The Drake Passage named after the 16th century sea captain, privateer, slaver and navigator, Sir Francis Drake, is an infamous stretch of water between the South America and Antarctica. It can boil like a cauldron sending towering waves crashing across the bows of the ship, leaving passengers prostrate on their bunks, nausea their cabin mate. It is known as the ‘Drake Shake’.
On the other hand you can experience Drake Lake. Watch Commerson dolphins from the deck surfing the bow wave as the ship cuts through a rolling, glistening sea beneath a cobalt blue sky, a sky peppered with skittering Cape petrels, Antarctic prions and soaring Wandering albatross.
On my most recent voyage to Antarctica, I had the ‘Drake Lake’ and while I was thanking the weather gods we were offered up something special, two Blue whales, the largest living mammals on earth, more than 90 feet long and weighing 150 tons apiece. These gargantuan cetaceans, a male and his mate, glided in slow motion ahead of the ship, graceful, silent but for the blows that ejected a 30 foot vertical spout of water into the air, the sound continuing to resonate long after they slipped below surface.
Between 1904 and 2000 more than two million whales were slaughtered, 360,644 of those were Blue whales. With only 2,000 of these magnificent creatures left in the Southern Ocean, it was an exceptionally rare sighting.
Our voyage was all about marine mammals and in particular whales, a golden opportunity to study them during their feeding fest on krill, before they moved north to warmer waters. Krill is a 6 centimeters crustacean that lives in swarms on phytoplankton and is key to the survival of the majority of marine mammals and penguins in the Southern Ocean.
I had an added interest, I like many others, continue to protest against the practice of keeping killer whales (orcas) beluga whales and dolphins in sea parks for entertainment and breeding programs. Sea World the multi billion-dollar business with three parks in the USA, housing 23 killer whales, claims that studying them in captivity benefits science. Yet how can these mammals that are kept in extreme unnatural conditions, in fact pitiful tanks, shed any scientific light on general whale behavior? Another argument is that it gives everyone the chance to witness these creatures. An argument I put to one of our naturalists on board. “Hey, you can pay 30 bucks, take a boat ride and see a whale in the ocean in many parts of the world!”
However, perhaps the tide was changing. Before sailing, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, a Democrat from Santa Monica had proposed a bill that would ban the use of killer whales for entertainment purposes in California. Possibly other States would follow. I would learn the result on my return.
For the next ten days in Antarctica we were going to be under the tutelage of the scientist and whale expert Dr Ari Friedlaender of Oregon State University. Thirty-eight years old, tall, thickset with a beard and hair drawn back into a pony- tail, Friendlaender would prove to be a man of unfaltering patience.
We spent several hours a day on the zodiacs (inflatable dinghies) cruising amongst the ice. A little distance away Friedlaender with the assistance of Alyson Fleming, who presently works in the Washington DC State Department of Fisheries, would be in their own zodiac tagging and taking samples from the whales. At the end of a long day and once back on board between giving illustrated talks, he would face a myriad of questions by passengers mesmerised by these near mythical sea creatures. Mesmerising too was his cross bow, the tool he used to take samples from whales. By firing an arrow into the whale’s side – who feels ‘nothing more than a mosquito bite’ the head of the arrow with a float attached, collects tissue biopsies before dropping into the water to be retrieved by the scientist. The samples are then frozen and taken back to the labs providing important data such as molecular genetic and pollutant studies, stock structure, sex of the animal, population structures and other similarities and differences between individuals and stocks.
On the third day and in the Neumayer Channel, lined with glacial ice, we were quickly surrounded by a pod of at least 20 Minke whales. This was unusual as they mainly travel singly or in groups of two to four. The second smallest of all baleen whales they are predated by Orcas and therefore seek refuge close to the ice. Outlandishly curious they encircled our zodiacs again and again and at times we could see their 30 foot shadows disappear beneath us.
Between the years of 1971-1981 Soviet and Japanese whalers caught 65,000 Minke whales in Antarctic waters until banned by the International Whaling Commission. Japan claimed that the killing of some 3,600 whales in the last 14 years were for scientific purposes. Yet very little, if any of the science was shared on the international platform. More importantly, scientists like Friedlaender are proving that it is not necessary to kill whales for scientific research. The case was brought by Australia to the UN’s International Court of Justice and their bid was upheld. Today they remain hunted by Iceland, Greenland and Norway. It is a woeful thought that living today, Fin, Bow Head, Blue whales and other species, that were hunted some fifty years ago and more continue to carry the scars today, both physically and mentally.
Whales were not the only marine mammals we witnessed on our spectacular voyage. Fur seals bobbed in the water, Elephant seals huddled on the beaches, the bulls with elephantine proboscis, tipped the scales at a magnificent blubbery 3,000kg. The Crabeater the most abundant seal species lay sluggishly on ice bergs with a weary eye on a rapacious predator, the Orca.
However the mean, not so lean killer machine, was the Leopard seal. Behind those brown doleful eyes was a powerful predator,that took full advantage of the young recently fledged Gentoo penguins taking to the water for the first time. As if showing off the Leopard seal would swim towards us, the dying penguin caught in its razor sharp teeth, before throwing the hapless bird into the air, only to catch it and disappear into the depths.
By the seventh day and in the glorious icescapes of Wilhelmina Bay it didn’t matter where you looked, Humpback whales floated asleep like semi-submerged submarines, others fluked, causing the zodiac passengers to let out an involuntary whoop. Occasionally, a large knobbly (known as tubercles) head would appear vertically out of the water to inspect us, known as ‘spy hopping.’ Some passengers in sea kayaks got a little more than they bargained for yet the sensory powers of these gargantuan creatures all of 16 meters long and weighing more than 30,000 kilograms never once endangered our little sea crafts.
Before turning north Orcas, with distinctly black and white colouring and large dorsal fin, were spotted from the bridge of the ship, way off in the distance. These beauties of the Southern ocean, covering two hundred kilometers a day are of the dolphin family and live within a highly complex social grouping system, not unalike humans. Juveniles remain with their mothers throughout their lives and as many as four generations can be found in one pod with a language specific to that pod.
Once in incarcerated in sea parks, these social groups are torn apart and combined with the snatching of young calves from their mothers and the implementation of a reward system to train these mammals, it is not surprising that injury and in some cases death of the trainers occur.
Whales and many cetaceans face a challenging future. Entanglement in fishing gear is common as are collisions with ships. Oil and gas exploration generate extreme seismic noise both high intensity and low frequency sounds from air guns towed behind boats. The sound travels for thousands of kilometers in the ocean, masking communication between whales. Yet climate change is the biggest threat. Krill need ice to breed and feed. Less ice, less krill, and a seismic change in how our marine wildlife will survive in our oceans.
Friedlaender remembers a season in Wilhelmina Bay, a few years back, where he counted 500 humpback whales feeding on 2.3 million tons of krill that measured 200 meters thick. Will he witness this again?
It takes some twenty years for the science that Friedlaender and his colleagues are collating to give an accurate picture, but less we forget, whales and all marine creatures are the barometers of the condition of our oceans and in turn our planet.
Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s Bill to end keeping whales in captivity in marine parks? It’s been stalled until mid 2015 on the premise that it needs further study. But the tide is turning.
(This blog written by Angie Butler was also published in IOL Travel Magazine. Check this link http://www.iol.co.za/travel/travel-news/antarctic-beauties-1.1695525#.U58gqxY2ZZg)
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