Correlation between vocalization and breaching

Nicole Lee

Beam Reach Marine science and sustainability school

Status

considered for listing as “threatened” in U.S, endangered in Canada

Human/ whale interaction throughout history

Probable cause of resident status = language barrier

Echolocation discovery – helped inform how communication occurs

What if communication were better understood?

Theories of why Breaching occurs

Exercise AggravationForagingSocializing, or “playing”All of the above

Motivation

Past researchers

Behavior in 4 broad categories: Foraging, traveling, resting and socializing (Ford, Ellis, Balcomb 1994)

Breaching = behavior seen during socializing

Highly variable squeaks, squawks, and whistles while socializing

My Curiosities

What kind of vocalizations are made when breaching, no matter what explanation for that activity was correct.

Can a correlation between breaching and vocalizations be found?

What theory will I develop?

My Experiment Designed to record

vocalizations and analyze sounds I heard at the time I observed a breach

My Expectations To find a correlation between

breaches and vocalization No correlation?

Methods

Instruments used: “Ears”, “Elephant Ears” Amplifier Maranz recording device

Software Ishmael Creative Wave Studio Call tutor

Behavior observation data sheet

Instruments used for Acoustic Observation

EARS ELEPHANT EARS

Results

The most frequent call heard when breaching occurred was S10

*Rainy day breaches were common, out of 11 S10 calls 6 were heard on rainy day.

Number of Calls vs Stereotypical Call ID

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

S1 S2 S6 S7 S10 S11 S13 S15 S16

Calls

Nu

mb

er o

f C

alls

Although S10 calls occurred most frequently during observations, and showed somewhat of a trend, I found there not to be a consistent call when breaching occurred.

S10 Calls vs Breaches

R2 = 0.0769

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Number of breaches

Nu

mb

er o

f S

10 C

alls

My theory

Breaching is contextual I believe Orcas do things as sporadically as humans do.

Acknowledgements/ Bibliography

Thanks to Scott Veirs for his teaching, guidance, and support; to Val Veirs for his instruction and equipment, to Captain Todd Shuster for allowing me to reside on his boat for five weeks, to the other Beam Reach students for their help, and to the Friday Harbor Labs for their facilities. Thanks also to Fred Felleman, Ken Balcomb, Rich Osborne, and David Bain for their time, insight and motivation. Finally, thanks to Orca Network for providing us with beneficial information.

(Ford et al., 2004) J.K.B. Ford, G.M. Ellis, and K.C. Balcomb. 1994. Killer Whales: The natural history and genealogy of Orcinus Orca in British Columbia and Washington State. UBC Press, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Pictures by Scott Veirs, Laura Christoferson and Val Veirs.