Whale Festival Program 3.-6.8.2011 talks & music

@ Ocean Sounds in Henningsvær:

3.8.2011 opening at the Ocean Sounds Center 17 o clock: welcoming talk by Heike Vester, David Rothenberg, Lasse-Marc Riek, Rauno Lauhakangas and Tuula  Nikulainen

30min Ocean Sounds slide show about the different whale species in Henningsvær

Afterwards: music with David and others in the center of Ocean Sounds

4.8.2011 whale & marine bio-acoustic research:

16:00 – Prof. D. Rothenberg (NJIT) and R. Lauhakangas (CERN) will tell you something about your field work in Russia (and other places) with some examples on how difficult it can get…

16:45 – talk by H.Vester: communication in matrilineal whales – killer and pilot whales

17:30 – talk by Prof. M. Timme & Dr. Jan Nagler (MPI): New methods for whale-sound-analysis

18:00 – talk by Prof. J. T. Nordeide (UiN) Bodø: Sex and sound of cod off Henningsvær

18:30 – “shark” talk by Claudia Junge (NIVA) Oslo

20:00 concert/music (David and others…) on the peer in front of Bryggehotel (weather permitting)

5.8.2011 human activities & whales:

16:00 WWF Norway – talk about whaling in northern countries (not confirmed yet)

16:45 Daniel Opitz film about whaling

18:15 History and whale stories: Tuula, Hanni, Rauno…

19:00 film

21:00 open for performances of guests!! On the peer in front of Bryggehotel (weather permitting)

6.8.2011 our contribution:

16:00 music with whales: David Rothenberg will say something about his work and experiences and show a French documentary about his work in Hawaii with Humpback whales.

16:45 Heike Vester will round up the festivals’ activities and discuss further wishes for the future

Open end live performance: Lasse-Marc Riek: soundscapes with orcas and pilot whales calls

Bring your own instrument, play with us and the whales, COME AND JOIN US FOR A BIT OF FUN!

www.ocean-sounds.com +47-91842012, Hjellskjæret, 8312 Henningsvær

The summer is here, the Vestfjord is full of plankton, you can see schools of mackerell everywhere! on a beautiful day i found 7 different whale species in the fjord: first there were 2 fin whales, a mother with calf, then 3 harbour porpoises swam by and i met 2 minke whales on my way into the fjord. a friend was with the group of orcas deeper in the fjord and he received a call that pilot whales were there as well. I moved on, it was a far trip but worth it! halfway in the fjord I saw a lonely humpback whale feeding, he was not interested in boats and was difficult to take a pitcure of, but i got his fluke for ID! then I moved towards the pilot whales and just when I arrived at the small group, more and more pilot whales appeared and in the end i was surrounded by more than 100 individuals!! what an amazing sight and sounds, they communicated a lot when meeting..they did not mind my presence, some animals even came very close to have a closer look at me. i could take excellent Photo-ID and some good sound recordings. but unfortunately a large ship circled us for the whole time and I got a lot of boat noise on the recordings…
then all of sudden the pilot whales started lifting their heads out of the water, something we call spy hopping. they can see well above water, but I had no clue what they were looking for, until I saw a small fin turning around my boat, then another one, then jumps…a group of Atlantic white sided dolphins came to say hi! there was a lot of communication and then 5 minutes later all was quiet again, the dolphins had left!

it was truly an amazing day!! one of the best days in my life. after 13 hrs out at sea I cam home, very tired but happy! the field work is going very well this year…

pictures will follow later in the gallery…i need some sleep first…

heike

This season so far has been fantastic, several groups of killer and pilot whales have been in the Vestfjord and the weather was good, so I could collect good research data. I don’t know what the killer whales were feeding on, it was not carousel feeding and the only fish available at the moment is small saithe. they have been giving birth to 2 babies, of which on disappeared 2 days after birth.

The pilot whales were feeding at night when squid, their main prey becomes active. I did not have the time yet to go through all the pictures and match them yet to our Photo-ID catalogue and I don’t know whether it is a new group, or a group that has been documented before.

This year I focus strictly on my research and will not take tourists or volunteers with me. that means I am very busy and cannot update the news regularly, I hope you understand.

pictures will follow soon, once I have gone through my 8535 pictures….

[Zeige als Diashow]

[Mit PicLens anzeigen]

in the afternoon I received a phone call from a friend in Svolvaer that they have found a dead whale floating in the water around the islands of lille molla. we went out with their boat and I could take pictures and skin samples, it was clearly a male spermwhale, ca 12-14m long. spermwhales are extremely rare inside the Vestfjord and maybe he died outside the Lofoten Islands and floated into the Vestfjord afterwards. the whale has been dead for some time, his kin was already pink and eaten up in most parts. what has caused his dead is unknown, he was too young for a natural death (adult male spermwhales can reach 18m of length). often spermwhales collide with large ships, or he could have died of an infection or pollution. male spermwhales travel from the south (e.g. Azores) to northern Norway along the continental shelf to feed and return to the females and calves in the south after some time. I hope the DNA samples will tell us to which clan he belongs, and maybe the dorsal fin was not too destroyed for a match, but more to that asap.

here are the pictures, let me know if you need more info/material for research.

