Whale Reconnaissance
Greetings fellow whale-enthusiasts!
I had the chance to go on my first official whale watching tour this past Saturday, where I was mainly doing reconnaissance work to evaluate the tour operations. If possible, I was also charged with determining potential opportunities to interview tourists and to secure an interview/survey from a tour guide.
As I have previously mentioned, there are only a few prominent whale watching companies that operate in the local area. One of them, Sea Las Perlas, appears to dominate much of the vessel activities, offering daily transport to some of the major islands in the Perlas as well as all day beach trips that include whale watching. My advisor had secured a conversation with the manager of the company, and she was very receptive to our project mission and had graciously proposed to allow one member of our team to go along for a whale watch tour for free. As both A.A and my advisor are out of town this week and last weekend, that job fell to me.
The day started super early. I had been told to show up at 6:45AM to check in, as the ferry departed at 7:30AM. I arrived to the usual hecticness of tourists trying to determine which boat they were supposed to get on, if they had the right tickets, if they were waiting in the right line etc.... The trip out was fairly uneventful and most of people took naps or read (no whales sighted). The trip takes everyone out to the island of Bolanos, one of the tiny, uninhabited islands with beautiful beaches. The majority of the tour immediately hit one of the two beaches and parked their stuff, ready for a day of soaking up rays and swimming. However, I was there to work so I eagerly hung around the staff, hoping for a cue as to when the whale watching would occur.
I had struck up a conversation with the tour guide, a young woman in her early 20s who was fully bilingual, who had informed me that typically the company utilizes the boats belonging to the local fishermen to take the tourists out into the archipelago to look for whales on their small boats ("planchas"). However, it appeared that today there was a bit of a mix-up. The manager of the island had a harried conversation with one of the members of the ferry staff (I took the opportunity to casually eves-drop), who told her that there were 19 people who had paid for whale watching, but the manager had only arranged for a single plancha to be available for whale watching. These boats can only hold about 8-10 max. There were a bunch of phone calls made to the company management, including the owner of the business himself (a man named Sonny Eyman, who we have been trying to get in touch with to no avail, but who we have discovered through casual internet searching actually went to ASU many years ago! We may attempt to exploit this connection later if all else fails....) After a lot of back and forth they decided to change the usual schedule and leave for whale watching at 1:30PM. Instead of the planchas, we were going to use the large ferry boat to view whales. The rest of the group who wanted to stay on the beach would be picked up at 3PM by another ferry that was coming through.
This meant that we had some time to kill.... while I was initially disappointed as I felt a little antsy about getting the surveys done and determining the best way to approach people, I thought, hey - there are definitely worst places to be stuck doing field work...
During lunch I got a chance to talk with the tour guide about her experiences. She had just started working with S.L.P and previously had worked with a company out in Coiba, another group of islands to the west of Panama city. She filled out our survey and shared her thoughts on the current industry regulations. In her opinion, the issue lay mostly with the lack of enforcement and training for boat operators. She and the other naturalists do receive training and for the most part they are genuinely concerned with the well-being of the whales and do their best to convince the boat operators they work with to adhere to the regulations, (this includes maintaining a distance of at least 250 m from the whales, not cutting across their path of movement or interfering with their activity in any way). While the regulations have been established, the only current means of reporting infractions is to take a photo of the guilty boat - but as she pointed out, how are you supposed to measure the distance the boat is from the whale, simply from a photo? Also how do you identify the boat/operator in order to follow up with punishment or citation?
The tour guide also believed that international tourists were more motivated by conservation than the local ones, however, she has constantly experienced tourists (of both backgrounds) asking for the boat to get closer to the whales than was permitted. She believed the whales were definitely stressed by the presence of the boats and said they will often dive down to get away from them, or even in some extreme cases exhibit their displeasure by performing pectoral fin slaps (a sign of aggression). Nothing she said was surprising based on our preliminary research/suspicions, but it further validated the reason why our project had been initiated. It was nice to be able to actually talk with someone involved with the industry, as it provides us with a first-hand account of the issues we specifically need to focus on.
During lunch I also struck up conversations with some of the tourists (a father/daughter from Holland, a German woman living in Brazil) and had a nice conversation with them about their trips. They had noticed the STRI ID badge I was wearing and so they were also asking me questions about my project and the implications of whale watching. I was worried that by sharing my intentions for being on the trip I was unconsciously "contaminating" my sample, as it might affect the answers they provided later (if they ended up being selected to answer my survey). I figured in the moment I would prefer to be social and friendly, rather than rude all for the sake of good science. I guess I'll have to see if this ends up being an issue down the road. If anyone has experience with social surveys, please give me advice or insight into whether this may be a confounding issue and how to deal with it!
