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Summary

Sable Gully, a deep water canyon off the coast of Nova Scotia, is an area of remarkable marine diversity. It is being looked at for special protection. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has already designated the area in the Notice to mariners as a whale sanctuary to protect the northern bottlenose whale. These gentle giants are a distinct and vulnerable population. Researchers looking at the genetics of the bottlenose whale in the Gully have noticed a significant difference between them and other bottlenose whales.

Transcript of Video

Jill Deacon
Whales are known for their ability to dive to incredible depths to search for food. The deepest of all divers, the Northern Bottlenose Whale, now lives near Nova Scotia. And that's quite a surprise. They usually live much further north and further east. One intrepid researcher discovered a pod off the east coast and began to study its habits. Recently, his work has taken on added importance as the whales face a new threat to their survival. The federal government is now working to protect the whales and the area they call home.

Jay Ingram
The stiff breezes of spring ... remind Dr. Hal Whitehead that the summer sailing season is just around the corner.

In a few weeks his 12-metre sailboat "Balaena", will be loaded with grad students... and supplies to last three weeks.

The crew of Balaena will head out in search of the Northern Bottlenose Whale.

Dr. Hal Whitehead
Imagine Flipper... the famous bottlenose dolphin... and then make it ohhh... perhaps 10 times as big... make its head a little more bulbous... so it's really bulging out... keep the smile... they've got the same smile as Flipper does, and that's about what a bottlenose whale... a bit... bit fatter too!

Jay Ingram
The gentle... curious bottlenose... is small compared to many other whales... It averages just seven metres in length. It has a wide range... from the coast of Labrador... to the edge of the Arctic ice pack... and north of Norway.

But Dr. Whitehead will sail south... to the Sable Gully, off the coast of Nova Scotia. There, he studies a bottlenose family that lives thousands of kilometers from their northern cousins.

Dr. Hal Whitehead
In the Gully there are about 130 bottlenose whales. All parts of the population... there's young babies, there are big old males with flat heads... and females. All ages in between. These animals are in the Gully year round... We've started to look at the genetics of the bottlenose whales in the Gully and compared them with those outside, and overall, there is a significant difference between the Gully and other areas, so it suggests that the populations are at least somewhat distinct...

Jay Ingram
Imagine the Grand Canyon... underwater... and you've got a picture of the Sable Gully.

You'll find it about 400 kilometres southeast of Halifax. It's 20 kilometres wide... 70 kilometres long...

And a misplaced family of northern bottlenose whales is just one of the mysteries of this deep-sea ravine.

Bob Rutherford
Probably what we know best about the Gully, is that we know very little about the ecology there... it's a very deep place. It makes a very unique community of species and very diverse. Species that normally don't meet in the ocean meet in the Gully.

Jay Ingram
In fact, much of what we know about the northern bottlenose we know from Dr. Whitehead's work in the Gully. He's spent 10 years identifying the whales... and observing how their social life is organized.

He's captured never before seen pictures of their behavior.

Dr. Hal Whitehead
We were watching two males... and they started jousting with each other... they would swim in opposite directions... and turn around and then come in towards each other... dive slightly then crash head to head... and then they'd break apart and do it again. It seems to make sense that this very flat head of the male bottlenose whale is used in these kinds of aggression when they are competing with each other.

Jay Ingram
But he really wanted to know why they were in the Gully. And his students devised some ingenious tests to find out.

With a hollow-tipped dart... a cross-bow... and a steady shoulder, they extracted small samples of skin and blubber.

They analyzed the fat in the blubber, and found the first clue...

Dr. Hal Whitehead
The fatty acids of the bottlenose whale blubber were exactly the same as those found in a strange squid which is only found deep in the ocean... at about one-thousand to 1500 meters below the surface. And so it seems that the Bottlenose Whales are feeding on a population of these Squid which live at the bottom of the Gully.

Jay Ingram
But was that possible? Researchers knew of no marine mammal that could dive so deep.

Using the same crossbow... researchers rigged a time-depth recorder to a two-dollar Canadian Tire suction cup. It was a test of anyone's aim... But after 50 attempts... two stuck... one for 28 hours. When it floated free, they had the first-ever peek into the underwater life of the whale.

Dr. Hal Whitehead
These whales were diving routinely down to the bottom of the Gully... to about 1500... 1400-1500 metres below the surface... over one kilometre down.

Jay Ingram
That makes the northern bottlenose the undisputed deep diving champion. It routinely dives deeper than any other mammal ever studied.

A unique family... a unique species...

And it's vulnerable. Today it's not whalers that threaten the animal... it's rigs like this. Huge oil and gas reserves are waiting to be tapped along the Scotian shelf, near the Gully.

A major gas pipeline is being built between Sable Island and Boston, through the Maritimes and New England...

And Dr. Whitehead fears contaminants, and noise pollution will take their toll...

Dr. Hal Whitehead
When you listen underwater... you will almost always hear the booming of the seismic ships as they survey the areas around there for... for potential oil and gas discoveries. But these are so extraordinarily loud that even we'll be listening 50 kilometres away from the ship... making, you know... they're drowning out most other sounds... the whale sounds and so on.

Bob Rutherford
There are about 14 species of whales that frequent the Gully... we'll see there on a regular basis. The bottlenose whale is one of five that are considered to be vulnerable to human activity.

Jay Ingram
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans keeps a close eye on the bottlenose whales.

The Gully is already a whale sanctuary... and at the moment there's a moratorium on new development in the region.

This gives DFO time to draft a management plan, one that Rutherford hopes will become the basis for a "marine protected area" ... a part of the ocean where human activities will be controlled, and limited, to preserve the biodiversity there.

Bob Rutherford
The Sable gas fields are just 40 kilometres to the west of the Gully... and they've done a lot of work in monitoring their impact, their noise and contaminants, to make sure that the Gully ecosystem is protected... but we want to make sure that that applies to all activities out there...

Jay Ingram
If approved... a marine protected area could be at least a year away...

But it can't come soon enough for Dr. Whitehead and his colleagues...

They've worked hard to prove that these whales are a distinct, and a vulnerable population.

Reason alone, they say, to establish a Marine protected area around the Gully.

Dr. Hal Whitehead
We don't know what the effect of exploiting those fields will be... but there is a fair probability that if they were exploited, just the activity involved in that would drive the Bottlenose Whales out of the Gully, which would be... from my perspective... a real tragedy...

Jay Ingram
Aboard Baleana... he'll be back out this summer... keeping an eye on the whales... as they keep an eye on him.

This story was produced with the assistance of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.