On Location in Rarotonga: Ali's Diary
Team member Ali wrote reports on her daily activities and you can read these below,
plus view some pictures of the adventure also ...

Monday, 14 February
Today we went to our friend Tap's new house and he said he had found a whale vertebra when he moved in a few months ago. He showed it to us, and we realized it was much too big to be from a humpback or even a fin whale. Which means it's probably from a blue whale. We don't know where the vertebra came from. Maybe blue whales sometimes visit the Cook Islands.

Wednesday, 16 February
Today we surveyed off the north coast of Rarotonga, where we spotted beaked whales last August and our friend Wayne Barclay spotted some about ten days ago. Also we looked 6 miles off to the west, where our friend Elgin may have spotted some yesterday.
Sunday, 20 February
Since no one works in the Cook Islands on Sundays we didn't go out on the water. We went to see the beaked whale skulls Mike Tavioni has collected. One is from a Cuvier's beaked whale and the other is from a dense-beaked whale, the kind we see so much in the Bahamas. (See Ali's Beaked whale sighting log and Cook Islands beaked whales for more. )
Cuvier's beaked whales have only two teeth, and they both stick out from the end of their lower jaw.
Mike holding the Cuvier's lower jaw and one of the teeth. We noticed that the tooth is worn, who knows why?
Skull of Dense beaked whale which stranded on Rarotonga in 1990. Dense beaked whales have only two teeth as well, but they only show in adult males. The teeth of females grow within the jaw and never emerge. Males' teeth erupt when they mature. This animal was either a young male or female, because its teeth were well inside the jaw until Mike chipped away the jaw to remove one of the teeth. You can see that the Dense beaked whale's two teeth grow about 1/3 of the way back from the tip of the jaw, in contrast to Cuvier's beaked whales.
Monday, February 21
Rain, rain, and more rain! Couldn't get out on the water but Mom and We got to meet with Ewan Smith, the head of Air Rarotonga, and we're all set to have the plane spot for beaked whales tomorrow. Ewan took this aerial photo of Rarotonga.
We named this whale after Te Manga, a huge double peaked mountain on Rarotonga. It is of Te Manga's dorsal fin viewed from the right.
Saturday, February 26
Today we had a spotter plane! Our friend Rudy flew his airplane for us in the Bahamas and looked for beaked whales from the air while we were down on the water in the boat. It really helped a lot because you can see so much more from the air. So today we got Roy from Air Rarotonga to fly our friends Gerald and Lyn over our for an hour. It was cool. It took some of the pressure off of us. Sometimes I feel like it is a game of Hide 'n Seek out there on the water. Especially with beaked whales since you so rarely can find them!

 
They took lots of pictures of lots of things but not beaked whales! But after they landed the plane, a flight coming in from Aitutaki saw three whales just south of the F.A.D. (fish aggregating device)
Roy took off as fast as he could in his Cessna 172 and headed out to find them! He radio'ed us and Mom, who happened to be driving the boat, took off in full speed and headed that way! Roy never did resight them and just as we got to where they should have been, a great big rain squall came up and the wind swirled around as the sky got darker and we knew that it would be pretty impossible to find them!
This Fish Aggregating Device (FAD) is moored in over 1000-m of water and is designed to attract lots of fish for fishermen to catch.
The Cessna passing close over our heads while searching for whales.
The plane moves so much faster than we do - one moment it's over our heads and the next it's just a speck in the sky - see it in the top left corner?
For some reason there were a lot of red-tailed tropicbirds on the water today.

Sunday, February 27
We heard that there was a man on the other side of the island that knows where there are lots of whale bones! His name is Tutai Taringa. He remembers when the whalers used to bring the harpooned whales onto shore here and butcher them for the blubber. They didn't want the meat off the whale so they put it on a cart and went all the way around the island giving most of it away to the local people. Sometimes they would trade the whale meat for fruits and vegetables to take back out to sea. Another man, reverend Bill Marsters, told us that if we were looking for whale bones we should look under the old bridge over in Muri. It was the first bridge to be built on the island and they used whale bones to support it! We'll go digging! 

Monday, February 28
Today we got all of the humpback whale photographs scanned on to a disk so that we could update the ID (identification) catalog in the computer.

Each photo tells a little bit about each humpback whale. When they photograph a whale they try to get the SURFACE shots first:

* Right side of dorsal fin.
* Left side of dorsal fin.
* Ventral surface of the tail fluke.
* Dorsal surface of the tail fluke.
* The head if possible.
* Any scars on the whale's body.

Then the UNDERWATER photographs:

* Right side of whale. (lateral pigmentation)
* Left side of whale. (lateral pigmentation)
* Head.
* Tail fluke.
* Pectoral fins.

These photographs on the page are part of our ID catalog. They are all pictures of a whale named NOANIE (named after my grandmother!)
It is important to get all of these ID shots in order for the conference in Auckland. Then the other researchers can see if they recognize any of the whales from their study area. If they have the same whale in their catalog then it is called a "match." Hopefuly we'll have some matches with other researchers across the South Pacific. It will be fun to know if a whale in the Cook Islands might also be seen a thousand miles from here in Tonga!

Saturday, March 4
Today is our last day here in Raro! We fly to Auckland before the sun comes up tomorrow for humpback meetings. The water was still too rough for good beaked whale spotting but we went out anyway. The spotter plane searched for whales, too. We watched a big rain storm grow over Rarotonga and were glad not to be getting wet. Here's Vane driving the boat as we leave Avatiu Harbor
Tuesday, March 7
We are still working hard on matching flukes. We also heard a presentation on genetics and things like DNA sampling. You can find out a lot about the whales by looking at the DNA and they do that here in the lab at the University of Auckland. There are a lot of really smart scientists around.

Here I am with Rochelle, Jacqui, and Claire. We are hoping for a match with the New Caledonia whales. Mike Donoghue and Michael Poole are also working hard.

Wednesday, March 8
Today I got to help in the lab. We wanted to find out more about the 2 whales that had stranded in Rarotonga. (Read more about beaked whale strandings in About Beaked Whales and in What's up Today for February 20.)
The way to do this is to take little pieces of their teeth and study the DNA. Merel Dalebout is a PhD student in Scott Baker's lab at the University of Auckland's School of Biological Sciences. Merel specializes in beaked whale genetics, and has even identified a new species of beaked whale by analyzing DNA from old beaked whale teeth.
Remember that we think one of the Rarotongan whales was a Mesoplodon densirostris (Dense beaked whale) and that the other was a Ziphius cavirostris (Cuvier's beaked whale)? Gerald McCormack made these identifications based on all of his measurements and comparison of the teeth. The research team want to confirm these identifications through Merel's molecular work.
Merel said that if the teeth weren't from beaked whales she would just grind them up and do her work. But since they are so rare she uses special techniques that preserve the teeth.
The first step is to sterilize the teeth. She wears gloves and is careful not to contaminate them.

Next, Merel chooses the Mesoplodon densirostris tooth. She cleans her drill and then inserts a special sterile bit. Then she very slowly and carefully drills a tiny hole in the tooth.
She drilled for so long I started to yawn, and asked her questions. Merel explained it all really well to me. Tooth bits from the drill collect in the special tray, and then Merel pours them into a special vial.
Merel did the Ziphius cavirostris tooth differently because there was still some dried soft tissue on the tooth. Instead of drilling she scraped the tissue off the tooth.
After pouring the shavings into the vial the samples were headed for the -80 freezer. The samples get stored in the freezer until Merel is ready to extract the DNA.

 

Ali's observations

 

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