Many whales have patterns of black and white pigmentation
and scars on the underside of their tails that are unique to each
whale, just as fingerprints are to humans. Researchers document
the marks on the right and left lobes of the tail, or flukes, and rate
the percentage of dark vs. light skin pigmentation from 100 percent
white to 100 percent black.
Why do scientists need this data?
For scientific purposes, each whale that is sighted in any ocean, is assigned a catalog number. The unique scarring and
shading patterns also provide the inspiration for common names of whales.
Scientists can further use this way of tracking whales to learn more about their livelihoods as they do everyday.
What was the most difficult part of our lab?
Our class did a lab that helped us learn to identify whales by their flukes. In this lab, each team of two partners was given 4 photographs of whale flukes and they were required to match the corresponding whale to its corresponding fluke. The hardest part for me was not the matching it was more of the pressure we received as we first started. The booklet we were given to match the whales was enormous. It has about 15 pages each page included 15 whale flukes. It was very overwhelming at first but never the less, we were able to get the task done quickly and correctly.
How could we change this lab to make it better?
I think we should've been given more difficult pictures of whale flukes to match. Many photos had whale flukes that were clearly easy to identify. I felt like it wasn't a big enough challenge for me. Perhaps if we would've recieved more than 10 photos to match, it would've been a better learning experience. One that is both challenging and educational but fun at the same time
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