WaterNotes

White sharks in Florida?  I used to answer this question with a quip: “maybe at the Jaws cruise in Universal Studios.” (Oh teachers and their sense of humor.) These big predators aren’t exactly the most common of finds off of our coastlines if you go by what is popularly known of them from most news reports and the documentaries on television.  Nope, when I think of white sharks, I think of chillier zones often hosting tasty marine mammals like the rookeries of fur seals off of South Africa or southern California.

And yet, according to some of the newest tracking studies, it would seem that great whites certainly do patrol a stretch of Florida’s northern Atlantic coastline.  Three tagged sharks made a determined movement from southern New England’s rich grounds in late September, following the shelf through to North Carolina waters by October and finally arriving off of Jacksonville, Florida’s beaches in early December.  The sharks stayed on, wintering in the south, until their tags popped loose and the study concluded.

This study encourages a slew of questions of course: why are they migrating?  Are they following a food source?  How long do they stay in Florida?  Do they reverse their course and return to New England directly or is there another leg to this journey that we haven’t yet seen?  What triggers them to start their southern trip?

The food source question is one of the more intriguing ones for me.  There aren’t exactly large rookeries full of delicious sea lion or seal pups in Florida any longer but there are species of whale that migrate through these same areas on a mission to give birth in warmer waters.  There have definitely been reports of white sharks feeding on Northern right whale carcasses.  It makes you wonder if the Atlantic bottlenose dolphins aren’t the only escorts a right whale might see while cruising off of Florida’s beaches.

The dedicated folks over at the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program are regularly out watching their research pods and groups for behavioral studies on their social interactions and also to learn more about bottlenose dolphin life history.  On occassion, they also get involved in rescue operations.

In mid February a team with SDRP noticed one of their dolphin calves, a 9 month old named Nelly, had managed to entangle herself with plastic over her head.  They were unable to capture her to remove the entanglement until just this week on Monday when calf and her mother were restrained briefly in Little Sarasota Bay to successfully remove the debris.

It has not been an easy last few weeks in my world.  Following the recent tragedy in Florida I find that the public backlash concerning conservation, environmental education, zoos and aquariums, has rocked me to the core.  While I know a large section of the American public does support zoos and aquariums, I was totally unprepared to learn that an equally large – and infinitely more vocal – percentage does not agree with the ethics of captive wildlife.  Worse, they feel that mission statements of research, rescue, and conservation education, may simply be veils with which to camouflage less noble motives.

And perhaps most devastating of all, many of those people who most strongly disagree with my professional field are some of the biggest names and forces in wildlife conservation.

I am floored to discover that the community of environmentalists and conservationists is dramatically polarized on this issue.  I feel somewhat betrayed by my fellow conservationists who are so strongly and publicly denouncing zoos and aquariums with the argument that no one can learn anything from an animal if it is not living in its natural habitat.  For some reason I had always identified all conservation groups as being apart of a wider community that was working towards a common goal.   For me such sense of a fluid community has all but vanished.

For an environmental educator like myself, these are deeply disturbing opinions to hear and have led to many sleepless nights.  I have often lain awake at these times wondering if we are indeed failing our missions, what more we can do to make use of our exhibits and animals for inspiration, and how we can learn from judiciously considering the viewpoints that are so strongly opposed to us.

I for one am tired of debating my chosen life’s work in grocery store checkout lines and at the post office.   I want to get back to the business of promoting awareness, conservation, and green lifestyles.  I want to get back to teaching and guiding and watching small moments make a big impact that can change the direction of a life.

Its been a rough few weeks in Florida wildlife conservation circles, particularly with our lovely sea cows, so lets take a moment today to share some positive things.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium recently rescued a sea otter pup and brought her in to live with another resident otter.

Daily Mail shares a number of ridiculously beautiful action shots of dolphins leaping through surf and riding the waves.

The gentlemen over at The Great Barrier Reef Swim continue to refine their gear and their approach to doing long distance open ocean marathon swims and completed their Whitsundays swim this past weekend.

And Science Daily brings us news on the potential link between diatom diversity and whale diversity.

Happy Tuesday my conservation friends, and stay positive!

What can a 400 year old northern right whale bone tell you? Apparently, a heck of a lot.

New research published in the journal Conservation Genetics was written up by the BBC just today about northern right whales.  These are the highly endangered species that migrates off of Florida’s coastline at this time of year. Traditionally we have explained their extreme rarity by citing extensive whaling and targeting of this species up until the turn of the century.  (In fact that is still the common explanation for their name “right whale” since they were the “right” whales to hunt.)  However, new research on whale bones from the 16th and 17th century actually refutes the idea that northern right whales were targeted or that their population’s diversity at the genetic level was effected by whaling.

Basque whaling ship wrecks and stations were discovered in the 1970’s and 218 whale bones recovered from the sites were identified for use in the study. Of 218 bones just one was a northern right whale and all others belonged to bowhead whales.  (Their close relatives within the Balaenidae family.)  While this suggests that this particular culture of whalers from Spain’s Basque region did not specifically attempt to target northern right whales, or that bowhead whales may have been easier to take or find in some way, it may also be a window into a larger pattern seen among whalers at the time – that they may not have targeted northern right whales at all.

Researchers also made the decision to look at diversity at the genetic level between the 400 year old bones and modern day northern right whales.  Across 27 sampled sequences the researchers did not find an appreciable amount of difference in sequence or a loss of diversity.

Their paper suggests that the population of whales from 400 years ago was no more diverse than current day northern right whales.  There are of course a few ways to interpret this and one of them is that whaling may not have had a large impact on their population or caused a genetic bottleneck effect that would be expected with heavy hunting and targeting of the species.

Instead the researchers think this may support a different explanation for northern right whale’s rarity and current endangered status: they may never have been a terrifically abundant species.  And, instead of whaling impacting their populations from a few thousand down to a few hundred, climate changes and resource changes may have impacted their species more.

I love that this paper attempts to use even very old resources to shed new light on current day problems so that we can truly understand the species we are attempting to conserve, but its foray into genetic diversity is as valuable as it is potentially flawed.  By using just one whale bone from the pool the sample size for comparison already sends up some red flags but I should really withhold until I can read the full article.  If anyone has access to the report and would be able to email a copy to me,  I would be eternally grateful.  Unfortunately my resources do not currently include Conservation Genetics.