Page 29 - Sjæklen2003

Summary
On June 26th 2003, in The Sound just off Espergærde, an
evening bather »sensed« something large in the water, which
»definitely was not a porpoise«. This is how the »Fin
Whale Saga of 2003« started, which gave media journalists
a welcome opportunity to pad out the Silly Season with a
curious holiday-time stories.
A few days after the fin whale was sighted off the coast
of Copenhagen, it left The Sound and swam up, over and to
the west to Jutland’s east coast. Here, it toured up and down
in close vicinity of the coast, seemingly trying to stay as far
west as possible. Its northernmost turnaround point for the
in total, seven trips back and forth, was Kalø Vig (Cove),
just north of Aarhus, which the whale/whales visited four
times; its southernmost destination was Kieler Förde and
the waters off Heiligenhafen in the Fehmern Belt. During
these trips, all the fjords were visited except Haderslev
Fjord and the Schlei - two very narrow inlets only a har-
bour’s entrance wide. On August 8th and thereafter, the pre-
sence of two fin whales was established. The whales swam
together for a while but appeared to have split up in Aaben-
raa Fjord around September 11th 2003.
During the presence of the fin whales approx. 225 calls
about sightings were received, and an equal number of
questions of which, only a few could be answered. The spe-
cies was quickly determined as fin whale, but the chief
question of why the whale or whales had entered Inner
Danish waters remained to be answered
There is a positive scenario for presence of the whales:
they voluntarily seek out particular parts of the Inner Da-
nish waters in order to feed on large concentrations of shoa-
ling fish being present there. The whales have often been
sighted in narrow stretches of water as well as close to the
cooling water outlets from power plants where both for-
aging opportunities and the quantity of fish are believed to
be optimal. An unambiguous sighting of a foraging whale,
though, has not been made.
In contrast to this there is the negative scenario: the whales
being on an odyssey and having erroneously strayed into
the Inner Danish waters. The whales always were seeking
»westward«, visiting the western most fjords, and maybe an
inborn westerly bearing lets them search for a way out to
the Atlantic Ocean and prevents them from going further
north around and away from the Djursland Peninsular.
Likewise, the whales’ preference for the slightly warmer
cooling water from the power plants may indicate a search
for warmer oceanic waters. One of the fin whales aborted du-
ring its stay in the western Baltic and therefore may indica-
te that these waters are a less suitable habitat for the spicies.
The whales - or just the one whale were last seen on Oc-
tober 17 th just off the Kieler Förde. Whether the whales left
Danish waters soon after that or whether they stayed on lon-
ger well into the winter is not known. Because of decrea-
sing daylight hours, bad weather conditions and an almost
absence of pleasure boats, sighting opportunities during this
season are rated very low.
Fin whales have previously been sighted in Inner Danish
waters - most recently in 1997 - but there have also been se-
veral earlier observations. In the church of St Nicolai in Mid-
delfart are kept the jawbones of a fin whale, which beached
at the Hindsgavl Manor Estate on April 30th 1603.
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»Fokus på Hvaler«
»Fokus på Hvaler i Danmark« var et samarbejde mellem
Zoologisk Museum i København og Fiskeri- og Sø-
fartsmuseet i Esbjerg. Projektet gik i gang den 1. februar
2000, og i den følgende treårs periode indsamledes oplys-
ninger om observationer af marsvin, delfiner og hvaler i
danske farvande. Denne indsamlingsperiode blev afslut-
tet med en rapport pr. 1. februar 2003, men siden da er
projektet videreført på lavt blus, hvor der i samarbejde
med firmaet CCKonsult stadig indsamles oplysninger om
mere usædvanlige observationer af havpattedyr i vore far-
vande. Oplysningerne lægges ud på projektets hjemmeside
www.hvaler.dk.