Sperm Whales - Titans of the Deep | Free Documentary Nature

[Music] around 60 million years ago a group of mammals left the dry mainland forever our knowledge about these deepest diving mammals is still restricted to the short time they spend close to the surface why do sperm whales have the largest brain of all living organisms in the history of evolution [Music] what do sperm whales experience when they spend two-thirds of their life in the deep ocean with modern computer technologies attempts are being made to unveil the secrets of their life here the water is normally pitch black and close to freezing the water pressure is strong enough to crush a diver do they hunt alone or in groups how do they react to environmental changes all of these questions are only now being investigated they communicate with each other through clicking sounds since sound is conducted extremely well in water the animals can stay in touch at distances of more than 10 kilometers is this a language scientists are still trying to decode it the azores islands in the middle of the atlantic the nutrient-rich deep sea mixes with the warm gulf stream creating an ideal nursery for raising offspring for generations the azores were a center for whaling the former whalers are now working with biologists using underwater microphones the researchers locate the whales had whalers been aware of this technique 40 years earlier who knows whether any sperm whales would still be around today how many sperm whales still exist whether 2 million or just 200 000 there are no reliable numbers as some nations propose to take up whaling again it is all the more important to try and carry out a census using video glasses and an underwater camera it's possible to monitor them without interfering too much they're two whales they're two of them all right i think it's a cap wow it's really young a rare moment females only raise one calf every three to five years at birth a whale calf already weighs five tons and gains about a hundred kilos a day from its mother's milk alone no other mother in the animal kingdom expends so much effort on child care it will take another five years until the calf is able to hunt on its own [Music] whaling was banned three decades ago in the azores there are still a few industry ruins to indicate the size of this operation thousands and thousands of whales were cooked into oil in this plant in these boilers alone 700 whales were cut up and melted each season squeezing out 10 000 liters of oil per whale which was sold to england and germany greasing the wheels of their industrial revolution for the poor resorians whaling was the only means to earn extra money the whales offered little resistance even with bare hands it was an unequal [Music] fight what was the animal thinking these images document some of the last hunting expeditions in the azores how many barrels of whale oil were shipped to europe has never been calculated but the trade books reveal an interesting detail the yield per whale had decreased since the 1930s no full-grown whales were left and juveniles were hunted to fill the quota up to the 18th century the harvest for sperm whales was limited to the atlantic when it became harder to find animals whalers moved towards the pacific until the 1950s when all known sperm whale stocks were depleted as a last resort they extended the hunt to the arctic using ever more sophisticated harpoon technologies they could maintain their quota of 30 000 per season on factory ships their blubber was cleansed and melted into oil and the greasy meat was sold as pet food when western nations finally regulated whaling russian fleets continued on their own terms it is spring in the azores it's time for this bull to make his way to the summer hunting grounds off norway it's unknown to this day where and how they navigate through the vast oceans during their migration the males travel five thousand kilometers in just three months it's one of the greatest navigation skills of the animal kingdom in recent years however sperm whale bulls seem to have been leaving their traditional migratory routes more and more marine biologists are puzzled as floyd grana explains coincidentally seismic surveys for oil and gas took place at the same time in this case it appears to be a direct reaction to the seismic explosions it seems to be an extreme a crass reaction to the loud sound waves his observations have been on his mind since then because at the same time whale strandings were increasing in the north sea what drove these normally deep diving whales into the shallow north sea at a depth of only 200 meters during the late 1980s and 90s marine scientists in europe noticed a sharp increase in strandings they observed that the strandings always occurred during the winter months which is migration time when the bulls returned to their clan in the azores why did they abandon their traditional route veterinarians try to find the answer laboratory analyses produce no results the whales appeared to be healthy and in good condition so what is it that lead these experienced wayfarers to enter the shallow north sea waters the whales normally travel beyond the continental shelf but here they're changing their course toward the shallow north sea since 1988 more whales are being found on europe's coastlines there is no common european database to date the statistics are collected by independent biologists what made