Whale spotting

Overnight we sailed through fog, and awoke to a mirror calm sea – you could almost see your reflection in it! Perfect weather for spotting cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). Just over the shelf edge (where the shallower ‘shelf’ deepens rapidly into the deep Rockall Trough – it’s a bit like going down a steep mountain, except we’re floating above the slope) we spotted a baleen whale (mysticete), probably a fin whale. Here’s Woody pointing in the direction he saw it:  

Baleen whales don’t have teeth, they have baleen plates, which look a lot like hair, that hangs across their huge mouths. It’s because these huge animals (this was likely to be a fin whale which is around 20m long – the size of 2 double decker buses) eat the teeny tiniest animals – plankton. So they gulp in a huge mouthful of water, and then use their tongue to push out all the water, while the plankton gets left in the mouth by the baleen. For more information check out this web link. 

But that's not all we saw - we also saw some beaked whales! Here is Meg pointing in the direction she saw them (there were 6 of them!):

This was VERY exciting because beaked whales are very rarely seen. They are very deep divers eating squid deeeeeep in the ocean (so yes they have teeth – all toothed whales are called odontocetes). These ones were sighted right on top of Anton Dorhn sea mount – this is a very steep, round mountain under the sea – it’s great because a lot of sea life like sea mounts – there are lots of deep sea corals and animals living on it (see this cruise log by another group of Plymouth scientists) but also other animals like fish, squid… and whales like the sea mount too. So Meg was very excited to see the beaked whales (see this web link for more information on beaked whales).

Unfortunately we can’t watch all the time because we are listening on our hydrophone – this is an underwater listening device that is towed behind the ship to listen for whales. We’ve heard quite a few sperm whales in the deep sea (we’re in water that is 1800m deep – which is around 180 double decker buses back to back!). More about sperm whales and the sounds whales make in a later blog. We better get back to listening!