The center in Henningsvaer is open again. There are no fixed opening hours but you can send an email: info@ocean-sounds.com or call: +47-91842012 to make an appointment.

At the Center we show a 30minute slide show about the Marine Wildlife (beautiful pictures of all sorts of animals, from yellyfish to puffins to seals and whales and dolphins and the landscape of Lofoten / Henningsvaer through a whole year!) and you can listen to Whale and Dolphin sounds and get a first hand explanation from a scientist.

For the ones of you that want to know more, we offer 30-45 minute lectures on Killer and Pilot Whale Biology (min 5 people).

At the moment we are not offering marine wildlife boat expedtions, you have to wait for the stormy weather to calm down. In addition the regulations for our boat have become more strict and we need to investigate whether we are able to take you on board at all. but more to that as soon as possible…

I hope to see you at our center in Henningsvaer!

We will open the center again after the 18.4.2011, please give us a call or send an email (info@ocean-sounds.com) to make sure we are there: +47-91842012

Please follow the NEWS for safari tours.

Gabi Reichert and her family are staying in Henningsvaer for a month and will help to open the Center of Ocean Sounds. If you are around, please come to visit us!
we can show you our beautiful slide show and you will get a lot of information, Gabi might even offer a Photo-course.
Please give her a call and find out when she will be there:

0047-95227866

Our new partner PakeaBizkaia invited me for a week to their home harbour in Bilbao, Spain 16-23.01.2011. we have many things in common and want to educate people about life in the Ocean and thereby protecting it. on 20.01.2011 PB organised a conference at the Maritime Museum and I will give a lecture at 19 o’clock about the Marine Wildlife in Lofoten and Chile. There will be beautiful pictures and of course sounds of the whales and dolphins, even cod..If you are around please come by and support our idea!
On Saturday we will sail out to the Bay of Biscay with AMBAR (local NGO) and maybe find some whales. more news will follow soon…

[Zeige als Diashow]

[Mit PicLens anzeigen]

Since the days around Christmas, several people on Andøya have witnessed an amazing arrival of herring in Andfjorden, and with the herring, the arrival of hunting killer whales and humpback whales. Sightings of humpbacks have also recently been reported outside Senja.

One of the first reports were from the 22 of December, when both killer whales and humpback whales were seen outside Andoya and the highest numbers included 50-100 killer whales and around 7 humpback whales including mother+calf pair.

You can view a video on the event here:

After hearing and seeing this, Fredrik Broms went to Kvalnes on Andøya to collect pictures for the Ocean Sounds photo-ID catalogue. When he arrived, both the killer whales and the humpbacks, which had previously been feeding very close to land, were much further out and to the south in the fjord. So what he needed was a boat and with the help of wonderful local people they got out in the fjord and came upon a group of 5 humpbacks (including a mother and her calf) feeding together with a pod of orcas. Short days and little light due to the polar night made photography at sea difficult, but hopefully the identification of the humpbacks will give us new insight into their lives, which we know so very little about. We can’t wait to see if some of the whales are known from before!

In this area whale watching has a long tradition, but winter whale watching with small boats are much more challenges for the whales and people. Most of the boat drivers do not have experience in approaching whales and there is a risk that such tours will disturb the whales from feeding. However, if done properly and carefully this will be the most amazing experience of your life time! If you can’t go out at sea there are possibilities to view these magnificent animals from land, the best and the coolest observations have been made from land; the killer whales have almost been up on the rocks outside Breivika, Ramså and Kvalnes and people could hear their feeding calls on land! So, keep your eyes and ears open!

All pictures were taken by Fredrik Broms on the 27 Dec, in the Andfjorden outside Dverberg, on Andøya in northern Norway. Fredrik saw 5+1 humpback, 1 minke and ca 8 orcas on that day alone!

Summary of 2010

Now that the last days have passed by, I feel like I should say something about the year 2010. It has been a critical for Ocean Sounds and it nearly was the last year for our operation. In short all possible things failed, ended or broke down, expected help did not arrive, disappointments and the bad weather and the economical crisis reduced our already bad economy and made it difficult to survive…but there were helping hands and minds and we will be able to continue in 2011!

