What Can We Learn From Doomed Whales?

In the last 50 years, humanity has radically changed its attitude about whales and dolphins.  One of the ways to visualize this change is to look back at old photographs of whales and dolphins.  Many of these photographss depict dead animals on the beach, with people (often children) standing on them.  Earlier books on marine mammal identification were full of photos of beached animals, often because 1) they had never been seen alive or 2) photography technology wasn't good enough to capture them on film.  A live dolphin just wasn't going to sit still for a daguerreotype.

Beached Whale, New York circa 1891. From the Tooker Photo Collection.

A lot of things have changed in whale conservation in the last 50 years.*  In the mid 1960s, scientists at the Southwest Fisheries science center noticed that thousands of dolphins were being killed each year in tuna fisheries.  In 1972, the US enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which was followed in 1986 by an international moratorium on whaling.  As I write this, I am a little bit shocked - whaling wasn't banned by the IWC until well after I was born! There are still many problems with the International Whaling Commission's ban on whaling, including the clause to allow scientific whaling.

Modern photographs of stranded whales rarely show people walking on beached whales (with the exception of scientists attempting to determine cause of death).  Instead, they show people helping the whales and dolphins - moving them back to sea, keeping them cool, helping them in a rehabilitation tank.

Volunteers moving a false killer whale back into the sea in Australia.

Although there are wonderful success stories, many stranded animals die.  Cetaceans often become beached because they are already sick or injured, and despite heroic efforts on the part of scientists and vets, there is little we can do to save them.  As a result, many beached or stranded animals are often euthanized, which is much less cruel than allowing them to suffocate under their own weight on the beach or drown in the sea.

These doomed whales can also help scientists to protect other whales from a similar fate.  One human activity that has been linked closely to beached whales is noise, specifically sonar.  Unfortunately, we don't have the foggiest idea what most species of whales and dolphins can hear.  This lack of information can lead to a lack of regulation - we can't always prove the whales can hear sonar, because no one has ever tested the hearing of many whale and dolphin species.

An infant and a false killer whale having their hearing tested.

New technology makes it (relatively) simple to test dolphin hearing.  The method is similar to how we test the hearing of newborn babies.  Suction cups are attached to the dolphin's head, and a sound is played to the dolphin.  Electrodes within the suction cups record electrical signals in the dolphin's brain that happen as a response to the dolphin hearing a noise.  The suction cup method is non-invasive, and allows scientists to learn what the research subject is hearing even when it can't talk.

I run like Phoebe, for example.

In recent years, members of my research lab at the University of Hawaii have developed a mobile hearing test that they have taken to beached whales all over the state.  Using this equipment, they have gotten the very first measurements of a beaked whale and a pygmy killer whale.  If these whales had been euthanized immediately, this valuable information wouldn't be available to the scientists and lawmakers who make the policy decisions which protect whales and dolphins from the human impacts of noise.  More hearing tests are still needed; just like we can't make assumptions all women's running ability based on Flo-Jo, we can't assume all whales hear the same based on one measurement.  And still, not a single baleen whale has had a hearing test.

Regardless of my personal preference for the precautionary principle, changing  of conservation law often requires basic knowledge of animal ecology and biology.  Until we figure out how to get whales to make appointments for hearing tests, stranding data is going to be vitally important.

Baleen whales never show up for their yearly check-up.

*Actually, the first whale conservation society, the Council for Conservation of Whales (CCW) was established  in the late 1920s, but changed quite a lot since then. (Added 4/16/2012 after reading this book).

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