Show Date: February 16, 2005

SEEING WHALES AND THEIR FOOD
Pam Eastlick for the Marianas Variety

Greetings and welcome to The Deep column and the deepest radio show on Earth. The Deep is the science talk radio program that takes you from the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of the universe. This week on The Deep hosted by Jim Sullivan and aired at 6:00 this evening on K-57, we have a special guest. Join us for an in-depth interview with local photographer Chris Bangs and his upcoming project with world-famed ocean artist, Wyland. We’ll also have some expedition calls and our science news updates as well as taking your phone calls. Tune in tonight! And don’t forget to log on to www.thedeepradioshow.com for all the latest and deepest news.

SEEING WHALES

Local photographer Chris Bangs and internationally renowned artist Wyland

Next month, Chris Bangs, a local photographer, will embark on an incredible adventure. He’s going to go swim with the whales. And he won’t be alone; he’ll be accompanying world-famous ocean artist, Wyland. They’re going to Silver Bank, an elevated area of sea bottom in the Caribbean, about 75 miles north of the island of Hispanola, home to the countries Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In winter, it’s the gathering place of the world’s largest concentration of humpback whales.
The North Atlantic humpback whale spends spring, summer and autumn in the high latitude feeding areas off Canada, Greenland and Iceland. As winter approaches, they migrate south to the mating and calving grounds of the eastern Caribbean.

Humpback whales are gentle giants, up to 50 feet long. They feed on plankton in the Arctic seas by straining them from the water with their baleen, a sieve-like apparatus. It is one of nature’s gentle jokes that the largest animals in the world get that way from eating some of the smallest animals and plants.
When humpbacks leave their northern feeding grounds, they stop eating and during their winter gatherings, the females typically remain gentle and flirtatious, but the males become very vocal and aggressive and spend a lot of time at the surface.

During mating and calving, male humpbacks securing their position next to a female and protecting that position from any challenging whales. If a challenger moves into the area, the escorting male will display at the surface to warn his competitor.

Sometimes several males will gather around a single female and use their pectoral fins to swat at other approaching males, ram into each other or repeatedly breach, all in an attempt to reach a position next to the female. It’s an awesome spectacle to see six or more challengers for the favors of a female being protected by one valiant escort.

Females also calve in winter and spring and it’s not unusual to see newborn humpback calves. Chris Bangs will talk about his experiences with seeing a newborn sperm whale not too far from Guam. He is looking forward to his adventure with Wyland and the whales. Tune in tonight to learn all about it!

A NEW MODEL FOR OCEAN PRODUCTIVITY
SEAWIFS chlorophyll map of the ocean around Guam and the Marianas Islands Areas with high amounts of chlorophyll are shown in red. Can you see ‘red Guam’ near the center of the image?
Humpback whales feed on plankton and scientists have recently discovered a new way to measure plankton productivity. Phytoplankton is the name for the small plants that float in the ocean and in order to measure productivity, you have to know how much phytoplankton there is and how fast it’s growing.
Scientists can now use both the color and brightness in a satellite image to help them discover how green the tiny single-cell plants are and how many cells are in a given area. Researchers can calculate growth rates from the greenness of the individual phytoplankton cells. When cold water, bright light, or low nutrients stress the phytoplankton, they lose pigment and appear less green. The reverse is also true, phytoplankton become greener when conditions improve and growth rates increase.

The research team used ocean color data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) satellite. They learned that growth rates change with the seasons and in various parts of the world ocean, exactly as they expected from years of laboratory studies on phytoplankton. When they applied their new data to recalculate ocean production, they discovered a significantly different view of ocean photosynthesis than was obtained with older models using the same satellite data.

Tune in tonight to K-57 at 6:00 p.m. and join us on The Deep for a look at whales and their place in the ocean food chain. And don’t forget to log on to www.thedeepradioshow.com for all the latest Deep News!