Kris Rossing, a reader, is a Senior Aquarium Biologist at the Vancouver Aquarium, undoubtedly the best such facility (for both display and research) in Canada. Kris spends his time tending and studying endangered frogs (see a story here), and, when he heard I was coming to Vancouver, he kindly invited me to a behind-the-scenes look at the Aquarium, saying he’d try to wangle a Beluga Whale Encounter and a Sea Lion Encounter. How could I refuse?

Yesterday I made the hour-long trek from Richmond (site of the conference and hotel) to the Aquarium in Stanley Park, met Kris, saw the frogs and other stuff, and had my Marine Mammal Encounters. I’ll post about the latter today, and show more photos of frogs, snakes, and other sea creatures in the next day or so.

After a look at some rare and endangered frogs, Kris took me to the beluga whale tank and handed me over to one of the trainers/keepers, who made me don a waterproof vest-cum-life-jacket, and we entered the tank. After a call and a quick slap on the water with the keeper’s hand, and the young female whale came over.  These whales are highly trained to respond to voice commands, hand commands, and whistles, which is useful for both petting them and doing a veterinary examination. Here I got to pet one; their skin feels taut and rubbery, like an inner tube. (All photos are by Kris).

Belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) are Arctic in distribution, are the only white whale, and the only species in the genus. They lack dorsal fins but have a bit of a hump on the back that is said to help it remain stable under the ice. here is their range in blue.

I got to feed it many fish and small octopuses. They don’t chew the small ones (herrings and the like) but swallow them whole.You simply drop the fish into the whale’s gaping maw:

Below is what you see when you feed a beluga. Unlike nearly all mammals, the teeth aren’t much differentiated—as you see below, they’re simple pegs.

I can’t remember how many fish each of these whales eats per day (there are 5-6 feedings each day), but the Aquarium goes through so much fish for its marine mammals that they have their own boat to fish for herring.

Here we’re feeling the head dome, or “melon” which the whale uses to echolocate. Sounds are emitted through the dome (which can change shape easily, as we saw), and are picked up through the lower jaw.

Here’s a diagram of the auditory system of the whale and an explanation from Wikipedia:

Like most toothed whales it has a compartment found at the centre of the forehead that contains an organ used for echolocation called a melon, which contains fatty tissue. The shape of the beluga’s head is unlike that of any other cetacean, as the melon is extremely bulbous, lobed, and visible as a large frontal prominence. Another distinctive characteristic it possesses is the melon is malleable; its shape is changed during the emission of sounds. The beluga is able to change the shape of its head by blowing air around its sinuses to focus the emitted sounds. This organ contains fatty acids, mainly isovaleric acid (60.1%) and long-chain branched acids (16.9%), a very different composition from its body fat, and which could play a role in its echolocation system.

The beluga has a very specialized sense of hearing and its auditory cortex is highly developed. It can hear sounds within the range of 1.2 kHz to 120 kHz, with the greatest sensitivity between 10 and 75 kHz,where the average hearing range for humans is 0.02 to 20 kHz.The majority of sounds are most probably received by the lower jaw and transmitted towards themiddle ear. In the toothed whales, the lower jawbone is broad with a cavity at its base, which projects towards the place where it joins the cranium. A fatty deposit inside this small cavity connects to the middle ear. Toothed whales also possess a small external auditory hole a few centimetres behind their eyes; each hole communicates with an external auditory conduit and aneardrum. It is not known if these organs are functional or simply vestigial.

Here’s a shot I took of the ear, which is certainly vestigial, although, as noted above, it may be slightly functional. It’s the very small indentation behind the eye (if you see the eye as the center of a clock, you’ll see the tiny opening, surrounded by a slight prominence, at lower left at about 8 o’clock).

I asked the trainer if the whale would recognize hand commands if I made them. The experiment worked:

I also had a “squirting experience”: they offered me a choice of getting pretty wet (whale spits water on you) or fully drenched (whale soaks you with a well-aimed slap of the tail). I chose the Moderate Drench, and I have a movie of it that I’ll post soon. The whales can also make about ten really cool sounds through their blowholes, and they can make a given sound on a given command (there’s also a “make a random sound” hand command, and a “make another random sound different from the previous one” command.) I filmed that and have audio.

Then it was time for the Sea Lion Encounter with Steller sea lions and fur seals (Fur seals are really sea lions, as they have external ears with flaps. Genuine seals don’t have external ears, but earholes.) The “pinnipeds” are an unranked clade that includes three families: the Odobenidae (walruses, only one living species), Otariidae, or sea lions, which include fur seals (15 species in all), and the Phocidae, or true seals (17 species).

The first pinniped I encountered was a female Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus). They are highly trained in three ways: for examination (e.g., presenting bellies, teeth, tongue, flippers for vet inspection), for research (to enter chambers that measure their metabolism, carbon dioxide emission, etc.), and for play (standing on their front flippers, playing dead, etc.). Here’s a smallish female. I got to feed her many fish but in this photo she’s vocalizing (loudly!):

The range of the animal. Decline in numbers has been alarming lately, and they’re listed as either threatened or endangered depending on the population. This is likely due to reduction in their fish stocks, which could be caused by human depredation, climate change, or both:

But my favorite pinniped was the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus; I met another female), a gorgeous, small creature with luxuriant fur and huge, liquid black eyes.

Here I am feeling her fur. It’s so thick that the undercoat doesn’t even get wet. They lie down for stroking on command. Only the sea otter is said to have more luxurious and thicker fur, but killing any of these animals to make coats should be a hanging offense!

Feeding the lady seal with herring. (The shaved patch on her back reflects experiments with Velcro-attached tags that were glued to the fur to see what kind of tags would work but not impede movement. The tags were removed and the fur will grow back when she molts soon.)

The range of the northern fur seal (dark blue dots are breeding colonies). The species was severely reduced by hunting (clubbing them to death!), but trade in these was severely restricted in 1911, representing the first international treaty trying to conserve any species. There is still a bit of hunting in northern Canada and Russia.

This was a wonderful moment. The keeper/trainer told me to sit very still, not touch the seal, and she would tell it to kiss me! Sure enough, she issued a hand-and-voice command, and the seal came up to me and nuzzled my face with hers— and I felt its whiskers! Being kissed by a fur seal has got to be one of the highlights of my life as a biologist:

Many, many thanks to Kris, to the trainers and keepers who took time out of their day to educate me and let me feed and play with the animals, and the other gracious people I met at the Vancouver Aquarium.  I’ll have more pictures and movies to show soon, but if you’re in Stanley Park, Vancouver, you might drop by.

The Aquarium is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city, and the part that regular visitors see is very well set up. I was highly impressed by the bond between keepers and animals, and their concern for their charges. 7 days a week, each animal gets fed and played with (or trained) 5 or 6 times a day. And the veterinary facilities are superb. I do have compunctions about keeping animals like belugas in small tanks, but I have to say that some of my opposition was tempered when I saw how much these people love their animals and how well they treat them. I noted, for instance, that every pinniped’s weight is checked constantly and is known to the keepers to the nearest kg. At any rate, let’s not debate that issue in the comments below.