these nomads leave their safe deep sea route the earth's magnetic field did not change nor were any special lunar or solar phases recorded at the end of the 80s the search for oil was intensified around the british isles and the north sea [Music] to find oil ships drag special measuring equipment through the water it looks harmless at first glance huge pressure cannon produce air bubbles within milliseconds when they collapse again they send out huge pressure waves like the punch of a giant they shake the ocean floor down to a depth of thousands of meters the echoes reveal the possible location of oil and gas fields these sound waves also radiate sideways and travel for thousands of kilometers through sound channels that form between water layers of the same temperature the sperm whales have to travel through them during their migration while extremely loud underwater the sound is almost inaudible above the surface florian ghana has a suspicion the number of strandings increased in the late 1980s parallel to the search for oil which was intensified in northern europe at the same time the demand is increasing to learn more about these deepest diving whales in underneath norway's northernmost port an international research expedition is about to begin a newly developed recording method they want to follow the whales during their hunt in the high arctic if their endeavor succeeds it will be a revolution in sperm whale research 100 meters away a bull is surfacing now they have to stay calm a mini computer known as d-tag will be attached to the back of the whale when it surfaces for air [Music] the d-tank attached to a 15-meter pole was developed with military funds can you get rangers still mark or is it i think it's getting old attached by suction cups it won't injure the whale try to get right behind him man perfect this is exactly lined up [Music] excellent [Music] from now on every movement and sound will be recorded a second whale is surfacing the same procedure begins again again 244 what's the seconds dude 245 06. don't get any closer mads this is good [Music] never before has man been able to track a sperm whale during his hunt in the deep arctic sea the d tag will stay attached and won't release for another 24 hours it's two in the morning ten kilometers further team members have discovered a decaying sperm whale the corpse must have been lying around for weeks it's impossible to determine the cause of death at such a late stage in 2002 12 sperm whales and a fin whale were stranded at the same coast at the same time a seismic search for oil was conducted in this region even though the local newspaper wrote about it no further inquiry was undertaken instead the corpses were pulled out to sea and sunk with dynamite a second team of the andanes expedition is lowering deep sea microphones 500 meters deep to understand the effect of noise on the whales the scientists need to enter their acoustic world using triangulation the whale's positions and communication can be determined but so far no life signs [Music] he's fluking he's diving into the depths of the ocean his signals are reaching the onboard control center he's down looking for food and he's emitting those clicks sperm whales emit extremely focused sound waves [Music] when they hit objects with the density different from that of water an echo is thrown back the whales can translate these into images of their surroundings to produce these loudest sounds in nature he claps two huge muscles in his nasal region the pressure wave is reflected from his skull passes through focusing lenses made of fat before traveling through the water at 5 400 kilometers per hour to detect potential prey [Music] whale watcher boats are also active in endiness they're also listening to the clicking sounds to find out where the whales will surface they've come across the whale with the d tank by now it is early afternoon [Music] suddenly a single military aircraft appears a p3 orion specialized in anti-submarine warfare in the canyon below an anti-submarine exercise seems to be underway look at these signals you can see that they're changing very much in amplitude so all of a sudden down here you have a very loud signal by emitting extremely loud sounds the military try to spot hidden submarines the whales have suddenly disappeared we don't want to talk about that right now because we are in a very sensitive situation about this and uh we're actually trying to collaborate with the base to find the tags we don't want to go into very much of that right now one thing is clear the whales have suddenly left the area [Music] unfortunately expedition leader battle murr is unwilling to comment but it's definitely not what we came for and i'm not going to comment on on these strain sounds out there because they're really none of our business now it's even more important to recover the mini computer the scientists are scanning for radio signals to detect the d the tag is also that way yesterday weak signals are coming in from far out so what happened in the canyon why did the whales leave marine biologist patrick miller has a suspicion we heard from the whale watching guides that their behavior was a bit funny uh that day of course we had a quite loud military sonar passing by which was pinging probably what they call a 53 charlie which is incredibly loud sonar and we could hear it on our directional hydrophones this is likely to