1:30 finally rolled around and we boarded the big ferry boat to go out and search for whales. I was immediately concerned about our likelihood of seeing any whales, given the size and noise of the larger boat (see photo above). Whales and many other marine creatures are extremely sensitive to underwater acoustics and a loud ferry boat would exactly provide the most subtle approach. Nevertheless, we did manage to see about 4-5 whales, mostly traveling in pairs. I could not be sure whether the boat was adhering to the rules of approach (slowing their speed, approaching parallel to the whale, not cutting across the whales' path) but we did leave the whales after 30 mins of pursuit. At one point a couple of the whales did surface right next to the boat, which was very impressive to see. There was a fair amount of fluke-up dives (which is when the whale prepares for a deep dive, so their tail ends up coming out of the water), which emphasized the possibility that the whales were trying to avoid the boats. Sadly I did not get any photos as I didn't feel like pushing my way through a huge group of eager tourists, especially as all of them had paid a lot of money for the experience while I had gotten on for free. However, if anyone does go on a whale watch in Panama and does happen to get a good fluke (tail) photo, please send them to the Smithsonian!
We have not yet seen any mother + calf pairs, which indicates that the the breeding season has not fully begun. The individual whales we have been seeing are likely pregnant mothers or random adults who are just passing through the area (and thus are not "hanging" around). This can make viewing them more unpredictable as whales can submerge for up to 10-15 minutes on a single breath when they are traveling (longer if they are deep-diving). Mothers will often travel more slowly as the babies cannot always keep up or are more interested in playing or feeding. The fact that we are encountering whales traveling in pairs is another indicator that these are probably not mothers, as once the mothers have their babies they tend to prefer to travel solo.
I did manage to get 4 pairs of tourists to fill out my survey. I tried my best to be "scientifically correct" and use a random selection process (I counted every 3rd tourist/group I saw. I counted a family group as a single individual as we did not want two members of the same family to fill out the survey as they likely share opinions/perspectives). Everyone I approached was very friendly and willing to take the survey (Yay, success!), which was very encouraging. I fully anticipate that there will be some people in the future that will decline to take the test, but I always get anxious about approaching people cold. Hopefully practice makes perfect.
All in all it was a very long, yet fairly successful day. We have been offered the opportunity to go back out on the whale watching tours again in the future (they only occur on Saturdays), for a discounted price. We may have to figure out a way to more efficiently collect tourist surveys (the whole tour is only about 50 people, about 20 go on the whale watch, which means about 4-5 surveys each trip, if we are lucky). But not off to a bad start. Now to figure out how to get a few hundred before the end of our season.....
Not sure how many readers I still have, but even if I'm just writing this for my parents and a couple of friends, I'll be satisfied). I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer so far, wherever and whatever adventures they may be up to!
Until next time, peace, love and traveling like a tourist
I had the chance to go on my first official whale watching tour this past Saturday, where I was mainly doing reconnaissance work to evaluate the tour operations. If possible, I was also charged with determining potential opportunities to interview tourists and to secure an interview/survey from a tour guide.
As I have previously mentioned, there are only a few prominent whale watching companies that operate in the local area. One of them, Sea Las Perlas, appears to dominate much of the vessel activities, offering daily transport to some of the major islands in the Perlas as well as all day beach trips that include whale watching. My advisor had secured a conversation with the manager of the company, and she was very receptive to our project mission and had graciously proposed to allow one member of our team to go along for a whale watch tour for free. As both A.A and my advisor are out of town this week and last weekend, that job fell to me.
The day started super early. I had been told to show up at 6:45AM to check in, as the ferry departed at 7:30AM. I arrived to the usual hecticness of tourists trying to determine which boat they were supposed to get on, if they had the right tickets, if they were waiting in the right line etc.... The trip out was fairly uneventful and most of people took naps or read (no whales sighted). The trip takes everyone out to the island of Bolanos, one of the tiny, uninhabited islands with beautiful beaches. The majority of the tour immediately hit one of the two beaches and parked their stuff, ready for a day of soaking up rays and swimming. However, I was there to work so I eagerly hung around the staff, hoping for a cue as to when the whale watching would occur.
I had struck up a conversation with the tour guide, a young woman in her early 20s who was fully bilingual, who had informed me that typically the company utilizes the boats belonging to the local fishermen to take the tourists out into the archipelago to look for whales on their small boats ("planchas"). However, it appeared that today there was a bit of a mix-up. The manager of the island had a harried conversation with one of the members of the ferry staff (I took the opportunity to casually eves-drop), who told her that there were 19 people who had paid for whale watching, but the manager had only arranged for a single plancha to be available for whale watching. These boats can only hold about 8-10 max. There were a bunch of phone calls made to the company management, including the owner of the business himself (a man named Sonny Eyman, who we have been trying to get in touch with to no avail, but who we have discovered through casual internet searching actually went to ASU many years ago! We may attempt to exploit this connection later if all else fails....) After a lot of back and forth they decided to change the usual schedule and leave for whale watching at 1:30PM. Instead of the planchas, we were going to use the large ferry boat to view whales. The rest of the group who wanted to stay on the beach would be picked up at 3PM by another ferry that was coming through.
This meant that we had some time to kill.... while I was initially disappointed as I felt a little antsy about getting the surveys done and determining the best way to approach people, I thought, hey - there are definitely worst places to be stuck doing field work...
