Symphony and the Seamounts

This week I’d like to share the tale of Symphony, a blue whale who makes Atlantic Canada her seasonal home and who has been known to researchers here for over 30 years. Among the many mysteries surrounding her iconic species, the largest in history, one of the most tantalizing is where they spend their winters. The Northwest Atlantic blue whale population, of which Symphony is a part, spends its summer here. But to this day, when they abandon our icy shores in late November and December, we aren’t certain where they go.

You might think it’s a simple matter of tagging one of these extraordinary creatures and waiting patiently for them to show us the way, but tags are expensive and they don’t tend to last very long. For whatever reason, however, in the fall of 2014, one tag stuck particularly well. It was attached to Symphony herself, put there by the people who first named her.

The Mingan Island Cetacean Study (MICS) was the first organization anywhere to undertake long term blue whale research in 1979. Symphony was an early addition to their catalogues and when she was finally tagged little over a year ago, MICS members watched her movements with great anticipation, hoping to discover her well kept secrets.

Her tag was attached in early November, 2014, and when she left the Gulf of St. Lawrence that December she visited the strangest of places — the New England Seamounts. This is a chain of over 30 extinct underwater volcanoes, stretching 1,100 kilometres from Georges Bank southeast toward the middle of the North Atlantic. Some of these volcanoes are over 4,000 metres tall relative to the ocean floor, a fanciful place to imagine migrating blue whales.

According to MICS’ founder and CEO, Richard Sears, this is a strange place for her to go. Blue whales tend to follow their food, which is abundant along the continental shelve, not in the middle of the North Atlantic. But humpback whales have been known to visit these Seamounts as they migrate northward in spring, so perhaps there’s more to these extinct volcanoes than we realize. The biology of the Seamounts is poorly understood, but Symphony’s interest in the region is further evidence that life abounds in some form or another.

Symphony didn’t spend her entire winter among these submerged marvels. Instead she returned to Atlantic Canada in January, swimming near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, before barreling southward past Georges Bank, Delaware, Chesapeake Bay and finally stopping on the shores of North Carolina.

By March she was back in Atlantic Canada, attempting to enter the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but she was turned away by the unwelcoming sea ice. Again she returned to the New England Seamounts, exploring the area to the fascination of everyone tracking her.

“Something had to draw that animal out there … and she stayed,” said Sears. “She didn’t just go out there and come right back in. She stayed, both times, for quite a while and worked the area.”

The tag on Symphony died in May and by the time she was spotted again in late summer, 2015, it had fallen off. Unfortunately, the movements of one whale don’t constitute a trend. If 10 blue whales were caught visiting the same regions as Symphony and at the same time, then maybe researchers would be on to something, but for now she has given us only a hint as to the mysterious wintering grounds of the Northwest Atlantic blue whales.

“Symphony was a real gift,” Sears concluded. Indeed she was.

Zack Metcalfe is a freelance environmental journalist, an author, and writer of the Endangered Perspective. He operates out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.