(If you missed it, start from part 1)
An Adventure to Behold
The trip was organised by John Rumney founder of Eye to Eye Marine Encounters, an ecotourism venture which teams up with world-class marine scientists to offer the ultimate in adventure diving on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea.
John Rumney has joined WWF-Australia’s campaign calling for the Coral Sea to be declared a Marine Protected Area - with the aim to unite tourism with research to help people understand the ‘the necessity of marine conservation now and into the future’. That’s John’s mission, and ours too.
The scientific research carried out aboard the boat is part of the Minke Whale Project. A joint initiative of researchers from James Cook University, the Museum of Tropical Queensland and Undersea Explorer. This is its 12th successive year of dwarf minke whales field studies, focusing on their behaviour, biology and interactions with divers and snorkellers in the northern Great Barrier Reef.
The Dwarf Minke Whale
The dwarf minke whale is only found in the Southern Hemisphere. It has a white shoulder and flipper base, with a dark-grey tip on the flipper. The colour patterns of a dwarf minke whale are the most complex patterns of any baleen whale.
Like the humpback whale the dwarf minke whale is toothless, instead they have up to 300 baleen plates made out of keratin (the same substance as our fingernails) that hang either side from the roof of its mouth. To feed, the whale opens its mouth, extending its throat pleats to engulf balls of schooling fish or krill. As the throat compresses, water is pushed out between the baleen plates and is trapped between the fine bristles that fray from the inner edge of each baleen plate.
Not a lot is known about the dwarf minke whale – scientists still need to find out how many there are and how far they travel from each other. What we do know, is that every year between March and October they can be seen in the Northern Barrier Reef - where the outer Barrier Reef meets with the waters of the Coral Sea. Eighty per cent of the whale sightings occur between June and July.
One of the tell tale signs that the dwarf minke whales like to visit the Coral Sea is from the scars left by small sharks called Cookie Cutter Sharks (Isistius).
These sharks inhabit the open ocean, they have a cigar shaped body and grow to about half a metre long. They feed by attaching themselves to larger prey such as whales and dolphins and then spin to cut out a cookie-shaped plug of blubber – leaving a trademark oval scar on the whale.
Dwarf minke whales have been re-sighted inside the ribbon reefs of the Barrier Reef with a new oval scar, suggesting they have been in open waters of the Coral Sea.
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