A UBC doctoral student鈥檚 drone footage of bowhead whales helps explain why they travel to Nunavut every year. Photograph By Sarah Fortune/YouTube
It鈥檚 not just humans who feel the need to occasionally exfoliate.
A PhD student at the University of British Columbia has found that bowhead whales do, too.
For generations, there have been 鈥渋ncidental observations鈥� of the whales returning every year to Cumberland Sound in Nunavut.
Sarah Fortune, a doctoral student at UBC鈥檚 Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, used drone video footage to find out why.
The stunningly beautiful video shows the whales rubbing against submerged rocks to remove dead skin that鈥檚 a result of moulting.
Fortune was watching the whales鈥� behaviour from a boat. She was with colleagues, including William Koski, a whale biologist with LGL Limited, and local Inuit hunters and fishers from Pangnitung.
From their vantage point, they could see the whales turn on their sides and wave their flippers and tails in the air. They realized the whales were not there to just feed. It was when they sent a drone into the sky above them that they were able to watch the whales rub against the rocks.
鈥淲e now know that Cumberland Sound serves as a habitat for feeding and moulting,鈥� Fortune says in a UBC press release. 鈥淰ery little is known about moulting in any of the large whale species.鈥�
Orcas have been observed rubbing themselves on rocks and pebbly beaches in the Strait of Georgia.
Fortune is continuing to study the behaviour of bowhead whales, the longest-living marine mammals on the planet. They can live up to 200 years. Scientists do not yet know, however, how they will adapt to warming ocean temperatures and the resulting changing environments.
