Baleen Whales
Whale Tales: cetacean stranding and medicine in the Pacific Northwest
Birds and Mammals that Depend on the Salish Sea: A Compilation
The biomechanics of lunge-feeding whales: marine science lecture recap
At the Marine Science Lecture at Camp Orkila on Jan 18, 2011, Dr. Jeremy Goldbogen of the Cascadia Research Collective spoke about current research into "lunge-feeding" whales.
Goldbogen studies biomechanics in rorqual whales, the group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales.
Rorqual whales are distinguished by their "ventral groove blubber" which allows their mouth to expand to a huge volume when feeding.
The whales feed by lunging at concentrations of food -- in most cases masses of krill, but also herring and other small fish -- and engulfing great amounts of water and prey. Like other baleen whales, they then expel the water and retain the food.
(Other baleen whales feed differently. Some filter continuously, swimming with their mouths open so that food gets trapped in baleen plates.)
Goldbogen has used specialized sensors to collect data as whales dive as deep as 250 meters. One of the mysteries of these whales has been why the don't stay underwater as long as other whales of similar size.
Goldbogen's research shows that the whales use an enormous amount of energy on each dive. In the fin whales he studied, the whales dove underneath big patches of krill and attacked them from underneath (which prevents the krill from seeing the whale coming). They are going very fast until they open their mouths, at which point the open mouth acts like a parachute and slows the whale down abruptly.
Want to read more?
Read Jeremy Goldbogen's 2006 paper, "Kinematics of foraging dives and lunge-feeding in fin whales." (It includes graphs showing dive profiles, as well as images of the bioacoustic probes and discussion of how the probes were attached.)
For a more general-interest view, take a look at this three part series by Darren Naish at scienceblogs.com. It's got photos of jaws, and a couple pics of Jeremy Goldbogen.
Garbage in stomach of dead gray whale on West Seattle beach
The Seattle Times reports that a gray whale that died after stranding on a beach in West Seattle had quite a bit of garbage in its stomach. Biologists with the Cascadia Research Collective surveyed the contents of the stomach and found sweatpants, a golf ball, more than 20 plastic bags, surgical gloves, and duct tape.
Read the full article, published 4/19/2010, at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011649749_whale20.html
Species of concern within the Salish Sea Marine Ecosystem: changes between 2002 and 2008
Gray whales may increase feeding opportunities for avian benthivores
Species of concern in the Puget Sound Georgia Basin: changes between 2002 and 2006
Recovering gray whales could help recovery of declining marine birds
SeaDoc-funded research suggests that the recovering gray whale population might be important for providing food for marine birds that are in decline. Gray whales, listed as sensitive species by Washington State and threatened by British Columbia, make an annual 10,000 mile migration between calving grounds in Baja California and summer feeding grounds in the Arctic. Every year some of them break-off their northern migration to come into shallow waters of Puget Sound to feed for extended periods.
