Understanding the free ranging behaviour of any animal is difficult; understanding the underwater behaviour of an animal the size of a blue whale (30 plus metres and weighing in at over 100 tonnes) makes life a little more interesting! Throw into the melting pot the fact that despite their size baleen whales are often "shy"; only come close to shore for a couple of months a year, quite often in remote locations; and even then are only available at the surface for a few seconds to breathe every 10 to 20 minutes and you'll start to get an idea of some of the difficulties that every field biologist faces. Then there is the weather!
Fortunately we have a number of different tools at our disposal, which allow us to make the most of the opportunities that we have. These include non-invasive suction cup attached data loggers which ride on the whale and allow us reconstruct it's underwater movements, scientific echo-sounders to map prey fields and hydrophones to record underwater sounds. Piecing together the data collected from these various sources gives us a brief glimpse into the whales' underwater movements and behaviour in relation to their prey.
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