Some people spend decades hoping to spot a white whale off the coasts of Australia, but you can see one right now in this drone video. One of the most widely hunted whales, they were almost driven to extinction by the early 1900s, and have been protected as an endangered species since 1946.
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“Something unusual is going on with the southern right whales”, Bejder said. “Now they don’t stay white for the rest of their lives but within a year or so they start losing that color and start becoming the same color as their mothers”.
Murdoch University’s Cetacean Research Unit captured the footage during its new study on whales’ behavioural ecology.
“We were very excited to come down to Augusta and photograph the calf from the air with our drone, and also to tag its mother to look at her behaviour”, Dr Fredrick Christiansen at Murdoch University told Business Insider. This particular footage was captured off Augusta in Australia’s south-west and shows a white calf swimming alongside a fully grown southern right. Said Lars Bejder a professor, Murdoch University.
The team of scientists in question aim at understanding the most natural activities of these whales, especially in their breeding and calving grounds.
Right whales are large baleen whales, which sift their food, and grow to about 15 metres in length and weigh 60 tonnes.
The researchers assessed acoustic communications, ambient noise, calf suckling rates and body condition.
The whales only live in in the oceans of the southern hemisphere.
Aside from the non-invasive drones, the team approached the whales on a small boat, and using a long hand-held pole, attached digital acoustic recording tags to seven whales.
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“The DTAG measures and records the depth and temperature of the water, and the swimming orientation in three-dimensions of the tagged animal”, says Professor Bejder. The drones are part of an innovative programme which also uses suction caps applied to the whales to measure their dives and sounds to learn more about the animals.
