GVI Kenya

Category: Cetacean research, Humpback whales | Date: Sep 08 2008 | By: gvikenya

It must be fate after my final comments on the last blog… the humpback whales returned today and ironically it was the coastal forest research team and not the marine research boat that recorded them! I got a call at around 10am from our team in the forest who had trekked out to the very end of our transect 1, where the forest meets the ocean, to be presented with 3 humpback whales entering the Wasini channel, just 500m from our base on the island. I jumped on board our small wooden dinghy, ‘Squirrel’, with our marine staff Sergi, Ines and Shafii, and the necessary survey forms, and we headed out as fast as our 25hp would allow us in the direction the whales had gone. Sightings of a couple of blows on the horizon as the whales surfaced to breathe, and a splash as one of them breached, indicated that we were at least heading in the right direction although not necessarily catching them.

Beyond Nyuli reef and out to sea we stopped the engine and drifted looking out for signs of these huge mammals, which become very difficult to locate in the open ocean. And then a couple more tell-tale blows on the horizon pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately they were too far and moving to fast to get close to, but through binoculars I had a perfect view of four large tails emerge from the water’s surface and slip back down again in perfect synchrony. Another blow behind them indicated that there were at least five animals in total.

The only time I’d seen humpback whales was about 8 years ago, between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, so it was fantastic to see them again, right on my doorstep… and another reminder of just how lucky I am to be involved in our project here in Kenya.

 The photograph above shows the ‘blow’ of a humpback whale as it surfaces to breathe, within 500 metres of our base in Mkwiro

The photograph above shows a humpback whale seen last Thursday, closer than we were able to get today

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Category: Cetacean research, Dolphins, Kisite Mpunguti MPA | Date: Sep 07 2008 | By: gvikenya

Working on a Sunday isn’t always a bad thing… with tourism still recovering, we are taking every opportunity to join the tour boats and collect research data, so I set off at 8 this morning for a day of dolphin surveys. Towards the end of 2007 we expanded our dolphin research to incorporate the tourist boats that take visitors to the Kisite Marine Park. Whilst our core research enables us to assess population size and social associations, studying the interactions of the tour boats with the dolphins is equally important in enabling Kenya Wildlife Service to manage tourism responsibly and ensure that impacts on the dolphin population are regulated.

With their kind co-operation, we boarded the Dolphin Dhow tour, to record data on the location, duration and dolphin individuals encountered. It was a beautiful sunny and relatively calm day… no one was complaining about giving up their Sunday. As we approached Kisite Island, we joined a couple of other tourist dhows that had come across 11 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, including a mother-calf pair and a sub-adult, travelling in a tight formation towards the Kisite reef.

After the launch of the dolphin-watching code of conduct a year ago, and with five tourist boats in total, it was pleasing to see them all drive responsibly, following the group from behind at a distance of about 30m, so as not to disturb their behaviour. This is particularly important when there are young dolphins present. After 15 minutes two more tourist boats joined us with another four adult bottlenose dolphins bow-riding to join the group. The behaviour then changed, with peduncle and tail dives, and more scattered distribution suggesting that they had started foraging at the edge of Kisite reef. It was a fantastic opportunity for tourists and our research team to observe these wild animals with the sub-adult giving us a couple of playful leaps and tail slaps on the water’s surface to keep us all the more enthralled, and a soundtrack of rhythmic gentle blows as they exhaled at the surface.

As the dolphin group reformed and set off travelling again, Dolphin Dhow moored up their boat on the edge of the reef to give us the opportunity to cool off and enjoy the underwater world. After two and a half years working here, today was one of the best snorkeling trips, with exceptionally good visibility and a diversity of colourful reef fish that I hadn’t witnessed before, of all shapes and sizes… including some of the biggest I’ve seen.

