Humpback Whale Running Interference

A story from Alisa Schulman - Janiger.

Killer whales and humpback whales interacting

Alisa, naturalist and marine biologist, knows every killer whale in the transient population by name and its relationship to other family members. But it’s the curious behavior of humpback whales who come upon killer whales hunting a gray whale calf that catches her attention. Was it altruism or something else that caused them to intervene?

ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER is a marine biologist and the Census Director for the American Cetacean Society (ACS) Los Angeles Chapter’s ‘Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project’, now in its 34th year. She is well known as a transient killer whale researcher and is actively involved in humpback whale identification. She also teaches a naturalist class for the LA Chapter of ACS.

Alisa was born in Maywood, CA and grew up mostly in Long Beach, CA. She became interested in the oceans at age five when she saw her first grunion. Her kindergarten teacher brought an octopus to class in a glass jar and couldn’t answer a question Alisa put to her. That defining moment lead Alisa to decide to become an educator.

A marine biologist with a teaching credential, Alisa taught on boats for ten years, worked for the California Department of Fish and Game doing environmental reports, worked back east for 2 years studying humpback and right whales, and has been a naturalist for the past 30 years.

Simultaneously with her work on the gray whale census, Alisa spent 20 years teaching marine science in the high school classroom for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She retired as soon as she could to follow her passion spending time with whales and conducting whale research.

You can watch her story on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/2hIeyRWwbUE

Humpback Whales Running Interference

It was May 3, 2012 and we were on a whale watch trip. We happened to have the BBC out with us on a charter trip with Monterey Bay Whale Watch. So it was just a few people, Nancy Black, Captain, and Mike Merlo, deckhand, and myself. We were out looking for killer whales – the BBC really wanted to see killer whales – but humpback whales, too. We’d been filming humpback whales and then we got a call at 12:05pm from Captain John Mayer on the Sea Wolf that they had found killer whales attacking a gray whale mom and calf.

So we headed over there because that’s what the BBC folks wanted to see, even though this was a day that there were over 100 humpback whales feeding, surface feeding on krill. The humpbacks were everywhere, and they were lunge feeding. We were trying to ID the whales, but we barely saw any flukes. It was an amazing flat calm, beautiful day.

It took us awhile to get to where the Sea Wolf was. It took us about half a half hour, so we got there at 12:35pm, and we saw several killer whales going after a gray whale mother and calf. And the calf was being pushed into the air somewhat, and you could see blood from the mouth, and there were a couple of humpback whales, two humpback whales that were in the mix. They were trumpet blowing, and they were tail slashing.

I took still pictures at first, trying to capture as much as I could to try to ID[1] the animals. Then I pulled out my video camera, and 12:38pm was the last time we ever saw the gray whale calf. That was the end. It had died already, and the killer whales stayed there, and the mom stuck around for about fifteen minutes.

What was really interesting was a humpback whale was diving down with the mother. The mother would dive down where the calf disappeared.  Then the humpback whale would go right after her. They would both be underwater, and it seemed to us kind of looking for the calf, looking for the calf.

When that happened the killer whales sort of backed off, but then the killer whales came in, too. And the gray whale mom left after about fifteen minutes, and took off, headed towards shore. So we stayed there expecting to watch killer whales feeding. We had about ten killer whales there at the time, and we saw the humpbacks go down.

So we’re documenting this, and the humpbacks are vocalizing, and they’re trumpet blowing, they’re bellowing, slashing their flippers, slashing their flukes. They’re very loud and they’re facing the killer whales and following the killer whales around. We saw a few other humpbacks in the area, and they came in, too. So over a period of seven hours we stayed on the scene and the humpbacks wouldn’t leave. In fact, we saw more and more coming in, and saw as many as seven at one time.

But later when I analyzed the photos, it was at least sixteen different humpback whales identified just by their flukes, and there were additional humpbacks that didn’t fluke up. One was there for at least three and a half hours. There were several of the whales we’d seen in the morning, hours earlier and several miles away that moved into this area.

There was a lot of food (anchovies) around, but it was very interesting that the humpbacks didn’t feed. There was only one feeding bout the entire time during the seven hours that we were there. One time four whales came up really quick in a feeding lunge, and then they went right back side by side, touching each other, facing the killer whales, trumpeting, approaching them, following them around – really interesting interactions. We left at ten after seven, because it was dark and we couldn’t see anymore.

All the while, killer whales were feeding on the calf. An oil slick spread, and I noticed another group of killer whales around; Chop Fin or Stubby’s group. The group he hangs out with is a group we call Jagged. They were there. Chop Fin wasn’t at all involved in any part of the attack or the feeding. He kind of stayed off to the side. There was one killer whale female who would go over there with her mom and her siblings and hang out with Jagged’s group for a while, then come back and feed. In fact, she seemed to do most of the active feeding.

And we had albatross. We had dozens of albatross around. We had black-vented shearwaters feeding on the blubber. It was very noisy, and it was a lot just trying to record all these interesting interactions: which whale is feeding, who’s interacting with the humpbacks, who’s the humpback that’s coming in, recognizing a few of the humpbacks in the field.

It was really astonishing! Not just because the humpbacks were interfering, or seemed to be trying to interfere with killer whales during the hunt, but even after the calf was dead for seven hours they stuck around. So if you say that it was because they were trying to, because they were attacked as a kid, or they’re trying to protect the calf, there were no humpback calves around. The ideas we came up with just didn’t seem to make sense. They seemed to be protecting the carcass. They didn’t want the killer whales to have anything to do with the carcass at all, because when a killer whale would start feeding, then a humpback would start trumpeting at it, and slashing all over the place.

So it was extraordinary. We’d been talking to Bob Pitman, a colleague who was pulling together accounts of humpback whales interfering with killer whales feeding on different species, and we’d already contributed sightings and it was supposed to be the end of the period to collect for the paper. But Bob said we need to have this, as it was a unique encounter, seven hours, lots of humpbacks, non-stop and when we left and it was dark, there were still multiple humpbacks in the area, and they were still just as boisterous and following the killer whales around, and the killer whales were still feeding on the carcass.

So, quite amazing! And it actually became a major focus for the scientific publication that came out in Marine Mammal Science, because it was the longest documented encounter of interaction, and it was involving the most individual humpback whales, too. So that’s what happened here and it was an amazing day. When we talk about altruism, why in the world could they have been doing this? Fascinating, shocking, awesome!

Thank you for sharing your story with us Alisa!

[1] Humpback whales are identified by the coloration and scarring on the underside of their flukes. Killer whales are IDed by their dorsal fins, the saddle patches on their backs and eye patches.