Marine Mammal Memories

MareCet, a Malaysian NGO focused on the research and conservation of marine mammals in Malaysian waters, has recently started a series of online lectures on their Facebook page with the release of weekly videos till the end of June and will only be up till July this year so go check the videos out while you can.

To date, two videos have been uploaded - the first as an introduction to marine mammals and the latest on marine mammal tales and traditional uses in cultures across the globe. I just completed the latter lecture and it certainly brought back memories of these unique organisms as seen in the wild over the past three decades of my existence on this blue planet.

(WARNING: Much digression ahead.)

My earliest memory of marine mammals is probably from when I was about 10 years old, maybe younger, on a family trip to Pulau Langkawi. I must have seen a pod of dolphins leaping in the horizon while on a boat trip around the island as my mom captured scenic images of the beautiful sea with the jumping dolphins as black dots on the photographs using a compact film camera without a zoom. I remember my mother describing the moment to my relatives using the photographs as a visual aid, "The dolphins are the 'boogers' on the photo!"

The next time I saw marine mammals in the wild was during my first semester as an undergraduate at University of Hawaii at Hilo in the fall of 2008. I volunteered for a semi-annual Hawaiian monk seal, Neomonachus schauinslandi, count and travelled to predetermined locations on the Big Island by car to spot this endemic pinniped (semi-aquatic carnivorous marine mammals like seals, sea lions, and walruses) for an island-wide (or was it a state-wide) study on its population size and individual migratory patterns. I got in a car with the small group I was placed in led by the super inspirational and damn cool Darren Roberts (fanboy-ing now; ask me why personally) headed north to places that I have forgotten the names of (one good reason to start journalling seriously) for this count. We finally made our one and only sighting of a Hawaiian monk seal at Kauhola Point (I only remembered this location because of the lighthouse). It was sunbathing on the rocky shoreline. I was reminded to adhere to federal laws and to maintain my distance from this animal as to not harass it and also to not get my face bit off by this strong, semi-aquatic, wild animal. It was super chill though, ignoring Darren's closer examination of the identification tag(s) on its tail for the report at the end of sighting effort. After this virgin sighting of the Hawaiian monk seal, I observed it a few more times with the most memorable sighting on a summer afternoon at Richardson's Beach Park where a huge individual made its way to a freshwater/brackish pond by the car park. Good times.

The lighthouse that helped me figure out the name of location where I sighted my first ever pinniped in the wild, the endemic Hawaiian monk seal. 

A digitally zoomed image of the Hawaiian monk seal basking on dry land.

I think I zoomed in for this photograph too. Look at the orange identification tag on its tail. I think there could be more tags on its tail, maybe even flippers, because I keep remembering seeing more than one tag. Maybe this memory is of a different individual some other time after this sighting.

The following semester in spring of 2009 (I think) while on a field trip out at sea for my Marine Biodiversity Laboratory class, I actually got to see and hear Humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae. This is towards the end of an annual affair of migrating from the icy cold waters of the northern seas to the warm tropical waters of the Hawaiian archipelago to mate along the way and give birth to young. I vaguely remember observing some partial breaches from a pod of a few individuals.What I do remember very well is the song of the Humpback whales captured from the hydrophone of the vessel - it was magical. Although only able to listen to a small segment before losing the signal, I remember feeling extremely calm and grateful for being able to be there with my classmates and instructor. Unfortunately, I do not have any visual (nor audio) records of this warm experience. Thanks, Humpback whales! Like the Hawaiian monk seal, I made few more sightings of these giants while in Hawaii.

Fast forward to the year 2015, I made sightings of dolphins from the shores of Datai bay where I used to work at The Datai Langkawi, a five-star luxury resort as an informal educator. These are Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, Sousa chinensis. I have created a reputation at my former workplace for the person that all dolphin (or any other "cool") sightings must be reported to so we can contribute to MareCet's long-term research on Langkawi dolphins. I would request my then watersports colleague to take me out on the inflatable to capture images of their fins to assist MareCet in the possible identification of individuals visiting the bay but without much luck. My colleagues, resort guests, and I would get very excited to see these animals in our bay, it was always a very special treat. The "Old Guards" of the watersports pavilion at the resort always told me that the appearance of dolphins in our bay would ALWAYS usher stormy events in the very near future. Unfortunately, I never found this to be true since the islands' weather is determined by the monsoons.

The best that I can do from shore with the animal being more than 200 m away from me, a person with no prior experience commandeering an inflatable equipped with a then five-year old 200 m zoom lens.

I then got to learn more about this animal and other cetaceans (fully aquatic marine mammals like dolphins, porpoises, and whales) in September of the same year when I finally got the opportunity to participate on my first MareCet fieldwork as a volunteer in a study on population density of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (and I think also the estuarine Irrawaddy dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris) of the coastal waters off of Matang Mangrove Forest in the state of Perak. Other than the aforementioned species of cetaceans, I also managed to observe the elusive (or is it evasive?) Indo-Pacific finless porpoise, Neophocaena phocaenoides, mostly reminding me of floating tyres. I got to see a group of young Malaysian "cetaceanists" (you read this here first) passionately (and patiently with a lot of discipline) go out on explorer boats with a local captain in search of cetaceans for eight days. It was an eye-opening experience. I learned a lot about the science that goes behind studying marine mammal ecology in Malaysia and also the character needed to dedicate so much of one's life in doing so. There were many profound personal experience for me throughout the eight days but the happiest, most fulfilling moment as a volunteer with MareCet over roughly four years (this is after considering the times when we buried a dolphin carcass above the high tide mark of a secluded beach along the obsolete part of Jalan Teluk Datai and sieving the guts of a dead porpoise after dinner into the early morning of the following day) would be on perhaps the third day of this particular trip when I managed to alert the team of a sighting of a Irrawaddy dolphin. This would be the first of the very few times I have alerted the group  of a marine mammal sighting, an achievement that I am still very proud of myself. (It is tough since it is quite easy to mistake a white cap of a the crest of a breaking wave as a dolphin's dorsal fin. Plus I have bad eyesight....)

