Fin Whale Finale (Nov 27, 2015)
“Mich, I’ve got a blow and I think it’s blue whale!”
Wow, that is the only alarm clock I like! It was 0640 and in one giagnatic
movement I leapt out of bed, sort of passing myself coming as I surveyed and
began doning suitable attire. In under 3 minutes, I was upstanding and
garbed ready for action as I stepped into the wheelhouse camera in hand.
“You would make a good fireman!” Curt reckoned.
I grabbed the datasheets and on deck in the warming sun began making all the
usual notes – time, lat & long, depth etc. “Six thousand metres,” I read
off the nav chart, “This whale is in 6000 m, no wonder the water is 16.1
degrees C”. The tall, white, steamy blow billowed straight upwards from the
dark body moving on the grey, silky sea. Glassy conditions with a whale in
our sights – I am in heaven! With the first surfacing we both immediately
commented on the tall, upright, dark dorsal fin and the dark, slender
chocolate-coloured body suggesting it was a fin whale. After a few
surfacings, sure enough we saw the asymmetrical, white lower lip and the
chevron markings on the shoulder. After one hour and forty minutes, we
reckoned we had three whales within a 3-4 nm area. A fine finale for our
trip, some fin whales! But wait, the trip isn’t over yet!
Soon after breaking with the pod that we had photo-id’d, we had fin whale
songs appearting on the screen. A down-sweep from 23 to 16 Hz – fin whales,
known as “the 20 Hz whale” produces a loud, low and very transmisible sound.
Described as the most simple song of the cetaceans, it seems to mostly take
the form of “doublets”, two pulses of calls one second long with varying
lenghts of intervals between, (short 8 seconds and long 11 seconds).
We continue eastwards and homebound. We are very excited about all the
acoustic detections made and new (for us) ground covered, way out wide.
Stay safe.
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