be a submarine is my guess the expedition suddenly takes on a new sense of purpose is it possible to prove how sperm whales react to noise the detection signal points to the mini computer so far it's a complete success i'm going to see what data it's got we wake it up tell it we're here it just sends all the data and the programming information goes for our infrared so it issues this little it's so so thin yeah yeah it was mainly being about 100 and that's what's really curious yeah so look at this layer here and you can see it's it is it is very unusual it's the first example we've ever seen of such shallow forages it's it's extraordinary actually because i found some kind of uh but that also shows that it's worthwhile to go to a different habitat with different animals yeah go tackle you can argue we put tax on 50 sperm offers these guys for example very very very different right it's always dangerous to think that you know everything about an animal the first analysis has been surprising but they're still lacking the details for this they're collaborating with computer specialists from berlin in the basement of the hacker lounge seabase 3d experts have developed programs that allow unusual data sets to be visualized millions of abstract positioning data now programs have to be written to turn this wealth of data into the first authentic 3d reconstruction of a sperm whale hunt first the actors are modeled then the skeleton is linked up to the positioning data the sperm whale's original movements were measured five times per second now his records are being transferred into a diving curve the whale has left the canyon towards the open ocean to understand how sperm whales use echoes for orientation his sound beam is envisioned as a light ray these clicks generate enough orientation for the whales to find their way around even in depths below 1000 meters these are the first authentic reconstructions of the supreme deep sea hunter clearly audible the military sonar roams through the canyon the 3d programming is done now it's the task of the biologists to investigate the dives scientifically scotland the marine biologist patrick miller teaches at saint andrews university his research interests include the estimation of surviving whales and their hunting behavior because sperm wells do seem to be more abundant in areas where there is productivity it makes sense to take the locations where we have survey data and then extrapolate that up to the global scale the important question right now is just how many sperm whales are actually out there especially following this long period of intense whaling activity miller was a member of the dtag expedition this is also for him the first time to enter the new diving data what will be uncovered about the unseen life of the titans of the deep so then i have an animation of this so here's the first anime tag a world premiere is taking place the first authentic visualization of a sperm whale hunt in just 90 seconds he dives to 150 meters deep on these deep dives that day well looks like it actually is doing a bit more gliding on the way down which is quite interesting it's the d tag finally uncovers how sperm whales manage to dive so deeply gliding down without much effort proves he must have a similar buoyancy to that of water reaching 200 meters he begins to scan his surroundings his orientation clicks are seen here as light rays it starts clicking clicking already searching for a prey patch and making decisions about how deep to go and what kind of food to try to capture based on how it's sensing the environment slowing down the recordings the echoes of squids and rocks differ from each other like an acoustic torchlight every click reveals new information it descends at about 2 meters per second eleven minutes later he arrives at his hunting ground at astonishing depth the whale dove all the way down to about sixteen hundred meters which is one of the deepest dives we ever recorded from a sperm well the squid still has a chance the whale has to keep adapting his course each click produces a sound pressure which feels like an actual punch and there the whale switches into a buzz thanks to his oxygen reserves the whale shows the better endurance see it turns starts moving off to select another item to move towards for the next pre-capture [Music] event the regular clicks are slower like this by putting out more clicks more quickly that way the whale gets an update of how exactly its prey item might be moving as you can imagine in that final capture phase so every little detail counts his click rate speeds up to 30 per second then silence again so the rapid updating in the in the last phase of the capture is the most important with their sensitive ears faintest echoes provide enough orientation in this otherwise pitch-black environment which is the same thing you see in bats very different animals also producing those kinds of buzzes when it goes in for the capture of a moth do the same thing across very different animals using echolocation we see these zigzagging motions which is what we usually see in the foraging phase of a dive one hunt follows the next about every minute which proves that it is not one gigantic battle with a giant squid but many small catches that he makes already seven minutes at fifteen hundred meters the d tag accurately records behavior which could never be filmed before the military sonar no obvious