Feed aggregator

Around 200,000 birds are now filling the skies over the Booligal Wetlands north of Hay in a major bird breeding event not seen for 20 years.

Tesla was the dominant news force in 2016. The other big themes were battery storage, the price falls in wind and solar, the big shift from centralised energy, and politics, politics, politics.

Acoustic monitoring of the calls of marine animals, such as whales and seals, could be the key to identifying new species, finding new population groups and mapping migration routes.

We recently used custom-designed detection algorithms to run through 57,000 hours of underwater ocean noise to find the songs of endangered blue whales, rather than listening for each whale call. This detection program saved us an enormous amount of processing time and will be critical in future acoustic monitoring research.

Some endangered marine animals, including several whale and seal species, are “cryptic species”: they’re genetically different but look alike. This means that they are often mistaken for one another when identified visually, making conservation plans difficult to implement.

However, most animals produce species-specific calls. Eavesdropping on their calls therefore provides a unique way to monitor them. This is completely rewriting our understanding of their population recovery.

Recovery of the blue whale

We recently discovered two new blue whale populations migrating off the east coast of Australia using this technology. This is important news as the blue whale has been slow to recover after being hunted to the brink of extinction. How can the largest animal that has ever lived, the Antarctic blue whale, swim undetected just off the coast of Sydney?

It is remarkable that we have only now discovered them there. It is possible that they only started using this route recently, or perhaps they have been there all along and we have missed them.

Fortunately for us, blue whales sing, allowing us to detect them using arrays of listening devices spanning sites across the Indian and Pacific oceans. However, the frequency of their song is so low that humans can’t hear it.

Blue whales produce different calls and these calls possibly reflect different subspecies. Their different songs help the International Whaling Commission manage the recovery of these subspecies.

Blue whales speak with different dialects

Globally, there are at least nine separate blue whale acoustic populations, and Australia’s waters are home to at least three.

The west coast of Australia is a well-known blue whale feeding ground and both the Australian pygmy and Antarctic blue whales are common there.

Another popular blue whale feeding ground is in Southern Australia. Until recently the blue whales there were thought to be all pygmy blue whales, but it was discovered that the Antarctic blue whale is also found there.

We were further surprised to find that the Antarctic blue whales remained all year off southern Australia. In some years, they did not return to their krill-rich Antarctic feeding grounds in the summer, as we’d expect.

The east coast of Australia is not known as a blue whale site, so we were delighted to find two different acoustic populations in the Tasman Sea, all the way up to Samoa. We found the critically endangered Antarctic blue whale and, to the delight of our New Zealand colleagues, pygmy blue whales with a New Zealand accent.

Tasmania now looks like the boundary point separating the Kiwi and Aussie speaking pygmy blue whales.

What about seals?

Similar to whales, seals are also returning to our shoreline. Fur seals are an example of a marine cryptic species, and while some species are thriving, others are not.

The different fur seal species look similar. In fact, unless you are a seal expert, or a seal, it can be difficult to tell them apart. But we can easily recognise the different species because they have very different calls.

The seals can recognise further subtle differences in calls between one another. To maintain their breeding territories the male seals fight and bark incessantly. Each male has a distinctly different call.

A male can recognise and respond differently to the voices of his neighbours, whose territory boundary lines have been established by weeks of confrontations, from the voices of unknown males that are potentially a threat to his territory.

Fur seal mum and pup. Pixabay

The female fur seals and their pups also have individually unique voices. When a female returns from sea after days of hunting, she needs to find her pup from the hundreds of other pups on the island. The mum and pup call to find one another in the busy, noisy colony. The female recognises her pup’s unique call and scent as part of the reunion.

Spying on animal songs gives new insights into undiscovered populations and new migratory routes, completely rewriting our understanding of these marine giants. Accurately evaluating the population status and trends of cryptic marine species is critical in developing conservation management strategies.

Joy Tripovich receives funding from the Winifred Violet Scott Trust and is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia.

Tracey Rogers receives funding from ARC. She is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia

A rare glimpse of a river dolphin in Cambodia. Erwan Deverre/Flickr, CC BY-NC

It’s hot, and you’re sitting sweating in a small wooden boat. Your cold bottle of water is dripping, and the pink polyester roof does nothing to shade the glare of the setting sun. The young man at the back of the boat smiles and points at the water, and there you see it: one of Cambodia’s most magnificent spectacles.

