Whale Research

The Old Whale Biologist

When I first started working with whales, most whale research consisted of carving up dead whales at whaling stations. They were killed and towed to the whaling station where we took measurements and studied their anatomy. In 1972, all that changed when whaling became illegal in the United States. A new breed of researchers sprang up all over the world. These researchers would go anywhere and do anything to study whales in their natural habitat.

In 1973, I had an opportunity to study blue, fin, and other baleen whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, Canada. I was young and out to make my mark on the world. There were eight of us living in a small trailer. We lived and breathed whales day and night. It was an exciting time!

Our job was to observe and record the natural behavior of whales. Observations of whales are very difficult since they spend 90% of their time beneath the surface of the water. However, it is possible to observe the behavior of a whale at the surface and to draw some conclusions about what it is doing below.

July 16, 1973 is a day that remains embedded in my mind, particularly since it was my birthday. It was on this day in 1973 that we had an opportunity to track a blue whale from 1302 (1:02 p.m.) to 2330 (11:30 p.m.). Just seeing a blue whale will take your breath away because of its size. But knowing that this is the largest creature that has ever lived, and knowing that blues had been hunted to near extinction, made the sighting even more special. We tracked this whale all afternoon and into the evening. It was a window into the private life of a blue whale.

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