panic reaction is visible also the second tagged whale stays focused on his prey are all concerns exaggerated after all [Music] then something unusual happens it's coming up to breathe but it's actually clicking on the way up and in a quite close location we tagged another whale but you can see that it's doing the same thing and most sperm whales would stop clicking as soon as they start to come up and at the same time they both switch from deep diving to shallow diving the sperm whales are actually foraging here at 100 meters deep which is it's actually the shallowest that we've ever seen from any of our tag data but the whale misses and doesn't seem to care during the next four hours they sidetrack 20 kilometers no doubt they're also listening to each other and trying to pick up what they can similar shallow dives were observed by whalers as typical flight behavior but this analysis delves no further into the sonar issue are they missing a rare opportunity when the navy plane appeared before the entire expedition was at stake the whale safari also complained as they had to move out much further to catch up to the whales behaving slightly different at the surface if they take a shell of the normally because we we go too close but in this moment it takes yellow dive three four five times this is not normal unnecessary data and evidence was recorded and retrieved so why have they dedicated so little research effort on the sonar itself due to the division of the analysis work it was not patrick miller's job to lead this work task the signal to noise ratio is quite good the thing i think you have to be quite systematic about it valeria toloni was appointed to carry out the main analysis work she later claimed not to have detected a single sign of military operation within the recordings she is directly funded by the military wales simply seemed to like to hunt shallow sometimes was her conclusion thousand kilometers further the hunting ground of another sperm whale clan sadly gained fame they used to forage for months exactly where the bp oil platform blew up an estimated 780 million liters gushed out directly into their deep sea habitat two months later an area the size of portugal was covered by the toxic crude millions of liters of a highly toxic dispersant are sprayed to sink the reddish oil out of sight below the surface where it affects the entire food web forming poisonous clouds which linger down below the whales seem to have left in time but this is not the first oil industry related problem in this region which is why also here an investigation took place to detect possible impacts in the gulf of mexico we were studying the effects of seismic so that we could see in more detail how the behavior of the whale either related or didn't relate to the sounds this time the d-tag detects a behavior which was hardly understood before we can see that it's just sitting motionless bobbing in the water because if it were swimming it couldn't stay vertical like this the dtag data seemed to provide an answer for this odd behavior and let's just zoom in on that and try to see better what's going on during that particular dive for over 30 minutes there are no movements no sounds this seems to be their posture of deep relaxation after letting it record for a while we asked a seismic air gun company to come by close to the whale this is the same noisy oil exploration technology that might be connected to atypical strandings in the north sea but this time applied with care we asked them to go ahead and ramp up this is a half hour period where they gradually add one air gun than the next air gun until all of them were going so that we could see in more detail how the behavior of the whale either related or didn't relate to the sounds the whale shall get a head start but what is the chance for a slow-moving animal to escape sound travels at more than 5 000 kilometers per hour in water if we look in more detail so now the whale's been just drifting along head up what looked like completely normal resting dives even though the seismic air gun sounds coming in quite steadily whales here through special channels in their lower jaw perhaps this one has taken up a protective posture understanding that it is useless to even try to outpace these tremendous blasts he stayed for five hours in rigor we see this kind of interesting uh thing at the end that they the air gun sounds stop and just after that the whale stops resting and instead starts going on a deep dive well we we have to ask the question what might be the reason why the whale changed its behavior so close in time to the end of the air gun sound and the probability that that's just due to chance is pretty low so any loud sound that's produced by people is a concern and we should be worried about how it might affect sperm whales or any other kind of whale or other animals in the ocean even not whales but do these findings provide also clues for the increasing strandings in the north sea or do whales behave differently in different regions a whale in the gulf of mexico has heard these sounds before but to scientifically demonstrate whether or not a sound has an effect on a well is quite a difficult job maybe people are actually more concerned about what's happening on the bigger scale of the lifetime of the animals so we really need to have a new generation of people researchers who can understand complex data like this