RidgwayNorrisElectSuppl

Being ‘There’ for Surprises and Delights in Cetacean and Pinniped Biology.

The Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award Lecture

Presented on 12 October 2009, Quebec City, Canada

Sam Ridgway, ;

Electronic Supplement

To me, the significance of the Kenneth S. Norris award is increased by its two previous recipients, Gerald Kooyman and Toshio Kasuya. Both are good friends and respected colleagues. Though we and the Kooymans live only a few miles apart, we see Jerry and Melba only occasionally. When not in Antarctica, Jerry surfs. He stands up on a sleek board and catches big waves. Jerry is very fit. I use a belly board and catch smaller waves. It is fun. At a recent New Year’s party hosted by Red and Mitzi Howard, I said, “Jerry you are the healthiest 75-year-old man I know.” He replied, “come on, Sam. I am only 74!”

I don’t see Toshio Kasuya very often except at meetings. However, on one occasion I was ecstatic to sight him. It was my first visit to Japan. I was with my chemist friend, Sachio Yamamoto. Of Japanese ancestry, Sach is California born and bred. He was trying to learn Japanese. We made it through the huge multi-level train station in Tokyo and got on the correct train to Kamogawa. However, 20 minutes out of Tokyo, the train suddenly stopped. We looked around the packed train to get some indication of why we had stopped. Then there was an announcement in Japanese. The crowd headed for the exit. Sach said, “ I think this train is broken and we need to find our way to a nearby town to catch another train, I’m not sure.” Out on the platform, the crowd was moving to the exits. We were confused. Then, there in this huge crowd I sighted one of the three Japanese citizens I could recognize. What were the odds? It was Toshio. I was so glad to see him! Luckily, Toshio was going to the same meeting and readily became our guide to Kamogawa. After the meeting, organized by Dr. Teruo Tobayama, Sach made his way back to Tokyo by train. Dr. Tobayama took me to a large black automobile with uniformed driver. I was driven directly to the airport through the scenic countryside of Japan. At the airport, the driver, who spoke no English, stayed with me, checked my luggage, then stayed right with me like glue until I entered a security line where he finally bowed courteously and left me. I suspected that Toshio had warned “Tobayamasan, please don’t let Sam get lost in Japan!”

Phocoenoides dalli

Figure 1. Rooster tails of two Dall’s porpoises just off the bow of our boat near the Channel Islands, California in 1964. Dall’s porpoises are fun to watch at sea. More than any other cetaceans, they seem to relish playing about the bow.

Figure 2. Debbie Duffield training a male Dall’s porpoise at Point Mugu.

Figure 3. Dall’s porpoise rests quietly while I inject in the central vessel of the tail fluke. I was surprised to find that Dall’s porpoise, so energetic and active in the water, would lie quietly when out of the water on a soft pad.

I marveled at seeing the “rooster tails” of Dall’s porpoise at sea (Suppl Figure 1). These speedy animals seemed always to sprint to overtake our boat and play about the bow wave. Their black heads and dorsal bodies moved back and forth and twirling to display their bright white under-saddle with white tips of dorsal fin and tail flukes. They are exciting and beautiful animals to watch from the bow. We used this bow riding behavior to capture a few with our hoop net (Ridgway, 1966). As beautiful as their acrobatics were, however, the propensity for bow riding has done the entire species harm. For example, hunters take Dall’s porpoises from the bow by harpoon (Pilleri, 1971). I understand that the number of porpoises killed each year rose dramatically following the moratoria on hunting larger cetaceans introduced in the mid-1980s. Perhaps 40,000 Dall’s porpoises were killed in 1988. A quota of 18,000 individuals per year is now in operation. Concern remains that this inhumane capture is sufficient to deplete populations in the western Pacific (see also Brownell et al., 1989; Okamura et al., 2008). I might have said that the population has been “decimated” but that may not be enough. “Decimated” originates from the Roman Army – to kill one in every ten. When one says “the population has been decimated” usually many more than one in ten have been killed. Likely another word such as “devastated” should be used.