It all started in Chile, during field work in cooperation with the Scientific Tourism Project of Aysen (http://www.turismocientifico.cl/). We had 4 months of good and productive work with a lot of whales and dolphins, seals and birds in an amazing nature: the fjords and channels of Patagonia in Aysen. However some problems appeared, one captain killed the engine and we floated several hours without contact in deserted channels, fire on board, storms in a sailboat and the terrible and devastating earthquake of Chile. With a good crew and coworkers and friends we managed to get through with it all. However, there was a sight I could not ignore: the enormous expansion and negative impact of the salmon aquaculture farms on the natural environment of Aysen. The environmental destruction was visible everywhere, in form of floating and stranded garbage, the boat traffic, deserted farms and infected fish carcass, unemployed people with alcohol and violence problems, noise and chemical pollution… we decided to publish this in Nature Correspondence (nature465-17-june-2010), It was my duty as a scientist to report this matter for other scientists and politicians to act. It had a great impact, the media published it worldwide and scientists from Chile and Insurance companies from Norway contacted me. I hope this brought light into a rather dark part of the Chilean industry and politics. By introducing sustainable tourism, we hope to change the way people and nature can live together in this beautiful and remote place of the world. We have done our first step in creating sustainable marine wildlife tourism in Aysen, next year we will introduce it to tourists. Come and support our project!

Then back in Norway I had to move Ocean Sounds to a new location, unfortunately I lost the old center and had to start all over again. Without helping hands and friends, I would not have had the heart and motivation to renovate a new center and office. But people arrived and helped to swing a brush or installed electricity and so on, and we could reopen in June. Moving the company cost additional money, which we did not have, so I was hoping for a good tourist season. The tourists came, but the bad weather as well. The tourists left again (some disappointed) but the bad weather stayed until September. We had to cancel more than 60% of our tours, because we need flat sea to find the whales in our small boat. The financial situation became worse every day and on top of all, the boat engine started to have problems, the hydrophone and the car broke down…it was definitely one of these years that challenged my idealism and motivation…but then when all looked dark and even people that promised help turned their backs on me, two other doors open, one man gave a great donation and a friend gave me a private loan to be able to pay the bank loan. Ocean Sounds was saved in the last minute!!

During the summer months we managed to find whales and birds we have never seen before as well as old friends, again we found matches of pilot whale groups in the Vestfjord, these findings indicate that the same whales visit us every year.

We had several media coverage both for the salmon problem in Chile as well as the whaling issue in Norway, in addition the Lonely Planet Magazine published an article in their April issue, the German TV ARD made a small documentary and the German magazine Outdoor will publish an article in the January issue. I went to one conference and discussed the problem of noise in the sea (TAS, www.aquadyne.no, Oslo) and participated in a 3 week art exhibition in Oslo: gentle actions to discuss the interaction of whales and humans ( http://gentleactions.wordpress.com). We were several whale activists from different back grounds and the event was a great success.
Out of this we will organize a small festival in Henningsvaer 1-7^th of August 2011 to support the life of nature, especially the marine environment with its great whales and dolphins.
Scientific publications 2010:
We published a Nature correspondence (nature465-17-june-2010), a joint article on Bottlenose abundance in South Pacific (Aqu.Mamm.2010, 36(3), 288-293, pdf-tursiops-2010) and a joint article with Andy Foote et.al., on the genetic differentiation among North Atlantic killer whale populations (Mol.Ecol.2010, pdf-foote-et-al-2010).

Finances:
The small research fund from the WWF gave a starting tip, then again the application for a research fund from the Northern Norwegian council was denied without reason, equipment broke down and the weather turned bad…all critical challenges, but with the help of friends and good people we managed to continue and we will go on to the next year! But we need your help for 2011!

For 2011 we plan:

Open the center 18^th of April and start giving lectures and show our NEW slide show! You can call or write us an email in advance, or just come by when you are in Henningsvaer.

Marine Wildlife-tours will be offered later, we keep you updated for more details. We have to change our routines for the marine wildlife-tours because of our research project and we will not be able to take as many people with us as the years before. Please write an email for booking, unfortunately we will not be able to accept day tourists anymore.

Visit PakeaBizkaia 16-23th of January in Bilbao, Spain. I will visit the people from the PakeaBizkaia project (www.pakeabizkaia.com/en) and we will organize a small conference with talk, films and discussion rounds. I will post more information later.

Whale festival 1-7^th of August: open festival in Henningsvaer with different programs from artists, scientists and tour operators. The Program will be announced here in a few months. The festival aims to promote awareness of the beauty of whales, especially pilot whales and learn about their lives and, our interaction with them.

I hope you like our work and will continue to support us and we will always welcome you in the north!!

THANK you all for your great support and good wishes….

I wish you all a happy New Year with many dreams to come true!

Heike Vester,
biologist & founder of Ocean Sounds