to help us to answer these questions miller's investigation into the seismic impact was unfortunately put to an end and there are still open questions concerning the military sonar one of the sea based specialists is taking another look at the dive every successful hunt is marked as a ball at a depth of 1500 meters the whale catches prey every two minutes but at 200 meters catches are incredibly rare whalers were already aware that sperm whales dived shallow when they were fleeing were these whales trying to escape it took 10 hours for this bull to calm down then it started to dive normally again [Music] [Music] but when did the unusual dive start back to the beginning [Music] the analysis reveals that right after the sonar hits the whale he starts diving away horizontally were the whales unable to bear the noise if this was the case this could explain why the whales are leaving their normal migration routes trying to avoid the loud oil searching ships whale research is largely financed by both the military and the oil industry an alliance that threatens critical research if sperm whales perceive the sound as noise it affects them as it would a human being as painful and stressful the deep sea has long stopped being a quiet place whales evolved in comparatively quiet oceans but the rapid industrialization of the oceans by humans hasn't given these highly developed animals the chance to adapt acoustically [Music] brain researcher helmut ullschleger is fascinated by the whale's extremely sensitive hearing this is the first time the brain of a sperm whale is shown to the public to the left the 10 kilogram brain of a sperm whale to the right the 1.5 kilogram brain of a human a dolphin and a river dolphin bridges of the sperm whale brain are maximally developed this is not found anywhere else it suggests high computational a whale in particular sperm whale seems to possess a high sensitivity associated with this cerebral cortex in comparison the human brain has cortex areas that are similarly organized this is the frontal brain here's the temporal and here's where it is in the whale's brain the facial nerve is also bigger which controls facial expressions this makes sense because he has to control his blow hole at the front of his nose to generate his complex sonar signals to accommodate this a bigger brain with a larger surface the acoustic nerve fibers of both whales and dolphins are ten times larger than that of humans an unwritten law of neuroscience is the larger a brain aerial the more complex information it is able to process this is the acoustic area of the dolphin's brain and since the brain of a sperm whale has a similar structure to that of the dolphins it is likely that the acoustic area would be here all mammal brains generally share the same architecture the sperm whale has the largest brain that ever evolved in the history of evolution these are extrapolations from dolphins where we have more knowledge however we still know too little about sperm whales helmut urschleger compares brain cells of a human cortex to those of a sperm whale left human right sperm whale there are some differences like in the fourth layer but in general the cortex is made up of identical cell types our cortex consists of six layers of cells which all communicate with each other but the reaction to extreme noise is governed by the emotional system knowledge about the anatomy of emotions in whales is still limited the brain in the bucket helmut urschleger is on a visit to the university hospital in gottingen is the neuroradiologist of the team employing the magnetic resonance scanner they hope to get a deeper insight into the emotional system what are these concentric circles they look like convolution artifacts there are some mistakes not easily explainable another attempt is made like blind people they create an acoustic map of their surroundings i like to compare to air traffic control radars where one can get a constant update on the changing positions so that they can get a complete picture there it is there it is finally the magnetic waves created a millimeter precise picture of the brain here you can see how incredibly wrinkled his brain is far more than a human brain the neuroscientists have waited 20 years to get such a view of a sperm whale brain even the experts are stunned by the intricacies of the brain also the acoustic representation is highly defined it extends over a large cortex area this far surpasses the proportions of the human brain sperm whales receive sound from the water through their lower jaw from there the sound spreads across the canals to the acoustic cortex but the emotional evaluation takes place elsewhere the limbic structures which are responsible for the emotions lie deeper in the brain this is now the area of the limbic cortex just like in other mammals it's part of the limbic system and it's the amygdala shown in yellow here is the brain's alarm center if noises are too loud or too irritating they trigger an alarm throughout the body then there's no going back as with human beings it triggers a cascade of stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol flood the entire whale in just seconds the body shuts down the immune system mobilizes all its reserves and the huge heart begins to beat faster the stress-triggered flight takes place this explains very well why the amygdala takes up such a large space here sperm whales are