Researchers confirmed that they are tracing the first-detected living population of Omura’s whales.
Advertisement
The biologists, who published their research in the Royal Society Open Science journal, described the giant animals’ vocal and foraging behaviors, as well as their habitat preferences in the shallow waters of coastal Madagascar.
What was known about the Omura’s whale, prior to this research, came from carcasses washed up on beaches and from whaling.
Footage of the rare Omura’s whale species was captured by an global team of biologists off the coast of Madagascar.
Cerchio is also a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Whale watching… The elusive Omura’s whale has been recorded on film for the first time.
Salvatore Cerchio, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, along with his colleagues, started their observations eight years ago, and until 2011, their search was in vain.
Though their smaller size (around 33 to 38 feet in length) and unique markings distinguish the species from the Bryde’s whale, it’s still easy to confuse the two – in fact, that’s exactly what happened when Cerchio and his team spotted their first Omura’s whale off the northwest coast of Madagascar. He’s hoping to gather more information about their vocalisations and behaviour – and then perhaps have a go at estimating just how many Omura’s whales might be out there.
“They appear to occur in remote regions and are hard to find at sea because they are small”, he said.
Until now, the only Omura’s whales that have been found were dead whales, and those were initially mistaken for the larger Bryde’s whales until DNA tests revealed them to be a separate species. “Rather, they should be in the West Pacific, near Thailand and the Philippines”.
During this time, they managed to collect skin biopsies from 18 adult whales.
“When we clearly saw that the right jaw was white, and the left jaw was black, we knew that we were on to something very special.”
Advertisement
Cerchio plans to return to the field in November to further study the animals’ behavior, vocalizations, and population characteristics. They also used photographs to identify and catalogue about 25 individuals.
