Name Game In a lively annual ritual, researchers spend a day studying whales' tails to name the giant creatures. The Boston Globe, 13 May 1998 By Matt Villano Globe Correspondent ESSEX - Like participants in a mass Rorschach test, they sat in rows five deep, staring at images of whale tails flashed on a screen in front of them. Marine biologists, oceanographers, and whale researchers, they had come from all over New England for this ritual, the 21st annual Humpback Whale Naming Party. The descriptive names they chose would stay with these animals forever. In an animated stream of consciousness, the researchers looked carefully at the black and white pigmentation patterns on the underside of a tail, shouting out any shapes or objects that occurred to them. The patterns, displayed when humpbacks raise their tails to dive, are among the best ways to identify the whales in the wild. Like human fingerprints, the tail markings develop before the whales are born and remain unchanged throughout the animals' lives. Since the late 1970s, scientists have been photographing members of the Gulf of Maine humpback population and then meeting to scan the tail photos for name-worthy identifying characteristics. On this Saturday afternoon in April, they were intently studying a hairbrush-shaped black splotch in a white area on the left side of one individual's tail. "Ladle!" a researcher shouted. The crowd groaned. The mark was too square to be a ladle. "Toothbrush!" yelled another. Nods and smiles all around. They liked that one. By a show of hands, they unanimously agreed - the whale whose tail appeared before them would, from this point on, be known to researchers from Provincetown to the Bahamas as "Toothbrush." In all, researchers named 97 new humpback whales this year, the most since humpback research began here in 1976 - and a welcome rise in the census after several years of decline. Thirty-seven of the new whales were calves, the most ever. The other 60 were juveniles, a number also unmatched this decade. While some researchers cheer the data as evidence that this once-endangered population is bouncing back, others caution that the record year suggests only that whales came close to shore because there was an abundance of fish. In years when there were fewer fish to feed on, earlier in this decade, for example, there were fewer whales, they say. But no matter how you interpret the data, researchers say, get the binoculars ready; New England whale watchers are in for another record year. The Gulf of Maine humpback population returns to the nutrient-rich waters off New England each spring. They feed here from April to October, then head south for the winter, to mate and birth their young in the Carribean. Researcher use photographs to monitor which whales show up where, and when. Pictures of all whales that have been sighted in the gulf previously are on file at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, so when scientists what they think is a new whale, they check the catalog to make sure they haven't recorded it before. The catalog now contains almost 1,300 identification photos. This year's census total reversed a downward trend that began early in this decade. After 90 new humpbacks were identified in 1990, the annual count averaged around 45; in 1996, there were fewer than 30 newcomers. Some researchers were becoming concerned about the health of the population as a whole. Until last season. "If you consider that the whales we spotted last season made up nearly 10 percent of the whales we already had on file, I'd say that's pretty staggering," says Dave Matilla, associate director of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, New England's oldest whale research organization. "Is the population coming back? One would certainly have to think so." Matilla cites a recent study by fellow researcher Philip Clahpam, a biologist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, to support the assertion that the population, is on the rebound. Clapham's study, published last year, charted the reproduction and pregnancy rates of Gulf of Maine humpbacks and concluded that the animals were reproducing at their theoretical maximum of 6 percent. "Sometimes the facts don't tell the whole story," Clapham says. "Maybe in those years where we didn't see that many whales, we just weren't looking hard enough." Most researchers agree that where's food, there'll be humpbacks. Humpback whales eat small schooling fish, particularly tiny eel-like fish called sand lance. These fish frequent the sandy-bottomed Stellwagen Bank, and underwater plateau in the middle of Massachusetts Bay, between Cape Ann and Cape Cod. When sand lance abound, so do humpbacks. But when the fish population dwindles, humpbacks must search elsewhere for food. That was the case in the mid-90s. Sand lance numbers dropped, and humpbacks went north, hunting the herring and mackerel that frequent Jeffrey's Ledge, a rocky-bottomed area off the coast of northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. The whales sometimes ventured 20 or 30 miles offshore, making it difficult for researchers aboard commercial whale watch boats to spot them during four-hour trips. That changed last year, when the sand lance population boomed, and humpbacks returned to Stellwagen Bank in record numbers. More than 300 individuals were sighted - 97 for the first time, the rest old friends. Among the new ones, scientists say, were juveniles - animals that had been missed as calves in 1993 and 1994, bolstering Clapham's claim that in the past, researchers just weren't looking in the right places. So many whales, so little time. Lisa Foerster, director of the Gloucester-based Center for Oceanic Research and Education, says this coverage problem is one researchers must deal with every year. "What we gain by conducting research aboard commercial whale watch vessels is free access, a cost-effective platform," she says. "What we sacrifice is the ability to visit all of the prime feeding areas." Foerster chats during a break at the naming party. The researchers have just named the calves, and are primed to name the rest before dinner. Foerster, Mattila, and Mason Weinrich, director of the Cetacean Research Unit in Gloucester, are the veterans this year, one or another of them has been at every naming party since 1979. Back then, the party was held in Provincetown, and sponsored by Matilla's group, the Center for Coastal Studies. In 1990, the event moved to the Essex Conference Center, and Weinrich's organization took over the sponsorship. Whale naming started in 1976, when the captain and crew of New England's first commercial whale watch boat kept spotting the same humpback throughout the summer. Her tail was black in the center, with white speckles that looked like powder. The boat's captain, Aaron Avellar, named the whale "Salt," and the name stuck. The following year, when the Center for Coastal Studies began surveying the Gulf of Maine population, researchers adopted Avellar's method of naming whales by identifying tail markings that were easy to spot in the water. Naming parties began officially in 1978. Researchers old enough to remember the parties of yesteryear recall spirited events during which they toasted every name with a glass of champagne. Over time, the naming process has matured. Now, Weinrich says, there are three major rules: No proper names, no gender-specific names, and all must relate to a marking on the animal's tail. "They're really just mnemonic devices," says Jooke Robbins, a research assistant at the Center for Coastal Studies. Robbins joined the center three years ago after studying killer whale populations in the Pacific Northwest. Out there, she says, researchers identify whales with letters and numbers. "Working with animals that have names based on marks you see all the time enables you to identify these whales in the field much faster." Weinrich adds that names help humanize the animals, facilitating memorable experiences for whale watchers of every age. "It means something to people to see a whale they might have seen in the past, or to see a whale that we know was the 1992 calf of a whale they've seen before," he says. "Those personal connections not only help people understand why researching those animals is important, but they also drive the entire industry of whale watching. The experience can change people forever."