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Whales' tale: discovery by a fluke

Michelle Riggen-Ransom ( Bio / Posts ) | Friday, October 22, 2010 UTC

Gale McCullough

Gale McCullough is a former nursery school teacher who has suddenly found herself in the middle of a most improbable scientific break-through. A Maine resident with a long-time passion for whales, McCullough was looking at photos on Flickr one day and happened to do a search for humpback whale flukes.

In addition to all of these lovely photos, McCullough’s keen eyes spotted something else: the familiar fluke markings of whale that she recognized from another photo. The surprise? The photos were taken three years and 6,000 miles apart. She confirmed the match through Maine marine mammal laboratory Allied Whale’s database. For her discovery, she quickly earned the new moniker of “citizen scientist”.

What’s exciting about this discovery is what it tells us about humpback whales: they travel enormous distances in their lifetimes. Until fairly recently, what we knew of whales was what we could gather from whales in distress: we only saw them being hunted, when they were sick or beached. But then extraordinary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau did something characteristically extraordinary: he brought cameras underwater. We were able to see whales in their own environment — as graceful, intelligent creatures with complex life cycles and patterns that we are only beginning to understand.

Thanks to McCullough, a little bit more of the whales’ mystery has been revealed. “We have to rearrange the way we feel about the ocean,” says Mccullouch, “knowing what we know about whales.”