![]() Or perhaps they’re wooing her with ballads. Perhaps males are gathering around a female and fighting it out via song, says Cerchio. Occasionally multiple whales raise their voices in an Omura’s chorus. The whales sing a low, repetitive melody that they may repeat for an hour or more. Instead the Omura’s was seen hanging out in loose groups of up to a half-dozen animals. Animals stay within hearing range of each other, but give each other plenty of personal space. It doesn’t form tight-knit pods like many other whale species, but it isn’t solitary either. The new observations also showed the Omura’s social habits are distinctive. On a recent expedition aboard the Nautilus, researchers got a giant surprise! As they viewed footage streamed by the Hercules, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), a sperm whale swam into the frame and proceeded to circle around the ROV multiple times! Video courtesy Ocean Exploration Trust/GISRĬerchio’s team, which observed the whales swallowing murky water as recently as late 2015, suspects the whales are filtering out food such as fish eggs or tiny plankton that are almost invisible to the human eye. So “one of the big questions is how they make their living.” "We call it the very thin soup,” says marine-mammal biologist Matt Leslie of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who wasn't part of the new study. The tropics, on the other hand, provide slim pickings for baleen whales like Omura's, which filter small organisms through their mouths. (See " Life in Antarctica Relies on Shrinking Supply of Krill.") Most whales migrate, often over long distances, and most spend at least some of the year in cooler waters closer to the poles, where food abounds. The team’s first round of data, published in October 2015 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest that these Omura’s at least are homebodies. The sightings also suggest the Omura's sticks to tropical and subtropical waters.įor a whale, that’s doubly unusual. “They are stunning animals.” ( See National Geographic's amazing whale pictures.)Ĭerchio’s team made 44 sightings of the whales off Madagascar during 20 and more than 80 sightings in 2015. With their striking dark-light patterns and super-streamlined profile, Omura’s whales are a combination of “grace and beauty,” says Cerchio, whose work was supported by the U.S. Scouting for dolphins near Madagascar a few years ago, Cerchio spotted some medium-size whales. After the DNA analysis came back, on December 24, 2014, Cerchio learned he’d stumbled onto Omura’s whales-“a very nice Christmas gift,” says Cerchio, a National Geographic explorer. ![]() And the Omura’s keeps a relatively low profile compared to showboats like humpbacks, which make eye-catching leaps out of the water.Įven after it was unmasked in the scientific literature, the Omura’s was still known only from dead specimens, some hauled onto whaling ships, others stranded on coastlines. Sea surveys are costly, says Kershaw, who wasn't involved in the new study. It’s no surprise-at least to scientists-that a 35-foot (about 10-meter) long animal could elude detection, says Francine Kershaw, a marine mammal science fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ![]() Genetic data confirmed the whale as its own species in 2006. It wasn’t until 2003 that Japanese researchers identified it as a species in its own right rather than a petite version of the similar-looking Bryde’s whale. Big MomentĮven so, the Omura’s has avoided the limelight. ![]() The whales’ seemingly invisible food supply only adds to the mystique of the Omura's whale, whose habitat, lifestyle, and social lives make them standouts in the whale world. “Well, I don’t know yet.” ( Read about the Madagascar Omura's Whale Project.) “People see our photos and videos and say, ‘What are they feeding on? I don’t see anything there,’” says Salvatore Cerchio, a marine mammal biologist at the New England Aquarium and leader of the first team to document the whales’ lives. ![]()
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