Wind to Whales - Food for baleen whales in Monterey Bay - June 2006 meeting of ACS Monterey Bay

ACS Monterey Bay Program for June 2006

Wind to Whales: the cycle of productivity leading to food abundance for baleen whales in Monterey Bay

Krill illustration by
Richard Ellis. (See below.)

Thursday, June 29, 2006
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Dr. Baldo Marinovic, University of California at Santa Cruz

Our speaker is part of a group studying the prey cycle and resulting abundance of baleen whales in the Monterey Bay. This food source, which is wind driven, is highly variable from year to year. Hence the varied numbers of baleen whales at any one time.

Dr. Marinovic's specialty is the krill part of the equation, although his talk will cover the complete system.

Please join us for an interesting and entertaining evening.

Related web page:

Santa Cruz Sentinel article about unusual conditions in 2005 (with quotes from Dr. Marinovic)

The illustration is of Euphausia superba, the krill of the Antarctica, many times magnified, by Richard Ellis, Book of Whales, Knopf, 1980, p. 54. Ellis has this to say about Euphausia pacifica, one of our local species of krill, which has a similar appearance: one pound of Euphausia pacifica supplies about 400 calories.... Each individual of Euphausia pacifica weighs only one-tenth of a gram, so it takes about 40 million of these krill to sustain one blue whale for one day.

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