Friday night learning

Friday night we went to a local lecture on collaborative research in SE Alaska.  It was a full house, and four panelists gave short presentations on their local research.  All four panelists were great, and doing really interesting interdisciplinary research.  However, one of the speakers was a woman from Sitka whose project was working with local sablefish (the species I study) fishermen on trying to find out how sperm whales are stealing sablefish from their longline sets.  This is a fairly common problem - the sperm whales naturally eat fish and squid, and fish caught on a longline are easy targets.  How were the whales finding the fish?  Was there an accoustic signal that the fishermen were sending - like a dinner bell?  Turns out...yes!  Sperm whale use echolocation, a sort of clicking or pinging sound, to 'see' their environment.  The prop wash from the boats is made up of thousands of bubbles that reflect their clicks and presumably help the whales identify fishing, which they seem to have learned is associated with an easy meal.  Long story short, they used video cameras to try to catch whales feeding on the fish, and it worked!  This is a link to the video she showed (just click the underlined text) - and it's completely awesome.  The camera is looking up, so you see the sperm whale in silhouette as it comes in and ever so gently takes the fish off the line.  Amazing.  It looks like something fake, since sperm whales are so odd looking!  The clicking sound is coming from the whale, and it gets louder and faster as it gets closer.