THOUGHTS ON ECHOLOCATION

Until the publication of Norris et al. (1961), dolphin echolocation, outside Woods Hole and Florida, was not universally accepted. The discovery of dolphin echolocation began with the first attempts to capture dolphins in the visually opaque waters near St. Augustine, Florida. In 1938, the same year that Marine Studios was founded, Donald Griffin, a student at Harvard University, working with a fellow student Robert Galambos, used high-frequency microphones in the laboratory of physics professor, G. W. Pierce, to prove that insect-eating bats navigate in the dark by emitting sound frequencies above the human hearing range. Arthur C. McBride may have thought of these discoveries about bats as he marveled at how dolphins could catch fish and yet avoid his nets at night in the opaque waters of the St. John’s River estuary and tributaries. McBride wrote in his notes that “this behavior calls to mind the sonic sending and receiving apparatus which enables the bat to avoid obstacles in the dark.” We have this information because W. E. Schevill later published some of McBride’s early notes in order to establish McBride’s priority in the discovery of dolphin echolocation (McBride, 1956). If dolphins had not been in close proximity to scientists in laboratories and marine parks, one wonders if we would still be debating the function of those clicks recorded from odontocetes at sea.

By 1963, I had known Kenneth Norris for two years and had even gone with him on a field expedition to San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico in December of 1962. It was in these waters of the northern Gulf of California that only a few years before Ken had discovered the population of Phocoena known by the common name, vaquita (Norris and McFarland, 1958). On this brief expedition, we saw many large dark Tursiops but no Phocoena.

A MEETING EXPANDED MY OUTLOOK

In the spring of 1963, I was looking after five bottlenose dolphins at Point Mugu. My supervisor, F. G. Wood (A.K.A "Woody") offered me a learning opportunity to attend an important conference.

The first International Conference on Cetacean Research assembled at a hotel just across Key Bridge from Washington, D.C. in August of 1963. Participants represented a variety of scientific disciplines including cetacean taxonomy, fisheries, zoogeography, natural history, anatomy, physiology, hydrodynamics, acoustics, linguistics, and behavior (see Norris, 1966). F. C. Fraser of the British Museum (Fraser, 1966) quoted the famous American paleontologist, George Gaylord Simpson (Simpson, 1945) who regarded Cetacea as “the most peculiar and aberrant of mammals.” At the time I had to agree. (In the ensuing 47 years, it has been my privilege to join in the effort to elucidate some of those cetacean peculiarities and aberrations.)

I was the only veterinarian present. L. Harrison Matthews, Scientific Director of the Zoological Society of London the first session with a fusillade against the very organization I had joined. To quote: “…some people are proposing to prostitute their biological work on Cetacea and involve the animals in human international strife by training them as underwater watchdogs…” (Matthews, 1966). I value the role of military sentry dogs and view watchdogs as noble creatures whether on land or underwater. I thought it a harshly critical remark for someone from Britain, considering the actions of the U.S. Navy only two decades before during World War II. No matter. In science, one has to speak one’s mind.

At the 1963 conference, notable attendees, other than Ken Norris, who influenced my career were Carleton Ray, William Schevill (Figs 4 and 5), John Kanwisher, David and Melba Caldwell, and Carl Hubbs. An early contributor to our veterinary knowledge was Professor E. J. Slijper of the Institute of Veterinary Anatomy, Utrecht, Netherlands. Dr. Slijper had done path-finding work on the anatomy of whales and porpoises from the 1930s to the 1960s. His book Whales was very useful to me. I took the book along to the 1963 conference and asked Professor Slijper to sign my copy. Whales is still on my shelf and much worn.

Figure 4. from left to right, William E. Schevill, Kenneth S. Norris, and G. Carleton Ray, three of the key participants in the First International Symposium on Cetacean Research in 1963. The proceedings were edited by Norris (1966). Photo courtesy of G. Carleton Ray.

Figure 5. Organized mainly by Joseph Geraci a memorable tribute to William Schevill and Barbara Lawrence was held at Amelia Island Plantation, Florida, April, 5-6, 1983. Back row, left to right: Carleton Ray, Al Vine, William Evans, Joseph Geraci, Sam Ridgway, Clayton Ray, Richard Backus, John Twiss, F. G. Wood. Seated: Mrs. Vine, Mrs. Carr, Bill Schevill, Barbara Lawrence, Archie Carr, William Watkins.

