Bowhead rubbing
Sometimes the coolest things happen, when you least expect it.
These four bowhead whales with mottled skin were filmed rubbing their bodies against boulders. Animal A is seen rubbing the right side of its head on a boulder, and Animal D is using the rocks to exfoliate its chin. The long, thin lines running length and width-wise across the body of Animal C were caused by rubbing against rocks. Images captured by VDOS Global LLC
Since grade school, we’ve been taught the importance of applying the scientific method while observing and answering questions about the world around us. This means having clear hypotheses to test—and employing rigorous methods to collect, analyze and interpret data.
But, what happens when things don’t go quite to plan and you stumble upon something that falls completely outside your research scope?
This is what happened during Sarah Fortune’s PhD fieldwork in the remote waters of Cumberland Sound, Nunavut. Sarah and her colleagues had traveled there to study the diet and feeding behavior of Eastern Canada-West Greenland bowhead whales by recording their underwater movements using archival tags and collecting co-located prey data using a suite of oceanographic sampling equipment.
To their amazement, the team found that bowheads don’t just feed in Cumberland Sound, but they also exfoliate here with help of large rocks along the shoreline.
This unexpected observation of whales rubbing their bodies against large rocks gives new insight into the biological significance of Cumberland Sound to the whales — and shows how the coolest things can sometimes happen when you least expect them!
Sarah Fortune is a PhD Student at UBC’s Marine Mammal Research Unit.
Project Partners: Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Steven Ferguson), World Wildlife Fund Canada (Brandon Laforest), LGL Limited (Bill Koski), VDOS Global LLC (Thomas Seitz), Higdon Wildlife Consulting (Jeff Higdon), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Mark Baumgartner), Pangnirtung Hunter and Trappers Association and Peter’s Expediting & Outfitting Services.
See the rest of the Marine Mammal Research Newsletter from March 2018
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