During lunch I got a chance to talk with the tour guide about her experiences. She had just started working with S.L.P and previously had worked with a company out in Coiba, another group of islands to the west of Panama city. She filled out our survey and shared her thoughts on the current industry regulations. In her opinion, the issue lay mostly with the lack of enforcement and training for boat operators. She and the other naturalists do receive training and for the most part they are genuinely concerned with the well-being of the whales and do their best to convince the boat operators they work with to adhere to the regulations, (this includes maintaining a distance of at least 250 m from the whales, not cutting across their path of movement or interfering with their activity in any way). While the regulations have been established, the only current means of reporting infractions is to take a photo of the guilty boat - but as she pointed out, how are you supposed to measure the distance the boat is from the whale, simply from a photo? Also how do you identify the boat/operator in order to follow up with punishment or citation?The tour guide also believed that international tourists were more motivated by conservation than the local ones, however, she has constantly experienced tourists (of both backgrounds) asking for the boat to get closer to the whales than was permitted. She believed the whales were definitely stressed by the presence of the boats and said they will often dive down to get away from them, or even in some extreme cases exhibit their displeasure by performing pectoral fin slaps (a sign of aggression). Nothing she said was surprising based on our preliminary research/suspicions, but it further validated the reason why our project had been initiated. It was nice to be able to actually talk with someone involved with the industry, as it provides us with a first-hand account of the issues we specifically need to focus on.
During lunch I also struck up conversations with some of the tourists (a father/daughter from Holland, a German woman living in Brazil) and had a nice conversation with them about their trips. They had noticed the STRI ID badge I was wearing and so they were also asking me questions about my project and the implications of whale watching. I was worried that by sharing my intentions for being on the trip I was unconsciously "contaminating" my sample, as it might affect the answers they provided later (if they ended up being selected to answer my survey). I figured in the moment I would prefer to be social and friendly, rather than rude all for the sake of good science. I guess I'll have to see if this ends up being an issue down the road. If anyone has experience with social surveys, please give me advice or insight into whether this may be a confounding issue and how to deal with it!
 |
| Picture from Sea Las Perlas website |
1:30 finally rolled around and we boarded the big ferry boat to go out and search for whales. I was immediately concerned about our likelihood of seeing any whales, given the size and noise of the larger boat (see photo above). Whales and many other marine creatures are extremely sensitive to underwater acoustics and a loud ferry boat would exactly provide the most subtle approach. Nevertheless, we did manage to see about 4-5 whales, mostly traveling in pairs. I could not be sure whether the boat was adhering to the rules of approach (slowing their speed, approaching parallel to the whale, not cutting across the whales' path) but we did leave the whales after 30 mins of pursuit. At one point a couple of the whales did surface right next to the boat, which was very impressive to see. There was a fair amount of fluke-up dives (which is when the whale prepares for a deep dive, so their tail ends up coming out of the water), which emphasized the possibility that the whales were trying to avoid the boats. Sadly I did not get any photos as I didn't feel like pushing my way through a huge group of eager tourists, especially as all of them had paid a lot of money for the experience while I had gotten on for free. However, if anyone does go on a whale watch in Panama and does happen to get a good fluke (tail) photo, please send them to the Smithsonian!
 |
| The educational flier for Citizen Science, that the Smithsonian puts out each year. They distribute them to all the local whale watching/tourist companies in the area |
We have not yet seen any mother + calf pairs, which indicates that the the breeding season has not fully begun. The individual whales we have been seeing are likely pregnant mothers or random adults who are just passing through the area (and thus are not "hanging" around). This can make viewing them more unpredictable as whales can submerge for up to 10-15 minutes on a single breath when they are traveling (longer if they are deep-diving). Mothers will often travel more slowly as the babies cannot always keep up or are more interested in playing or feeding. The fact that we are encountering whales traveling in pairs is another indicator that these are probably not mothers, as once the mothers have their babies they tend to prefer to travel solo.
I did manage to get 4 pairs of tourists to fill out my survey. I tried my best to be "scientifically correct" and use a random selection process (I counted every 3rd tourist/group I saw. I counted a family group as a single individual as we did not want two members of the same family to fill out the survey as they likely share opinions/perspectives). Everyone I approached was very friendly and willing to take the survey (Yay, success!), which was very encouraging. I fully anticipate that there will be some people in the future that will decline to take the test, but I always get anxious about approaching people cold. Hopefully practice makes perfect.
All in all it was a very long, yet fairly successful day. We have been offered the opportunity to go back out on the whale watching tours again in the future (they only occur on Saturdays), for a discounted price. We may have to figure out a way to more efficiently collect tourist surveys (the whole tour is only about 50 people, about 20 go on the whale watch, which means about 4-5 surveys each trip, if we are lucky). But not off to a bad start. Now to figure out how to get a few hundred before the end of our season.....
Not sure how many readers I still have, but even if I'm just writing this for my parents and a couple of friends, I'll be satisfied). I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer so far, wherever and whatever adventures they may be up to!
Until next time, peace, love and traveling like a tourist
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