This coming Thursday, Andrew Stevenson will reveal some of his aerial footage in the making of the upcoming sequel to his ‘Where the Whales Sing’. The event promotion said, “Andrew Stevenson will reveal some of his aerial footage in the making of the upcoming sequel to his award-winning film ‘Where the Whales Sing’. “His aerial […]

The Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute [BUEI] announced the opening of a new exhibit entitled, ‘Majestic Migrations: A Look into The Humpback Whales of Bermuda’, located in the Ocean Discovery Centre at BUEI. A spokesperson said, “The Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute [BUEI] is excited to announce the opening of a new exhibit entitled, ‘Majestic Migrations: A […]

Courtesy of GoPro

The team traveled from New Zealand to Tonga along a humpback highway to collect environmental DNA and raise awareness of the plight of the marine mammals

The Republic of Panama’s proposal to implement four Traffic Separation Schemes for commercial vessels entering and exiting the Panama Canal and ports was approved unanimously […]

The post Commercial shipping lanes changed in Panama to save humpback whales appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

New research from a team of U.K. scientists reveals that humpback whales share songs during their migratory travels in the South Pacific.

Fredrik Christiansen, Kate R. Sprogis, Jasmin Gross, Juliana Castrillon, Hunter A. Warick, Eva Leunissen, and Susan Bengtson Nash

An animal's body condition provides valuable information for ecophysiological studies, and is an important measure of fitness in population monitoring and conservation. While both the external body shape of an animal and its internal tissues (i.e. fat content) can be used as a measure of body condition, the relationship between the two is not always linear. We compared the morphological body condition (external metric obtained through aerial photogrammetry) of migrating humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) with their outer blubber lipid concentration (internal metric obtained through blubber biopsy sampling) off the coast of south-west Australia early and late in the breeding season (spanning ~4.5 months). The external body condition index of juvenile and adult humpback whales decreased by 26.9 (from 18.8% to –8.1%) and 12.0 percentage points (from 8.6% to –3.4%), respectively, between the early and late phase. In contrast, we found no intra-seasonal change in blubber lipid concentration, and no difference between reproductive classes (juveniles, adults and lactating females); however, the small sample size prevented us from effectively testing these effects. Importantly, however, in the 33 animals for which paired metrics were obtained, we found no correlation between the morphometric body condition index and the blubber lipid concentration of individual whales. The lack of a linear relationship suggests that changes in outer blubber lipid concentration do not reflect external changes in body shape, thus limiting the utility of outer blubber lipid reserves for individual body condition evaluation. The wider spectrum of change in body morphometry captured with aerial photogrammetry supports the use of body morphometry as a reliable and well-tested method.