ORCA AGM REPORT
Organisation Cetacea's Annual General Meeting, and Workshop.
The event was held at The Deep Millennium project, Hull on Saturday/Sunday 25th/26th November.
We heard from inspirational speakers including WDCS's Director of Science Mark Simmonds, BBC wildlife photographer Mark Smith and The Deep's David Gibson.
The survey workshop was held on the Sunday by Mike Tetley.
What follows below is a report by DCUK on the AGM .
And to round the weekend off is my report on the ORCA survey methods,held on the Sunday.
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Dolphin Care Uk are proud to be associated with Organisation Cetacea.
For the second year running, whale and dolphin conservation charity ORCA (Organisation Cetacea) held its Annual General Meeting at The Deep millennium project in Hull. The AGM took place on Saturday 25th November, and the survey workshop was on the Sunday 26th November.
Speakers included wildlife cameraman Mark Smith, who captured amazing snow leopard footage for the BBC Planet Earth series, and Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. In his role as Director of Science, Mark attended a crucial meeting of the International Whaling Commission earlier this year.
The first speaker to stand was (WDCS) Mark Simmonds and his talk on the (IWC) International Whaling commission. He explained to all who attended how Japan had convinced so many countries to vote on their behalf of whaling, Countries such as (St Kitts and Nevis) in the Caribbean, who really know nothing about whaling what so ever. Mark told us how in exchange for their vote, the Japanese built them a state of the art fish processing factory.
That's one way to get small Caribbean islands like St Kitts and Nevis to vote in favour of whaling. This year the Japanese, Iceland and Norway are going to hunt for Fin Whales as well as other species. Iceland last hunted and killed Fin Whales back in 1989.
The Japanese issued themselves with a (Scientific special permit) which allows them to hunt the Fin Whales for scientific purposes? But we all know that the meat of choice for the Japanese people comes from the Fin Whales. Mark Simmonds has attended the IWC for the last 6 years, he told us that the pro hunting nations won the vote by 1, that narrow win was all down to a new state of the art fish processing factory being built in St Kitts and Nevis, Senegal didn't even turn up at the meeting.
The next speaker to take the floor was (Deep) DAVID GIBSON Curator at the Deep, with his talk on cold water corals.
Think of coral reefs and you imagine warm, shallow tropical seas, not the cold, dark waters of the deep sea's and oceans. Now the deep ocean's best-kept secrets are being revealed - ancient coral ecosystems hidden from view at great depths.
DAVID GIBSON curator at the DEEP in HULL gave a talk on Lophelia a cold water coral and how BP has helped the DEEP with their exploration work BP allowed David and his team to go out into the North sea and collect corals from one of their oil rigs. No one had ever done this before and HULL's the DEEP was the first submarium to go out and collect living corals.
At first they had no idea about how to go about getting the samples, BP helped with this project by providing a (ROV) Remote operated vehicle. After a few adjustments and adding a kind of collection basket at the front of the vehicle they managed to collect some samples, they had to act quickly and get them back to HULL from the North Sea, else the corals would die. This first attempt failed, all the coral samples died and went mushy in their travelling box. More adjustments had to be made to the equipment; in fact it was redesigned as a two section chamber unit.
One was a dry section which housed the pumps and cooling equipment the other section contained the coral samples, kept at eight degrees. Once they had collected the coral samples, the race was on to get them back to HULL in the shortest time possible. This almost came to a sticky end through travelling delays from the rig to the north of Scotland and then on to HULL, only to find that the vessel they had been travelling on docked into Immingham the following day. However the corals had survived, and are on display at the DEEP, where research work is carrying on, on these cold water corals. (Lophelia)
The next speaker to follow was the BBC wildlife cameraman Mark Smith and the filming of the Snow Leopard in the far North West of Pakistan.
Mark told us about his time filming the Snow Leopard for the Planet Earth series and all the difficulties they uncounted. They were given just 6 weeks to film this elusive animal, Mark has been a wildlife cameraman for the last 12 years working on this series and he told us it was to have been Pakistan's worst winter for the last 15 years. Mark and his team had to travel hundreds of miles over the mountains to get to the location for this latest film of his.
The place was CHITRAL in Pakistan's far northwest region. On arriving in Chitral some of the locals had heard they were there to look for the Snow Leopards, which prompted a few locals to bring Snow Leopard pelts to the film crew. These were turned down and Mark explained he was there to make a film of these elusive animals and that he needed local wildlife guides to try and locate the leopards for the BBC film crew.
