Ocean Action, Birds and Whales… Winter Days

By Keith Hutton on June 28, 2016 in Other

It’s June already. Summer has gone. Black cockatoos are back, obvious in loose flocks high over seaside suburbs flying slowly, buoyant with deep measured wing beats, and wailing mournfully – constantly – while searching for flowering banksias to feed on. Humpback Whales are cruising north to breed, and a host of seabirds are moving into the relatively milder coastal waters of Australia. Albatrosses, petrels, gannets and whale birds from the Southern Ocean arrive in winter to escape from severe cold and storms further south. There are a few fur seals around too and, if you are into wildlife and the outdoors, the ocean is where the action is.

Australian waters provide important habitat for seabirds, and also for various whales throughout the stages of their life cycles including calving, breeding, feeding, resting and migration, and these seas support a large number of different whale species.

Whales, dolphins and porpoises as a group are known as cetaceans; they are closely related, air-breathing marine mammals that give birth to live young. Around Australia the extensive coastline provides a wide range of aquatic habitats, and more than half the cetacean species in the world can be found in Australian waters. Of these, large whales account for 10 species, with 20 smaller whales, 14 different dolphins and a porpoise.

However, only a few are well known and relatively easily identified. Humpback and Southern Right Whales, and dolphins, most regularly make headlines in the Sydney region. Blue, Killer, Pilot, Minke and Sperm Whales are also familiar courtesy of TV news coverage and increasingly popular wildlife documentaries, but the rest are relatively unknown and of little interest to most people.

Whale watching is becoming extremely popular in Australia, with Sydney and NSW offering excellent opportunities for interested tourists and enthusiastic wildlife watchers to see these magnificent animals and learn about their significance and history. Successful observations from headlands around Sydney, often with helpful and knowledgeable company and in reasonable weather, are readily achievable. Boat trips are also in demand, often with experienced wildlife guides to answer questions and assist with identification of marine mammals and birds.

Whales and people have interacted for thousands of years and the documented history of these many engagements is extensive. Over time various groups of people in many parts of the world became dependent on whales for their livelihood, to the point where organised killing of whales threatened preferred target species with extinction.

Over recent decades the relationship between people and whales has changed and most of the world recognises that the magnitude of continued exploitation of some species of whales is unsustainable. Consequently the Australian Government has made conservation of cetaceans a priority and is now a world leader in the protection and conservation of these species in Australia, and on an international scale.

However, at this point most hunted species are still recovering from over-exploitation in the 20th century, and some still remain endangered, or their existence threatened.