MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Whale recovery in Falklands” and an explosion of sightings

Peak of whale sightings: January to March each year

”Whale recovery in Falklands’ waters was the subject of an article in Penguin News in October last year. It outlined the Marine Spatial Planning team’s efforts to capture the story of the mammal’s recovery.

 SAERI’s Veronica Frans (*) travelled all around the Falklands, interviewing people about where and when they had seen whales throughout their lifetime, and if they could recall a difference between the numbers they saw in the past and what they see today.

Veronica takes up the story: “I also went through museum archives, government and whaling records, old newspapers, Falklands Conservation reports and scientific publications”.

The results are finally in and it seems that indeed, a story can be told.

Interviewee accounts have indicated that many whales were often or always seen in Falklands’ waters in the 1940s and 50s, but in the 60s and 70s, there were very few to virtually no observations.

Commercial whaling ended worldwide in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, the number of observations have increased and skyrocketed for the 2010s, and we still have half a decade left to go.

The older generations could recall having seen whales in their childhood, but noticed their absence and recent return; most interviewees representing the younger generation, however, had stated that they did not recall seeing their first whale until adulthood.

The majority of whales seen in the Islands' inshore waters are sei whales, followed by fin whales, minke whales, southern right whales and humpback whales. Sighting hotspots were found, with the highest concentrations in Berkeley Sound, Falkland Sound and the large bays of West Falklands.

One interviewee described the”increase in whale sightings as an “explosion of whales,” and others stated that they were, “glad to see they're back and [they] like seeing them.” “To many local residents, the return of the whales in the Falklands' waters may be obvious, but we now have data to study the recovery and tell the story to the rest of the world”.

Locally, the findings from this study can be used in Marine Spatial Planning by informing FIG on potentially important areas for the whales, and when they are most likely to be present in these waters.

“I and the rest of the Marine Spatial Planning team thank all participants again for their contribution, as well as those who provided other useful sources of information for this study”.

 (*) Veronica Frans is the research assistant at SAERI (South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute) and is leading the study on ‘Mapping historical whale sightings’ as part of the Darwin Plus-funded project, Marine Spatial Planning for the Falkland Islands and is supervised by Dr Amélie Augé also of SAERI. The Environmental Planning Department financially supported the study via their Environmental Studies Budget.(Penguin News)