One comes to mind featuring a deep diving whale. I was doing some expeditions in the tropical Indian Ocean off the Seychelles. So it’s located in the western tropical Indian Ocean. It’s actually very close to the equator. And we’re conducting research on Pygmy Blue Whales there. And we’ve encountered a lot of different species.
Actually 21 species in 21 days. •
And the one encounter that we remember is a group of about 100-120 Longman’s Beaked Whales.
So these Beaked Whales are fairly big, six – seven meters long. And they were chased by about 200 pilot whales with offshore bottlenose dolphins. And a few Frasers dolphins. So there were hundreds whales and dolphins.
And we were able to get on the small dinghy to actually collect biopsy samples on these Longman’s. And I remember a colleague working a lot on Beaked Whales around the globe. I think he’s seen the most big Beaked Whales, Bob Pittman, from the Marine Mammal Institute in Oregon State.
And he say, oh, you’re probably the one who biopsied Longman’s Beaked Whales for the first time.
Yeah, it was absolutely amazing to see this spectacle. I still remember that. I don’t know how much I screamed that day, but it was amazing. It was almost sunset, when it happened, so the ambience was pretty amazing.
So it’s a great memory.
-Jeremy
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 87 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here
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