Angkor Wat? No, it’s a critically endangered dolphin rising from the brown waters of the Mekong River, breathing, looking at you, and then disappearing below.

Our recent research suggests that while dolphin and whale tourism in Southeast Asia can be great for communities, it can also come at a cost to the environment.

So what should you look for if you’re going on tour?

Tourism boom

Dolphin- and whale-watching tourism is a booming industry worldwide, and it’s growing apace in developing parts of Asia. Many tourists flock to see spinner dolphins in Bali or Bohol; blue whales off Sri Lanka; Chinese white dolphins in Hong Kong; or Irrawaddy dolphins in great rivers like the Mekong and Ayeyarwaddy (as the Irrawaddy is now known).

Tourist boats looking for dolphins in the Mekong River, Cambodia. G E Ryan

This interest in seeing wildlife is a boon: it provides jobs for local people driving boats, selling souvenirs, or staffing restaurants and hotels. It also gives a growing Asian middle class the chance to get close to wildlife that many people are increasingly separated from in day-to-day life.

By providing jobs and building compassion for the species it targets, dolphin-watching tourism can thus provide an incentive to protect threatened species such as critically endangered river dolphins. But it has a cost.

Boat traffic can stress dolphins. What can seem like insignificant short-term stresses are known to have long-term costs on whole populations if they are repeated over a long time.

Tourist boats visiting dolphins several times a day can cause exactly this sort of problem, especially if they harass and chase animals. This happens in many places where regulation is absent or poorly enforced. We have seen large numbers of boats swarming groups of dolphins in many places.

Often such tourism is limited only by the numbers of boats and crews willing to conduct it. Understanding the long-term ecological effects of tourism activities on dolphin populations is difficult; it needs long-term data, which can be expensive and slow to collect.

This kind of work is rarely done, especially in developing Asia. So we don’t really know how tourism affects dolphins and whales in this area.

With colleagues, we recently developed a rapid risk-assessment method to understand the risk tourism poses to wildlife. We applied it to seven sites in six countries in developing Asia, including sites on the Mekong River in Cambodia, on the coasts of Bohol in the Philippines, Bali, Malaysian Borneo and Thailand, and in India’s Chilika Lagoon.

We found the highest risk from tourism was to Irrawaddy dolphins at Chilika Lagoon, and to spinner and other dolphins at Lovina Beach in Bali. Both of these sites have no regulation of the number of boats visiting dolphins, or how boats are operated around the animals. This leaves large numbers of boats free to chase dolphins around – hardly ideal.

Spinner dolphins and tourist boats in Indonesia. Putu L Mustika How to travel lightly

The sites we assessed are just a drop in a sea full of opportunities to view wild whales and dolphins. So next time you’re heading out on holiday and considering going to see some of the water’s most charismatic inhabitants, how do you know if you should go?

Here’s a few things to consider:

• Is there a land-based alternative to see the animals without disturbing them?

• Is there a code of practice for boat operators to prevent stressing animals? This may not be obvious. Talk to other tourists about how boat drivers operate around animals. Avoid operators who chase, cut off, or otherwise harass animals.

• Ask your driver not to chase animals, and reward them with thanks or tips for driving carefully around the animals.

• Ask yourself how you can meaningfully contribute to the protection of these species in other ways.

Watching wild animals in their natural environment is one of life’s great experiences. Few things in this world are as uplifting as the sight of a dolphin breaking the water’s surface, and it’s a sight we hope everyone can enjoy for countless generations.

We’re sure we will be able to if we encourage responsible dolphin-watching tourism. And that can start with you on your next getaway into the wild!

Putu Liza Mustika is also affiliated with Cetacean Sirenian Indonesia, an environmental NGO in Indonesia.

Gerry Ryan and Riccardo Welters do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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Canada’s Hudson Bay is as ice-free in November as on a summer’s day and polar bears could be extinct here by mid-century. If the bears are in trouble, so are we

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A guide is now available for this nationally listed endangered ecological community.

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The year that was: Donald Trump, soaring temperatures, mass-market EVs, and price parity - even in NSW - for solar and storage.

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