dependent on quiet ocean surroundings also for a different reason depending on the geographical conditions of the area they develop different hunting techniques back to scotland where ethnologists are exploring behavior and communication patterns in a way it's parallel to what humans do that some fishermen might specialize in fishing using nets other fishermen might specialize at fishing using pots for lobster like this one the research team at st andrews is investigating how different hunting strategies have been developed by different clans a bay close to the laboratory gives an idea why whale cultures have evolved independently of each other so if you imagine this is the caribbean sea the gulf of mexico over there and the mediterranean sea over here they would kind of be isolated by these landmasses some behaviors developing in the atlantic would have difficulties expanding into within the training because they're so isolated when people hunt they usually go for the bigger whales they might have a better knowledge of how to explore their their surroundings if you lose this knowledge the group might be losing its ability to survive how much of this whale knowledge might be lost forever after man has been harvesting the most mature and experienced whales for centuries what can we still learn from those remaining whale cultures which have managed to survive ricardo atunis and his team have looked into these cultures as an example of how sperm whales might have different virgin cultures let's say these are 2 000 meters and whales might come all the way down and four inch close to the bottom or they might forage at mid water or they might even go into a shelf and forage at 200 meters of water the whales of the azores have specialized in chasing along the nutrient-rich slopes of the mid-atlantic ridge they communicate in a rhythm of clicks which is why they are referred to as the plus-two clan in the pacific a clan has cultivated a different strategy they hunt in deep sea currents they share their necessary knowledge in a different rhythm even more astonishing is a clan living in the gulf of mexico which is where the warm gulf stream originates they've learned to hunt within gigantic upwellings where masses of food can be found each of the deep basins of the world's oceans is home to up to ten thousand sperm whales despite being of the same species they've developed different languages but to this day researchers are confused about these rhythms which at first glance looks so simple subtle rhythmic changes within the clicks might carry the secrets of the deep sea the international whaling commission banned commercial whale hunting in 1986 however the japanese government has continued to support whale hunting in the name of science minky whales and also sperm whales are on their list one justification is that whales are depleting their fish stocks however in light of the globalized fishing fleets this argument is hardly justifiable in particular because the whales are often victims of the drift nets japanese whaling has been declared as scientific research but already out at sea the whale meat is packaged and sent directly to the fish markets the meat from the remote antarctic waters is considered non-contaminated and therefore healthy the japanese public however are becoming critical according to surveys 70 of the japanese are against the continuation of whaling despite public opinion the japanese whaling lobby continually tries to although they have come close they have not yet managed to succeed we think that the japa program that the japanese have developed is a sham a fraud it's about commercial whaling in all but name and the outcome has been 7000 dead whales the purpose of our whaling programs bows down more to economical than to scientifical goals even though toshio kazuya one of the founders of the japanese scientific whaling program and other colleagues are starting to doubt its scientific value each fall the whaling fleet puts out to sea [Music] the official claim is they want to examine the whales to understand the effects of global climate change however modern methods have long been developed to monitor whale stocks without killing them biopsies taken for genetic and chemical analysis would be sufficient could this also be an act of defiance against the perceived exaggerated animal loving west back at the azores whaling was banned here a quarter of a century ago it is as if the animals can sense this they've started coming back closer to the shore this bull has completed his long journey to the arctic hunting grounds in search of new oil fields we are entering further and further into the habitat of these nomads will it ultimately be the noise of our civilization that will threaten their continued existence the more secrets these ocean giants reveal the more unique they seem perhaps scientists will even manage to decode their cliques in the future it's a language that we still have yet to understand [Music] you

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), nature documentary, Free Documentary Nature, Sperm Whale, Titans of the Deep, Whales, Whale Documentary, Ocean Life, Marine Life, Marine Life Documentary, Wildlife Documentary, Animals, cachalot, Cachalot Documentary, Wildlife Documentary 2020, Ocean, Whale Hunting, sperm whale documentary

Id: RhcFCONHZvA

Length: 52min 30sec (3150 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020