Sometimes, local vessel owners would allow for the temporary installment of what I call the "umpire's seat" at the bow of an explorer boat as seen in this image. This seat can accommodate two primary observers, towering perhaps four to five metres above the waters in search of swimming cetaceans. Since the primary observers have a wide angle of view to focus on, a third observer when there are sufficient individuals onboard, would stand below the the seat to look a narrow angle of view (right ahead) to catch missed observations by the primary observers as they scan through their viewing field. I was the third observer when I called out my first ever alert. It was exhilarating! Pictured here from left to right is the fearless Vivian, jovial Sandra, and amazing photog Long. 

A pod of Indo-Pacific dolphins in the waters of Pulau Langkawi in November 2016. I think this is the first trip for Sandra's behavioural/social study on this species. Dolphin researchers like Vivian and Sandra require clear images of the dorsal fins of individual dolphins for identification. Think markings on dorsal fins as fingerprints for humans. I hear it is a tedious process trying to identify individuals like this but it has proven to be a very accurate, non-invasive way to doing so.

During my time as a Masters student in the Global Field Program offered by Miami University, I had the chance to travel to parts of the world that I would not have thought of to learn about inspiring conservation work and unique biodiversity on summer field trips known as Earth Expeditions. It is during these Earth Expeditions that I manage to see foreign marine mammals in the wild. Baja California is a magical place and our Sea of Cortez leg (at Bahia de Los Angeles) of my 2016 Earth Expeditions allowed me to see my next pinniped, the California sea lion, Zalophus californianus swimming in shallow waters. You can view a video of this sighting here. I was feeling a mix of excitement and anxiousness - excited because well, it is a cool animal that I have only previously seen in captivity and anxious because there was a huge male that swam quite close to us. I thought he was going to obliterate me!

The Sea of Cortez, or more commonly known as the Gulf of Mexico, is a deep sea due it being a rift from tectonic events off the North American Plate. Upwells in this see transport nutrient-rich waters from the cold deep sea, allowing microorganisms to thrive, creating the base of a food web capable of sustaining large organisms. While the boat carrying me and my classmates were out on "swelly" waters, I manage to catch a glimpse of a whale as the boat was travelling up the crest of the swell. It could have been either a Fin, Balaenoptera physalus, or a Bryde's whale, Balaenoptera brydei, from the size of the animal but we were not close enough to see discerning features so I cannot confirm the species. On different day out at sea, the entire class was lucky enough to observe a pod of Short-finned pilot whales (technically very large dolphins), Globicephala macrorhynchus, swimming very gently at the surface of the water. I remember being incredibly shocked and in awe of the size of the animals in this pod. There was one, I kid you not, that was the length of the boat we were on. I did not pack my DSLR on this particular Earth Expeditions, which I regret till this day (should not have packed the extra clothes), so I only have a few scenes using my GoPro Silver 4 which you can see at the beginning of this video of the non-Whale shark aquatic highlights of Sea of Cortez. (For the video on my first ever Whale shark experience, click here. The Whale shark, Rhincodon typus, is a large, filter-feeding cartilaginous fish.)

My final Earth Expeditions was to Belize in 2017. The class was out on the boat travelling in the calm coastal waters of Belize within the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere in search of Antillean manatees, Trichechus manatus, with Belize's Manateeman, Jamal Galves, a local Belizean dedicated to the conservation of these gentle giants. When we approached an estuary at the mouth of a mangrove river, someone pointed out manatees in murky waters. This is perhaps the cutest marine mammal sighting yet for me. Even though I did not get the see the general form of the Antillean manatee due to murky waters, my classmates and I got to see the "snoots" of manatees coming up to to breathe dry air. Sirenians, the group of marine mammals like the Dugong and manatees, are related to elephants! The snout of the manatee poking out from the water for dry air reminds me of how elephants would use their trunks as snorkels when travelling in water! The snouts of sirenians are also prehensile like the trunks of elephants. My heart was leaping in excitement when I saw the manatees. Not what I expected to experience (think clear waters with tens of manatees surrounding the boat or clear waters where one can easily watch a manatee graze on seagrass from the surface), but a special experience nevertheless which I am grateful for.

The emerging snouts of a mother-calf pair (mom on the right, calf on the left). So cute!

If you watched MareCet's first video in their online lecture series, you would have learned of the different types of marine mammals. Three were mentioned here, cetacean, pinniped, and sirenian. The other would be marine "fissiped", apparently a defunct term to refer to carnivorous mammals who are fully reliant on the ocean for sustenance and reproduction. This includes the Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, and "ocean" otters like the Sea otter, Enhydra lutris. I have yet to see these species in the wild. In addition to this, I have also never seen the Dugong nor the other cetaceans, like the Bryde's whale, present in Malaysian waters. I really hope I will get the chance to observe them in their natural habitat one day.

These animals are apex predators and/or keystone species in the ecosystems they are part of. Without them, ecosystems crumble and we risk livelihoods and the survival of humans globally, whether directly or indirectly. And of course, they have the intrinsic right of being alive as a species. Therefore, we must make change and do our part in conserving and preserving these species and their habitats. I urge you to voice out against irresponsible coastal development, demand for better/more transparent supply chain of seafood (or reduce in the consumption of aquatic species), fight against pollution of waterways, do not litter/reduce the generation of solid wastes in your household, and support responsible tourism (no speeding boats, no feeding of animals, and definitely no crowding around these charismatic animals - let them dictate your experience).