(Thanks Ann for the images.)

The Land of the Long White Cloud - Landscapes from a Train

Back on the 3rd of December I took one of the world's most scenic train journeys and traveled by KiwiRail from Christchurch up through the Southern Alps and right across to the west coast at Greymouth and back.

Along the way, as it winds up into the mountains, the train travels over bridges across ravines and through many little tunnels. The landscapes on view include barren peaks, high altitude lakes, dark tannic rivers, isolated sheep stations, huge cattle ranches and, as it is high summer, fields of purple lupins and yellow gorse and broom. It is stunning.

The train has big windows and an open air viewing carriage where you can get covered in soot.

Sooty viewing platform

Diesel engine

train-spotters

Route

Native Podocarp forest and tannic river (east coast)

inside carriage

Lupins and broom on the high plains

The Land of the Long White Cloud - Otago Peninsula Again

Just to finish off that series of photos from yesterday...

So the sealion returns to the water to see off another of his kind

A viarable oystercatcher looks on

The first sealion sleeps on, showing some formidable teeth

A view of the southern edge of the Otago Peninsula seen from my departing aircraft.

The entrance to Otago harbour.

And finally - one that got away:

A yellow-eyed penguin ; or at least cardboard cut-out meant to lure the real thing.
(I heard but did not see the illusive endangered species.)

The Land of the Long White Cloud - Otago Peninsula

 It is almost time to leave the beautiful South Island of New Zealand but there is just time to squeeze in one final expedition.

This is Sand Fly Bay.

 What might live here?
What for example is this strange brown lump in the white sands?

It is a sub-adult male New Zealand sealion

And a little further along the beach are some fur seals, including this one hauled out among the washed up wood.

Shark? No sealion flipper!

Fellow wildlife watchers: Mike Donoghue of SPREP and  P Brakes of WDC

Sealions like to surf

Then they emerge from the surf

Then they turn around and go in again

The Land of the Long White Cloud - SMM 2

Highlights of the last couple of days at the SMM - which has manly been meeting in four simultaneous sessions have included impassioned pleas for the improved protection of the Maui's dolphins (New Zealand's genetically distinct sub-species which is now down to only some ~55 individuals); many papers related to the threat posed by noise to marine mammals; and a panel session looking at the issue of captive orcas.

Here are a few images:

Michael Jasny presented an overview of the work on ship-quietening technologies which he has been helping to lead.

Michael Jasny

 Here the man himself in full flow.

Barbara Maas of the German NGO NABU calling for more action for the Maui's dolphin

And reminding us of the statement made by the IUCN on this sub-species.

The Panel discussion met in a packed hall:

The Panel: from the left: Duffus, Rose, DeMaster, Orams, St Leger and Baird.

DeMaster presented data on survival.

A series of questions were put to the panel that had been made by its members and provided to the panelists a few days earlier, starting with this one:

 Then this one

The question from Erich Hoyt (below) elicited support from all the panelists for a call on the Russian government to stop taking orcas.

The full panel discussion was recorded and will be available through the SMM website a future point, so I will not say more now but try to provide the appropriate link in due course.