Volunteers tally visiting whales
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
About 600 volunteer whale spotters helped out yesterday during the midseason wave of the 2003 Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary whale count.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
The volunteers, stationed at 63 sites around the state, counted 4,000 whales, said Christine Brammer, the sanctuary's ocean count coordinator.
Shane Lum, 17 looks for whales at 'Ewa Beach. About 600 volunteers counted whales yesterday.
Brammer said that number is likely to contain some duplication, because the count does not distinguish between individual whales, so the same whale may have been counted more than once.
The whale counts are conducted annually, and recently, the sanctuary has begun holding three counts each season — at the beginning, the middle, and the end of each humpback migration.
The next National Marine Sanctuary count is March 29. The early season count turned up 1,300 sightings.
The Pacific Whale Foundation will conduct a Maui count on Saturday.
For yesterday's count, Science and Technology International conducted an aerial survey off the southeastern shore of O'ahu. The company uses high-tech imaging systems and used hyperspectral imaging to see beneath the ocean's surface. Preliminary STI results showed 10 whales in a 15-minute count period.
Hawaiian waters serve as a critical breeding habitat for two-thirds, or about 5,000, of the humpback whales living in the North Pacific. Studies show the number has been increasing at an annual rate of 7 percent for the past 10 years.
