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While tiger sharks along Maui’s coastline recently have captured the attention of marine experts statewide, research biologist Robin Baird has been focusing on other sea creatures, tracking whales and dolphins in hopes of understanding where they travel and why.
He learned in his research that bottlenose and spinner dolphins and melon-headed and pilot whales have resident populations off Lanai.
“There’s a lot to learn,” said Baird, employed by Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Wash.
Baird began studying killer whales in the mid-1980s off of British Columbia, Canada. In 1998, he became acquainted with Maui, where he lived for a year and a half doing research. He has visited Hawaii between two and four times a year since.
Baird began tracking whales and dolphins in 2007, through grants and contracts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Navy. His team includes marksman and researcher Daniel Webster, who uses an air rifle to shoot a tracker device attached to two titanium darts onto the dorsal fins of the marine mammals.
“It definitely startles them,” Baird said after being asked if the method hurts the animals. “We put it on to the dorsal fins because it has the most connective tissue. They don’t seem to try to get rid of the tags or rub them off on the bottom of boats, so it’s hard to say what they’re feeling exactly. You’d think if they’re annoyed they’d try to rub them off.”
The tracker, which can stay active for as many as 220 days, transmits information to a satellite that then relays information to Baird’s laptop. Unlike the shark tagging study, there is no real-time setup, but the collected information eventually is posted on the Washington state nonprofit’s website.
“The best thing is we don’t have to catch them,” he said.
In December 2012, Baird brought his research techniques to Manele Bay and the west and east shores of Lanai. He and his team spent 15 days around the island tracking bottlenose and spinner dolphins, as well as melon-headed and pilot whales.
“We tracked where they travel up to 70 days and during that period, the whales stayed in waters west of Lanai so we found out that they’re basically the resident population,” he said, adding that the same was true for the dolphins.
Baird’s team compared the whales to those identified in a separate study on Lanai in December 2000 and found them to be the same, based on distinctive markings on their dorsal fins and pigmentation.
Researchers also attached devices to members of the two dolphin species that are most prevalent around Lanai. He recalled a bottlenose dolphin that went from Lanai to Molokai to Maui to Kahoolawe and back to Lanai, over a span of 15 days.
“It showed that the animals are residents of the area and are using all of the Maui Nui islands,” Baird said.
He presented his team’s research earlier this month in community gatherings at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary in Kihei and the Maui Theatre in Lahaina.
“The project in Lanai is part of a larger study to understand resident species of whales and dolphins,” he said. “In the past, most of what we knew about bottlenose dolphins came from photo identifications, so in the span of a year or month or week later we would see the same individuals” but would not know if they were a resident population.
“The satellite gives us a continuous track over shorter amounts of time,” he said.
In addition to the tracking devices, Baird uses photo identification catalogs and other survey methods to estimate abundance, social organization, survival rates, evidence of injuries from vessel strikes or fisheries and incidents with sharks across multiple marine animals.
Earlier this month, he and a group of researchers took 16,000 photos of pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins over 10 days off of Kauai.
He hopes to do more studies and tracking in Maui waters next year.
“We’ve done most of our satellite tagging on the Big Island, Kauai, Niihau and Oahu,” he said. “There’s been relatively little done here, so not much is known about the marine animals in Maui Nui and that really relates to funding.”
Possible locations in Maui County for study include off Lahaina and Maalaea, Baird said.
“But we have to get the funding first, and then we’ll decide what the best option is,” he said.
* Chris Sugidono can be reached at csugidono@mauinews.com.