# briefing
WORDS OF WISDOM
I must be a mermaid … I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
ANAÏS NIN
SPERM WHALES: CULTURAL NOMADS Researchers have found that sperm whales are culturally nomadic, with distinctive clans moving vast distances in response to changes in habitat. This cultural constancy has so far been seen to be unusual in the marine environment, with most animals preferring to remain in their habitats through periods of environmental fluctuation, and adapting their cultures accordingly.
SIGNPOST
FEMALE
These findings come from a study in the Galápagos, where the waters were dominated by two specific clans of sperm whales until they left in the 1990s, but now host two entirely different populations that have moved in from across the Pacific basin, thousands of kilometres away. The distinct populations can be determined by their“ codas”, or vocal dialects, that are specific to certain clans.
Co-author of the study Dr Shane Gero, a postdoctoral marine biologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Mongabay that this kind of cultural turnover is unheard of outside of humans.“ It’ s as if you had been going to Canada for 20 years and everybody spoke English and French, but then in the next 10 years nobody lived in Canada,” said Gero.“ Then, you went back and everyone spoke Spanish and Portuguese.”
“ Sperm whale cultures appear to endure dramatic environmental changes,” said Mauricio Cantor, a postdoctoral fellow at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and lead author of the study.“ These cultural boundaries are not trivial or abandoned in the face of new challenges.”
The research implies that protecting sperm whales may require tracking their populations culturally, rather than geographically.
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.
RACHEL CARSON
We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
MOTHER TERESA
6 SDAA