A reward was offered to them of 10.000 rupees (about £100) to the first one to spot the Snow Leopard. Many weeks passed and the crew moved from one location to another, where in one location they were there in the same place for 3 weeks, a location they knew that the leopards were there somewhere.
The spotters were starting to get fed up of being there in the awful cold conditions; Mark was even seen doing multiple press ups just to keep warm and his blood circulating. A radio message arrived telling them that a Snow Leopard had been spotted in the next valley, quickly they packed there kit and set off for the new location - which was 10 miles away over more mountains. They arrived at the new location and were told that the leopard had been spotted at a kill, they investigated, found fresh poo, fur and tracks - but No leopard.
Mark set up his camera on the opposite hillside with a groundsheet cover over his equipment, The conditions were getting worst, snow falling like plates getting colder, a couple of days later - there it was a Snow Leopard appeared out of this cave and was looking at hunting one of the large mountain goats, after a few mishaps it managed to get a kill and this strong elusive animal was seen in the film dragging the corpse back up the hill side towards the cave. Where it was joined by a second Snow Leopard which turned out to be its one year old cub.
I spoke to Mark afterwards and asked him "How many actual hours of filming he did"? His answer was - 16 hours of continuous filming - (for a half hour on the series) 6 weeks, 16 hours of filming for a half hour slot? Wow.
Mark also filmed the planet earth film of the Arctic Fox, where for 10 months of the year it almost starves to death, then one day in June sees the Snow Geese fly in and stays for two months to lay eggs and rear the chicks. This cheeky little animal nicks the eggs and buries them to eat later on, once the geese have left. I really enjoyed this talk from Mark and could go on and on, but I must move on.
Phil Coles was the next speaker to take the floor and talk about Beaked Whales. Phil told us how some 98 species of cetaceans were seen this year on Orca's survey in the Bay of Biscay.
Phil told us how the survey gathered their information for data recording, using photographic evidence, taking pictures of the Whales dorsal fins. No two dorsal fins are alike and the notches are a tell tale mark belonging to that individual. He also told us, that taking photographs of the Fin Whale had to be from both sides as the Fin Whale differs in colouration on both sides.
ORCA came across and photographed other beaked whales on this survey which included, Sowerby's and their calves there were also Curvier's which were also photographed from both sides for identification purposes.
Mike Tetley of ORCA, ran the workshop on the Sunday with his talk on Survey methods. He told us how ORCA had become friends with the Fjordline ferry company that travels out of Newcastle to Norway. That they were made welcome on their ships, the survey spotters were stationed on the bridge of the vessel and even had the use of the ships equipment, such as the GPS and other equipment.
Mike told us there were two main methods they used:
1: Dedicated surveys (Bay of Biscay for example).
2: Platforms of opportunity (Ferries and other craft)
By becoming a volunteer with ORCA you are given the chance to go out on these surveys, Orca gain from this in the way of Data collection, the Volunteers also gain from experience and further training. Mike passed round bits of kit they use on these surveys, such as Reticle Binoculars and explained how they worked, there were also Angle boards again he explained how these also worked.
There were also the forms ORCA use for these surveys and he explained how they were filled in. Mike explained to the workshop on how a survey was carried out.
When on board, two observers would be on watch at the same time, and possibly a third person to record the data. One observer would stand on the Port side of the bridge and the other would be on the Starboard side. Each observer would scan an area of 90 degrees, plus 10 degrees into the other observers watch.
Both observers would have a pair of Reticle binoculars and would use them to search for cetaceans in the distance, in between periods of searching with the naked eye. The third observer if one was used would record the data and fill in the forms. The third observer if used was not to prompt the other two observers if he/she spotted something. The observers would rotate through each position every 30 minutes, and every three hours they would need to take a half hour break.
If an observer spotted something they were to shout out and alert the recorder so as the GPS position could be taken, along with measurements from the Angle board. Forms filled in, would include what species you had seen and the numbers spotted. This was an interesting workshop and from my talks with others present, I gained the knowledge that they had really enjoyed it.
To sum up the weekend, listening to others who were also present everyone agreed it had been a really worthwhile experience and that a lot of people had thoroughly enjoyed their weekend with ORCA.
If you would like to know more about ORCA and how to become a member or volunteer, send an email to this address:
Or telephone 0191 548 7279.
Dolphin Care UK would like to thank ORCA for inviting us to attend as a guest of theirs.