Guest blogger Nigella Hillgarth is President and CEO of the New England Aquarium and a W2O board member
Several hundred years ago there was said to be a strange and fierce sea creature that attacked ships. The Water-Owl or Ziphius had the body of a fish and a head of an owl with huge eyes and a beak-like a sword. Today we think the animal behind these stories is Cuvier’s beaked whale or Goose-beaked whale. This deep water whale is the most widely distributed beaked whale species.
In early February I was on a sailing ship in the Caribbean passing through the channel between St Lucia and Martinique. It is deep in that area – several thousand feet and suitable for beaked whales. I was not thinking about whales at the time because I was busy photographing the brown boobies that were following the ship. Suddenly a robust, chocolate brown animal appeared next to the ship below me. I took as many photographs as I could before it disappeared into the deep. I was pretty certain I had seen a beaked whale but I had no idea what species. It was not large – about 10 to 12 feet long but had the typical curved dorsal fin towards the back of the body and a strange elongated and slightly bulbous head. When I returned one of our marine mammal scientists at the New England Aquarium identified it as a young Cuvier’s beaked whale. I feel so lucky to have seen one of these elusive animals.
Cuvier’s beaked whales can dive deeper than any other marine mammal. A recent study shows that at least one individual went down as far as 9,816 feet! Not much is known about these elusive and extreme divers, but there is concern that noise in the ocean from sonar and seismic testing may cause these whales to strand. There is evidence to suggest that some of these stranded animals have surfaced too quickly and developed damage similar to that of the bends in humans.
Noise in the ocean is a serious threat to marine mammals and other marine life. Commercial shipping noise, sonar testing and seismic surveys can clearly have significant, long-lasting, and widespread impacts on marine mammal and fish populations. Normally, when we think about pollution in the seas we don’t think about noise. We think about plastics and chemicals and ghost fishing nets. Noise in its various forms is just as big a problem for life in the ocean. If we care about the future of strange and elusive mammals such as the ‘Water-owl’ we need to understand and mitigate noise impacts in the ocean far more than at present.
Photo: Nigella Hillgarth
Learn more about seismic testing and how you can help stop ocean noise HERE
