Song of the Whale

Song of the Whale is the International Fund for Animal Welfare's research vessel. She is a specially modified 46 ft sailing vessel dedicated to promoting the conservation and welfare of marine life. She travels the worlds oceans studying whales, dolphins, harbour porpoises, turtles and other marine life.

The boat

Dr Jonathan Gordon at the bow of the IFAW benign research vessel he directs

Song of the Whale is an Oyster 46 ketch (two masts) built in the U.K. in 1979. She is 46 feet (14 metres) long and 12 feet (3 metres) wide at her widest.

She was purchased by IFAW in 1987 at the end of a hard life as a charter vessel and adapted to her new role as an ambassador for benign, non-intrusive research into the life of marine animals

Why a yacht?

The mast give an elevated look-out position!

The role of a pioneering research vessel may seem daunting for so small a boat and at first sight a modest sailing vessel may seem an odd choice compared with the huge research vessels used by many institutes today. In fact IFAW has a number of very good reasons for choosing this sort of boat.

She is small and thus inexpensive to buy, run and maintain. Also, her size means that she is a minimal disruptive presence to the study animals. Usually she is actually smaller than the animals (whales) being studied!!
Her size and simplicity means she can be run and maintained by a small, largely unspecialised crew who combine a knowledge of sailing with scientific expertise and a commitment to animal welfare.
She is a sailing vessel. The sails provide and extended range, allowing her to cross oceans between projects and stay at sea for prolonged study periods. The sails steady the boat, providing a better platform from which to work. Much of the boats work involves passive acoustic monitoring using hydrophones, and the lack of engine noise while under sail makes for much better acoustic surveying.

If we want to learn about the undisturbed behaviour of any animal there is no alternative to spending a lot of time observing it unobtrusively in its own environment. For oceanic animals, like whales and dolphins, that means spending a great deal of time in the open ocean and small ocean going yachts like Song of the Whale are the most cost effective platforms for doing this safely and effectively.

Through research carried out from her decks, methods for surveying and assessing populations of whales are being developed which IFAW hope will remove any possible justification for scientific whaling.

The Work

Over the years, Song of the Whale has demonstrated her capabilities by successfully completing a number of previous projects.

Since Song of the Whale's first field season in 1987, in the Azores, much of her work has involved the developing and demonstrating of new benign methods of learning about species which were thought to be difficult to study. For example, passive acoustic monitoring techniques have been developed for the largest and smallest of the toothed whales, sperm whales (Physeter catadon) and harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) respectively. In many ways these techniques are far superior to traditional visual methods, since many cetaceans can be detected acoustically more efficiently than by eye.

The Azores project has developed into a long term study of the behaviour, social organisation and vocal behaviour of sperm whales in the region. These were linked to a feasability study of whale watching as an alternative to traditional whaling in the archipelago. Whaling is now banned in the Azores and whale watching ventures are attracting visitors from all over the world, as part of the global growth of whale watching.

The Song of the Whale team have also been involved in:

monitoring drift net fishing vessels on the high seas
investigating the possible disturbance of sperm whales by whale watching operations in New Zealand
working to prevent collisions between Jetfoil ferries and sperm whales in the Canary Islands
studying minke whales off the west coast of Scotland
assisting with studies of dolphin populations in the Moray Firth, Scotland
censusing cetacean populations in the Irish Whale and Dolphin Sanctuary, West Ireland
establishing a monitoring scheme for cetacean populations in the Ligurian Sea Cetacean Sanctuary, in the Mediterranean Sea.
studying sperm whales and humpbacks in the Caribbean, in conjuction with an education project on the island of Dominica.

Song is currently engaged on her 15th field season, returning to Dominica to continue IFAW's work there, and sailing south later in March to look for humpbacks off Grenada.

Follow Song's activities through a crew members diary:

January 1996

Examine and download real data from Song's Environment and Sightings logs

Join the Song of the Whale's current journeys.

WhaleNet

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