Exciting results from Operation Calanus!

L-R: Echosounder trace showing ascending and descending whales; Zoomed in view showing food and whales diving out of the food patch!

Rene has very kindly allowed me to post some preliminary results for all of you to enjoy. Simply put - this echosounder data matches the tag data and shows that Calanus was feeding at the bottom - 120 m down. That's where the food is (second figure) so it all makes sense! The temperature here was about 2 degrees Celcius - 14 degrees cooler than at the surface - BIG difference over a small range. The cold water comes courtesy of the Labrador current. I will write another post about the oceanography of the area on a later date so stay tuned.

What's really cool is that the MICS team has noticed that Meduse (the friendly whale you can see at the top right hand corner of the first figure) has raw wounds around his mouth and they suspected that it was because he was feeding on the bottom - these results confirm that - WOO HOOO! Its pretty amazing how we can apply these results to answer some real life questions too.


p.s: if you click on the image it will open larger in a separate tab