This past week has been an
exciting week for everyone a part of the Namibian Dolphin Project. On Tuesday,
we were on our way to Sandwich Harbour (60km south of Walvis by boat), to set
up a C-Pod (a device that will record data about the echolocation clicks for
months at a time) to record bottlenose dolphin presence down there. Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions
we aborted after only heading about 10km down the coast as we need really good
weather to make it that far and back safely. However, this ended up being a
good decision on many levels.
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While we were photographing a very boat-friendly group of Heaviside’s dolphins, a humpback whale was spotted breaching on the horizon.
Humpback whale data is important to the Namibian Dolphin Project because the
population structure of the humpback whales seen in Namibia isn’t fully
understood. The whales that pass by Walvis Bay are on their way north, probably
to Gabon, but possibly to a breeding area slightly further south. This has been
a very good year for humpback whale sightings in Namibia, but because there are
usually only one or two a day, and it can take over an hour to get the data we
need (biopsy for a skin sample and photo ID images), each and every whale counts.
The humpbacks that pass by Namibia tend not to breach as often as the humpback
whales in other parts of the world. When whales breach they can lose bits of
skin which can be collected and used for genetics, saving us from having to
biopsy the whale. As we approached we saw two humpback whales flipper slapping
and breaching. It was spectacular to see
from the perspective of our 6m long boat, small by comparison. By the end of
the encounter we had over a hundred photos for photo ID and two biopsy samples.
It was a great last day for the interns that stayed only for July. The next
couple days were filled with training for the August intern teaching them how
to take advantage of some of these unexpected opportunities to collect data.
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