Dave Riggs fitting an underwater camera to a device known as a Slocum glider for marine life research. Photo: Riggs Australia.
Anyone out on a boat who spots a killer whale is urged to become a citizen scientist and take a snap of it, film maker and naturalist Dave Riggs said.
He said more data was needed to better understand their range and migration habits.
Mr Riggs spoke after publication of an Australia-wide mapping study of orcas, with conservation recommendations for the ocean predators by Flinders University marine scientists.
However Mr Riggs cautioned against rushing to apply the existing findings to any extension of the existing Commonwealth Marine Park, which did not cover all of Bremer Canyon.
“I don’t think there has been much progress on developing a new set of coordinates for an extended marine park,” he said.
“This paper suggests there needs to be more citizen science observation.”
Mr Riggs has himself spent years photographing orcas at Bremer Canyon, after first identifying the location as a likely place to find them.
“We know the killer whales we encounter off Bremer have been located in the offshore canyons off Augusta and we know that through photographic identification taken by citizen scientists several years ago,” he said.
“The fact that we’ve managed to build a database of individuals based on their unique eye patches and other identifiable features from Bremer means we can cross reference other sightings in other regions.”
Mr Riggs said it was important to continue research that was “non-invasive”.
“This is a relatively-recently discovered aggregation point of killer whales so I don’t think there’s any huge rush to get the information instantly,” he said.
“But people who are venturing out into the ocean on recreational and commercial vessels, if they have the opportunity to take photographs of individual killer whales that they sight please send them through.”
Contact for Mr Riggs can be found on the website riggsaustralia.com .
