Tail of a whale, snapped in 2 seas,
reveals surprising wanderlust
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff
The Article From the
Boston Globe
October 13, 2010
Questions for you to answer
after you’ve read the paragraph
in the article.
By scouring a photo-sharing website for
tourists’ pictures of whales, a citizen
scientist from Maine has helped to
document a female humpback’s recordbreaking 6,000-mile journey from Brazil to
Madagascar.
Question: How far away is Brazil from Madagascar?
The remarkable voyage of whale number
1363 from one breeding ground to another
is a scientific discovery for the socialnetworking age — a study made possible
both by vacation photos posted on Flickr
and an exhaustive library of photos of
whales’ tails that scientists have built since
the 1970s.
Why do you think the whale is called Whale Number 1363?
Can you find both on a map of the world and show how the
whale might have swum from Brazil to Madagascar?
How many whales do you think are in the ocean?
How could you find out if you don’t know?
“This to me is just an incredibly exciting
way of reminding people they are our
whales — they’re not the biologist’s
whales,’’ said Gale McCullough of
Hancock, Maine, who has become a liaison
to Flickr for the Allied Whale research
group at the College of the Atlantic in Bar
Harbor, Maine. She regularly scours the
popular website for humpback whale
photos and uses expertise she’s honed over
more than three decades of identifying
whales by the shape and color of their tails,
as well as the patterns on the undersides.
Each whale’s tail, or flukes, is distinct.
Each whale’s tail is distinct.
Whale 1363 in the Antarctic Humpback
Whale Catalogue made its first appearance
in the annals of science in a most
conventional manner. It was first spotted
by scientists off the coast of Brazil in
August 1999, swimming with another
whale for an hour. The scientists took skin
samples and did genetic analyses,
determining that both whales were female.
Was the whale a male or female?
What does “distinct” mean?
What parts of your body are distinct from the same part on other
people’s bodies?
Are you a male or a female?
What do those words mean?
A male is a:
A female is a:
Then, two years later, Freddy Johansen, a
Norwegian tourist on a whale watch cruise,
took an auspicious photo of the same
whale’s flukes as it swam with two other
whales off the east coast of Madagascar.
Did you see the movie Madagascar? If so, what was your
favorite part?
What does the word “auspicious” mean?
“It was only a short trip taken on a whim in
between scuba diving and exploring of this
small island off Madagascar’s east coast,’’
Johansen, chief executive of a workshop
that specializes in exhaust systems for cars,
wrote in an e-mail.
What does an exhaust system on a car do?
If you don’t know, how will you find out?
In 2009, Johansen uploaded the photos
What does it mean to “upload” something?
from his trip to Madgascar to the website to
back up his images and share them with
friends. McCullough found them on a
search.
Could you upload your parents?
She saw in the speckled pattern on the
underside of the whale’s white tail a
configuration that reminded her of a face,
and the same pattern leaped out again when
she looked in the Antarctic Humpback
Whale Catalogue. She brought the match to
scientists at the College of the Atlantic,
where she works as a research associate.
What does “speckled” mean?
Who is the “she” in this paragraph?
Do you think it was normal or remarkable that she noticed that
the whale tail might be from the same whale?
Do you think the pictures all show the same tail? How do you
know?
Photo Caption:
The distinctive tail of Whale 1363 was
photographed off the Brazil coast in 1999,
and off Madagascar two years later.
(Courtesy Allied Whale, College of The
Atlantic)
What does “caption” mean?
Why do you think the Boston Globe put the phrase “Courtesy
Allied Whale, College of the Atlantic” underneath the picture?
Who do you think owns the photographs?
Typically, humpback whales swim long
distances to travel from feeding to breeding
grounds — around 3,000 miles, according
to Peter Stevick, a biologist at College of
the Atlantic and the lead author of the
paper published yesterday in the journal
Biology Letters.
What do you think “a journal” is?
If you don’t know, how could you find out?
“This record is unusual, not only in being
longer than any of those recorded
migrations, but because it’s not between a
feeding ground and a breeding ground —
it’s between two different breeding
grounds,’’ Stevick said. He said it is not
known why the whale would have made
the trip. One possibility is the whale swam
too far following prey and then swam back
to Madagascar to breed.
Is the trip from Brazil to Madagascar normal for Humpback
whales, or is it longer or shorter than normal?
Although it is believed to be rare for
whales to swim such a long way, it
suggests scientists should look harder at
whether this movement occurs, to a less
extreme degree, in other whales, Stevick
said. It is also intriguing, he said, because
male whales are the ones thought to roam
widely.
Do male or female Humpback whales tend to swim longer
distances?
What in the paragraph on the left tells you the answer to this
question?
What in the paragraph at the left tells you the answer?
Phillip J. Clapham, leader of the Cetacean
What is a “leader”?
Ecology and Assessment Program at the
National Marine Mammal Laboratory in
Seattle, who was not involved in the
research, wrote in an e-mail that it was very
unusual for a whale to travel so far.
Do you know any leaders? If so, what do they do?
“This remarkable movement shows either
that humpback whales are amazingly
flexible, or that they’re capable of making
amazingly large navigational mistakes!’’
Clapham wrote.
What does “navigation” mean?
What does it mean to make a navigational mistake?
Have your parents ever made a navigational mistake? What did
they do?
Richard Merrick, chief of the resource
evaluation and assessment division at the
Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said
that increasingly, citizen scientists are
making important contributions, whether
they are fishermen, tourists, or whalewatchers. Because they may look in places
that aren’t being studied, he said, they may
make important finds.
Could you be a “citizen scientist?” Yes or no.
If so, how would you do that?
What kind of scientific exploration would you like to do?
For Johansen, whose first passion is nature
and wildlife, the chance to take part in a
scientific discovery has been a pleasure.
Was Johansen a “citizen scientist?” Yes or no.
“This is my first time as coauthor of
anything at all,’’ Johansen wrote. “You can
imagine my surprise when it turned out the
way it did!’’
Did she like it? Yes or no.
How do you know?
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at
cjohnson@globe.com.
Who is Carolyn Y. Johnson?
Would you like to write her? How would you do that?
Write a quick note to her on the back of this page.
Tell her you read the article above, thank her, and tell her what
you learned from reading the article.
After you correct your work, ask your teacher or your parents to
send your note to Carolyn Johnson.