{"id":115465,"date":"2018-05-11T09:22:11","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T13:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=115465"},"modified":"2023-01-20T15:43:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T20:43:57","slug":"bates-club-of-antarctica-its-a-whales-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/11\/bates-club-of-antarctica-its-a-whales-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates Club of Antarctica: It’s a whale’s world"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day on a beach in North Carolina, someone asked Ari Friedlaender \u201996 if he\u2019d like to go count whales in Antarctica. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two decades and 32 trips later, he\u2019s become an authority on Antarctic marine mammals, specifically minke and humpback whales, and how climate change affects them. Like fellow researcher Doug Krause \u201999, Friedlaender often gets to know his subjects by putting video cameras on their backs. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
The Bates Club of Antarctica<\/h5>\n

This is Part 5 of a series about Bates alumni who spent this winter in Antarctica.<\/p>\n

Part 1: If glaciers could talk, what would they say?<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 2: If you give a seal a camera<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 3: Fossils and beach volleyball on a glacier<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 4: The secrets of the lakes<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/section>\n

Friedlaender reaches out to people as much as he reaches out to whales \u2014 his work has been featured extensively in <\/span>National Geographic<\/span><\/i><\/a>, CNN<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>, just to name a few. The reason, he says, is that we\u2019re more inclined to want to protect what we know.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Researcher<\/h5>\n

Friedlaender is an associate researcher at the Institute of Marine Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

In the gloom of a sudden snow squall, Ari Friedlander ’96 searches for minke whales in Andvord Bay in Antarctica. In that moment, “it was calm and smooth and a bit eerie.” (Carolyn Van Houten\/National Geographic)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Research<\/h5>\n

Friedlaender\u2019s specialty is whales. He\u2019s made a career out of tagging and tracking them in Antarctica, and his team also studies them off California, Cape Cod, and southeast Alaska.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the moment, he\u2019s focused on minke whales, the smallest of the baleen whales. His team tags them, sometimes attaching video cameras, to figure out how they eat, where they go, and how they interact. <\/span><\/p>\n

Minke whales \u201cevolved to live in sea ice,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re pretty cryptic, pretty elusive. They\u2019ll be most impacted by climate change, because one of the manifestations of that is that sea ice is decreasing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand how they use the sea ice habitat and to predict what the future holds for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Antarctica on Repeat<\/h5>\n

Friedlaender has made 32 trips to Antarctica, totaling two to three months a year. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A hexacopter drone documents four members of the 2018 minke expedition team as they look for whales in Charlotte Bay in the Antarctic Peninsula. (Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab)<\/p><\/div>\n

From Here to There<\/h5>\n

\u201cI grew up on the coast in New England, and I was always fascinated with the ocean,\u201d Friedlaender says. \u201cFrom a young age, I was encouraged to go out and observe things in nature \u2014 in fact, my mom started me taking notes in a field notebook every time I went to the beach when I was young. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI did a degree in biology and a minor in anthropology at Bates. Bates gave me the opportunity to learn to be a scientist and gave me the tools to go into the world and start doing science on my own. [Professor of Biology] Will Ambrose was a really important person for me because he was incredibly encouraging of the things I was interested in.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe taught me how to think. I think that was the most important lesson I learned at Bates \u2014 learning how to think like a scientist and how to ask questions.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Baptism by Ice<\/h5>\n

After he graduated, Friedlaender went to North Carolina to study stranded whales. One day, as he was dissecting a dolphin on a beach, a researcher approached him and mentioned that the Australian Antarctic Division needed \u201csomeone to go to the Antarctic to count marine mammals.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Friedlaender accepted, flew to Australia, and boarded a ship. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes about six days to get to the ice from Tasmania, and we had horrible seas,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe probably had 30 to 35-foot seas and 50 to 60-knot winds. The ship was rolling all over the place, but as soon as we got into the sea ice, everything calmed down.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A minke whale breaches in Antarctica’s Paradise Bay. (Ari Friedlaender\/photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe first month I went down there, the average air temperature was between minus 20 and minus 40, and we didn\u2019t see very many whales at all. But just being in that environment and feeling the cold, you feel absolutely minuscule and unimportant. It\u2019s also such a vibrant place and such an amazing natural wilderness that you can\u2019t help but be overcome by it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGetting off the ship, I said to the woman who had hired me, \u2018Okay, now you\u2019ve got to deal with me because I\u2019m here and I\u2019ve got to go back.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

What the Camera Shows<\/h5>\n

Friedlaender is one of the first scientists to study Antarctic marine mammals extensively \u2014 he was at the vanguard of the evolution from simply counting whales to tagging and tracking them, learning a tremendous amount about individual animals. <\/span><\/p>\n

Putting video cameras on the bodies of minke whales \u2014 the process involves <\/span>getting really close<\/span><\/a> to the creatures on an inflatable boat, then using a long pole to suction-cup a video tag to their skin \u2014 has led to two important revelations, Friedlaender says.<\/span><\/p>\n