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Researchers Bruce Mate

(right) and Al Goudy
prepare to tag a blue
whale off Costa Rica.

Whale hide-and-seek
Seeking the loneliest whale Marine biologist Bruce Mate and
his colleagues have pioneered
An enigmatic whale roams the North Pacific, and next year Bruce Mate will lead a month- techniques for tagging whales with
long expedition to find it. Mate, director of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal hockey puck–sized instrument
Institute in Newport, is no revenge-obsessed Captain Ahab. And the object of the quest is packages to track migratory and
feeding habits. Here are a few
no ferocious leviathan: It is probably one of the generally meek baleen whales that prey examples of what they’re learning
on creatures close to the base of the food chain. from tagging data about whale
No one has ever seen this particular whale (“that they know of,” says Mate), but behavior and populations.
researchers know it’s out there. Its distinctive 52-hertz calls — similar to those of blue Eddy feeding
whales and fin whales but higher in pitch — have been recorded Baleen whales sometimes seek
out and follow large, kilometers-
since 1989 by various researchers and the U.S. Navy. wide ocean eddies and feed within
Scientists have some notions about the mystery whale: It’s them or along their edges, taking
probably a male, says Mate, since its calls pierce the seas only advantage of biological hot spots
that are created as eddies bring
during mating season. The whale has been tracked swimming cold, nutrient-rich waters to the
as far as 11,000 kilometers in a single season, so it’s apparently surface.
healthy. Because the whale’s path doesn’t seem to line up with Tag-team hunting
those of other species inhabiting the same region, the cetacean Sperm whales, which normally
has been dubbed by some “the loneliest whale in the world.” forage alone for prey such as giant
squid, occasionally hunt in tag
Mate doesn’t buy that moniker for a number of reasons. For one thing, he says, females
FROM TOP: MINDEN PICTURES, MASTERFILE; COURTESY OF B. MATE
teams. One whale dives deep to
typically don’t respond vocally to a male’s mating calls; they simply show up, so scientists prevent prey from escaping down-
would not have heard them. He also doesn’t think it’s the last member of an unknown ward while its companions herd
the animals into dense schools
species hunted to near extinction. Instead, it’s more likely to be a hybrid between two and then lunge into the feast.
known species, or possibly an individual with a malformation in its sound-producing
Oil spill–related detours
organs — the cetacean equivalent of a lisp. “It wouldn’t surprise me to find a large number Mate and his colleagues are
of other whales in his vicinity when we find him.” now collecting data that could
In fact, Mate is counting on it. Although the expedition will be funded by a team of docu- reveal whether the massive 2010
Deepwater Horizon oil spill has
mentary filmmakers searching specifically for the falsetto whale, Mate hopes to tag about substantially affected sperm
a dozen other whales. That will give him a rare chance to learn what whales do between whales’ migratory and feeding
feeding season, when they gorge themselves to build up fat stores, and breeding season. patterns in the northern Gulf
of Mexico.
“We’re trying to track these whales from the season we know to the season that we
don’t,” he says. “There hasn’t been an experiment yet where we didn’t have “an ‘a-ha’
moment.” — Sid Perkins

32 | SCIENCE NEWS | September 21, 2013 www.sciencenews.org