{"id":140,"date":"2012-04-12T02:55:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T02:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/?p=140"},"modified":"2012-04-13T08:18:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T08:18:23","slug":"day-9-jour-9-09-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/2012\/04\/12\/day-9-jour-9-09-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 10 (Jour 10) 09 April Ua Huka"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have only two short days in Ua Huka, an island with around 3,000 horses (and a human population of only 582), so we were hoping to make the most of it. We were not disappointed. We first encountered a small group of spinner dolphins close to shore on the southern side of the island. We observed animals in this group were very stocky, with much larger post anal keels than other spinner dolphins we have encountered in French Polynesia. The males looked like \u201cspinners on steroids\u201d (a quote from Michael). Our second group of spinner dolphins (a much larger group, around 80-100 individuals) also showed these characteristics in the males, but there were smaller animals in the group as well, including juveniles and calves. We collected biopsies and photo IDs of this group despite the poor ocean conditions. Our third encounter was with a large group of melon-headed whales. We were able to collect several biopsies and photo IDs from this group. We counted the group size to be slightly less than 300 individuals. After this encounter we continued our circumnavigation around the island, stopping on the west side (the Lee side) to do offshore transects.\u00a0 Once again our offshore transects yielded no additional encounters, which begs the very important question\u2026Where are the rough-toothed dolphins?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Malheureusement, nous n\u2019avons que deux petits jours de mer \u00e0 passer sur l\u2019\u00eele de Ua Huka. Une \u00eele bien connue pour ses colonies de sternes, kaveka, mais aussi pour ses chevaux (environ 3000 pour seulement 582 \u00e2mes). Nous esp\u00e9rions bien pouvoir tirer le meilleur de notre court s\u00e9jour et nous n\u2019avons pas \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9\u00e7us par notre premi\u00e8re sortie. Nous avons d\u2019abord trouv\u00e9 un petit groupe de dauphins \u00e0 long bec sur la c\u00f4te Sud de l\u2019\u00eele. Les individus de ce groupe nous sont apparus particuli\u00e8rement robustes en comparaison des dauphins de cette esp\u00e8ce que nous avons l\u2019habitude de voir (sous esp\u00e8ce <\/em>Stenella longirostris longirostris), notamment ceux de Hiva Oa vu il y a quelques jours. Les m\u00e2les adultes avaient \u00e9galement une bosse ventrale pro\u00e9minente, ce qui est inhabituel chez cette sous esp\u00e8ce. Pour l\u2019instant nous n\u2019expliquons pas ces diff\u00e9rences mais nous ne manquerons pas de creuser la question. Le second groupe rencontr\u00e9 fut \u00e9galement un groupe de dauphins \u00e0 long bec (80-100 dauphins), avec encore des individus robustes mais aussi des individus de morphologie plus classique, incluant notamment des juv\u00e9niles et des petits. Nous avons collect\u00e9 quelques biopsies et pris des photos de ce groupe malgr\u00e9 une mer difficile. La troisi\u00e8me rencontre de notre journ\u00e9e fut avec un grand groupe de p\u00e9ponoc\u00e9phales (presque 300), situ\u00e9 sur la c\u00f4te Est de l\u2019\u00eele et donc expos\u00e9 au vent dominant. Encore une fois, des biopsies et des photos ont \u00e9t\u00e9 obtenues. Apr\u00e8s cette rencontre, nous avons continu\u00e9 notre tour de l\u2019\u00eele et fait quelques transects au large de la c\u00f4te Ouest, sous le vent et donc plus calme. Mais une fois encore, nous n\u2019avons pas pu trouver d\u2019esp\u00e8ces p\u00e9lagiques, et notamment de dauphins \u00e0 bec \u00e9troit, l\u2019esp\u00e8ce que Renee \u00e9tudie pour son doctorat. \"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have only two short days in Ua Huka, an island with around 3,000 horses (and a human population of only 582), so we were hoping to make the most of it. We were not disappointed. We first encountered a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/marquesas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}