Then it got better… we were unexpectedly joined by four of the dolphins, swimming around and beneath us. One of the most valuable regulations in the code of conduct was to prohibit explicit swimming with dolphins. The common anthropomorphic view is that dolphins are ‘friendly and enjoy human company’, and we all too easily forget that we are in the company of wild animals. Pursuing wild dolphins to get close enough to drop people in amongst them has to impact on their natural behaviour and it is believed to cause stress or interfere with their feeding or socialising. It really is comparable to driving off-road in a terrestrial park to get close to lions - something that few responsible tourists would tolerate these days.

However when the dolphins choose to come to you, it is at least a voluntary response to your presence, and an exceptionally rewarding experience. For 5 minutes we had clear views of these beautiful, and surprisingly large, wild animals, swimming with easy grace and precision. And the sound of their echolocation clicks reverberating through the water and seemingly through your body as they approached head-on was astonishing. It is an innate desire to observe and understand behaviour in animals that keeps me endlessly enthralled by the natural world and makes every day in the field a new experience. So to be in the water looking down on the sub-adult as it rolled on to its back for two adults to rub along its belly, was an unparalleled privilege.

After a wonderful swahili lunch on board the boat, bobbing on the Indian Ocean, it was very difficult to feel sorry for myself for having missed out on the Humpback whales a few days ago… today was another one of those “I love my job” days! With special thanks to Dolphin Dhow for making it so.

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Tags: code of conduct, dolphin research, dolphin-watching, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins

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Category: Cetacean research, Humpback whales, Kisite Mpunguti MPA | Date: Sep 06 2008 | By: gvikenya

In the last blog I wrote about our latest encounter with humpback whales here in the Kisite Mpunugti MPA, so I thought I would share some of the many photos our marine research team on the day managed to get.

The mother-calf pair above visited Kisite Mpunguti MPA on Thursday this week

Humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, can grow up to 15m in length and 30 tonnes in weight. They are a highly migratory species travelling up the East African coast to breed in the warm clear waters off the Arabian peninsula. Sightings of very young calves  indicate that they may breed off the Kenyan coast as they will generally wait until their calves are strong enough before attempting the long journey back to the productive feeding grounds of the Antarctic for during the southern hemisphere’s summer months.

Humpback whales are baleen whales, or mysticetes, with baleen plates instead of teeth, for filter-feeding. They are named for their characteristic long hump beneath the somewhat short, stubby dorsal fin. Their pectoral fins are distinctively long, up to one third of their body length and the head is covered in numerous knobs called tubercles.

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Category: Cetacean research, Humpback whales, Kisite Mpunguti MPA | Date: Sep 04 2008 | By: gvikenya

The exciting news from our marine research programme today was the reappearance of humpback whales in Kisite Marine Park. The mother and calf pair surfaced near to Kisite Island this morning in front of the team aboard our research vessel ‘Bardan’, a traditional local dhow that also goes by the name of ‘Lampard’ thanks to its Chelsea FC supporting owner. Lampard also happens to be the nickname I go by with the children in Mkwiro village so I’m feeling an affinity with our new boat!

Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) photographed close to Kisite-Mpunguti MPA in August 2007

The photo identification survey was attempted this morning, however with these majestic whales, unique identification comes from the pattern of notches on the tail flukes as opposed to the dorsal fins of the dolphins that dominate our cetacean research. Unfortunately this pair did not demonstrate much tail-diving behaviour and so opportunities to photograph their tail flukes for analysis were few and far between.

Mother-calf pair Humpback whales surveyed last year in Kisite-Mpunguti MPA

However it is very exciting still to have the opportunity to record the movements of these infrequent visitors to the Kisite-Mpunugti marine protected area. This is only our second sighting of them on marine surveys this year, the first coming almost a month ago, again a mother-calf pair, although we can’t yet determine if they were the same pair. Humpback whales were also spotted in the Wasini channel at the beginning of July, but not whilst our research vessel was at sea. Taken together this represents valuable data in understanding their migratory movements on the south Kenyan coast which this year covers at least a two month period. In addition it is a remarkable experience for our expedition members that have been conducting our cetacean research on the bottlenose and humpback dolphins, to see their larger relatives close up in the same waters. I hope that I will have more to report in the coming weeks as it is always a privilege to see these kings of the ocean.

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