In 1964, Thomas C. Poulter, of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) began a series of conferences on “Bio-Sonar and Diving Mammals.” In 1962, Poulter started assembling a group of scientists interested in Año Nuevo Island. He was active in getting Año Nuevo established as a protected reserve. The island was (and is) habitat for several species of pinnipeds just off the coast near Santa Cruz, California. By 1966, the Año Nuevo Island pinniped studies had largely been taken over by R. S. Peterson, R. L. Gentry and others of the University of California at Santa Cruz (c.f. Peterson and Gentry, 1967). Later in the 1960s, B. J. Le Boeuf took up his northern elephant seal studies on the Island. Thomas Poulter also developed an SRI facility in an area called Coyote Hills outside of Fremont, CA where orphaned and captive pinnipeds were maintained for research. Several scientists worked at this facility during the 1960s. Ronald Schusterman and Roger Gentry were among these. With these contributors and many of us who came from near and far, Poulter’s annual meeting was an informative event that many considered a precursor to the Society for Marine Mammalogy conferences.

Figure 6. A memorable meeting on physiology and bioenergetics in 1992 was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and organized by Terrie Williams and Dan Costa. From left to right: Fish, Worthy, Williams, Davis, Ridgway, Ponganis, Gentry, Oliver, Taylor, Pabst, Friedl, Heath, Kooyman, Costa. Most of these “fools” have been stellar contributors to various aspects of marine mammal research.”

BIOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF RIVER DOLPHINS

In 1986, I attended a conference on the biology and conservation of the river dolphins. (For a picture of some members of the conference on the Yangtze, see Ridgway, 2008). Specialists on each of the river dolphin species attended (William Perrin, Robert Brownell, Zhou Kaiya, and Liu Jiankang, 1989). We made suggestions about the potential for propagation of river dolphins, especially the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer, Yangtze River dolphin). We got to observe Qi Qi ("chee chee"), who was brought to the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology in 1980 after being injured by rolling hooks used by fishermen in the river. Qi Qi survived in the care of Chinese scientists until July 2002 when he died at an estimated age of 25. Much of what is known about the species was learned from Qi Qi. A large ox bow of the river some 20 km in length was set aside as a baiji sanctuary. We made suggestions about the capture, handling, veterinary care, husbandry, housing, nutrition, and social considerations for propagating these highly endangered dolphins (Ridgway et al., 1989). This was the only paper that I coauthored with Ken Norris. Attempts to find a female to breed with Qi Qi were not successful. Alas, pollution, damming of the river, heavy river traffic and fisheries bycatch took their toll on the species. By 2007, the baiji was apparently extinct before controlled propagation measures could be instituted in the ox bow. As impractical as it may seem now, if blood elements, and tissue of Qi Qi had been saved frozen, future DNA technology possibly could be applied for resurrection of the species (c.f. Pask et al., 2008)

THE MARINE MAMMAL PROTECTION ACT AND THE COMMISSION

In the 1970s, I was privileged to serve on Scientific Advisory Committee to the Marine Mammal Commission and to chair that committee for one year. During that time, I had many beneficial interactions, not only with the commissioners and scientific committee members, but also with Executive Director John Twiss and Council Robert Eisenbud in particular. I have recently reviewed some of the key influences of the Committee and Commission on my work and on my field. (Ridgway, 2008).

SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FROM MY CAREER

Figure 7. Point Mugu Lagoon where our ocean training began. Arrow indicates Bioscience Facility with concrete dolphin and sea lion tanks. L= Point Mugu Lagoon proper. PO= Pacific Ocean.

Figure 8. Dolphin helper Tuffy with diver at SEALAB habitat at 63 m depth, September, 1965 of Scripps Pier, La Jolla, California.

Figure 9. Diagram of how dolphin Tuffy would dive on command to a test switch located at up to 300 m depth. After pressing the switch, the dolphin would exhale his breath into a water-filled funnel before surfacing to collect a fish reward.

Figure 10. Schematic of procedure from the study of Ridgway and Howard (1979). A. Dolphin dives to 100 m to press a test switch that has been lowered to depth. The process is repeated 23 to 25 times in 1 h. After the last dive, the animal slides onto a beaching pad (BP) on the boat at the surface. B. A probe is inserted into the dorsal epaxial muscle and connected to the mass spectrograph (MS) to measure nitrogen. On single deep dives, the alveolar collapse demonstrated in the Ridgway et al. (1969) study appeared to be sufficient explanation of why dolphins have no problem with nitrogen bubbles or bends since air exchange was prevented by alveolar collapse below a certain depth. However, published observations showed that feeding dolphins might dive in bouts returning frequently to depth with very short surface intervals (Evans, 1971).