{"id":9164,"date":"2017-12-13T15:56:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.blueventures.org\/?p=9164"},"modified":"2021-06-18T15:06:05","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T14:06:05","slug":"whales-coming-cetacean-surveys-around-atauro-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.blueventures.org\/en\/whales-coming-cetacean-surveys-around-atauro-island\/","title":{"rendered":"The whales are coming: cetacean surveys around Ata\u00faro Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are heavy grey clouds covering the mountains, and the air is perfectly still. The waters between Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, and Ata\u00faro Island are, for the first time in months, completely flat. The season is changing \u2013 and the whales are coming.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again, the Blue Ventures\u2019 staff and volunteer team have been able to join Professor Karen Edyvane, from the National University of Timor-Leste, in her yearly quest to study the pygmy blue whale migration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen has already trained community fishermen in data collection to ensure a constant flow of data from Ata\u00faro\u2019s coastal villages. Engaging eco-tourists and volunteers in data collection is also critical to the success of her whale monitoring and the cetacean ecotourism development project.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Three days of boat surveys around Ata\u00faro Island were planned, with the goal of identifying individual whales and, hopefully, finding links to the populations regularly sighted off southwest Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ultimate goal of Karen\u2019s research is to discover whether the migration is consistent and predictable enough to support whale-watching tourism in Timor-Leste, with the potential to provide income and alternative livelihoods for the island\u2019s fishing communities. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Karen

Karen introducing her work to Blue Ventures’ volunteers before training them in cetacean surveying methods.<\/p><\/div>\n

Explore Timor-Leste for yourself!<\/a><\/div>\n

On the first day of surveying, we left Dili early in the morning on the MV Ata\u00faro, a small but sturdy vessel with a very friendly Timorese crew who offered us coffee and ginger sweets as everybody took up their position on the boat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our luck seemed good; as we were immediately greeted by a large pod of flamboyant spinner dolphins, busy delivering their first show of the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking out our cameras, we all tried to get as many photos as possible so as to confirm the species identification. This pod of spinners clearly finds humans as fascinating as we find them, as they eagerly approached our boat and rode our bow waves for a little while.<\/span><\/p>\n