Whale Conservation
Sizwe Dlamini|Published
PROFESSOR Els Vermeulen of the University of Pretoria (UP) has become the first South African appointed to a leadership position on the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) Scientific Committee.
As chief scientist and manager of UP’s Mammal Research Institute (MRI) Whale Unit, Vermeulen’s six-year appointment aims to strengthen Africa’s representation in global marine conservation.
“It’s obviously quite an honour,” she said. “I aim to increase Africa’s voice within global marine conservation.”
She hopes South Africa will serve as a springboard for the wider African region to address regional challenges, including shipping pressures and the accidental capture of dolphins in fishing gear, known as bycatch.
The appointment is grounded in decades of foundational research at the MRI Whale Unit, established by the late Professor Peter Best in 1985. Today, researchers monitor southern right and humpback whales, resident Bryde’s whales, and coastal dolphins.
Using a southern right whale database dating back to 1979, scientists identify individual animals through distinctive patterns of callosities, roughened patches of skin on their heads.
Photographs taken over successive seasons allow researchers to track reproductive histories and follow changes across generations.
Over the past 15 years, these long-term datasets have revealed significant shifts in southern right and humpback whale populations, including longer intervals between births, declining body condition, and altered migration patterns.
While these trends may reflect changes in the Antarctic ecosystem and climate change, local research also investigates pressures closer to shore, such as pollution, fishing interactions, entanglements, and shipping.
“It’s only with the help of those kinds of datasets that you can really look into long-term shifts caused by things like climate change,” Vermeulen said. “We have datasets that go back decades.”
For Vermeulen, the research extends beyond population figures to the individual lives of the animals. She described the emotional experience of matching a whale photographed in the 1980s returning to South African waters 40 years later with a healthy calf.
“When we get a match with an animal we’ve known since the 1980s, which is also when I was born, and these animals are coming to our waters 40 years later and still giving birth to a healthy baby, it is really emotional,” she said.
Through the unit’s Adopt-a-Whale initiative, the public can follow the histories of individual whales, such as Maggi, first identified in 1979 with at least 10 calves, and Granny, recorded in 1981 and believed to be over 50 years old.
“We’re not just dealing with a big group of animals,” Vermeulen said. “These are individual whales. They have their stories, characters, and intricacies, much like every human has.”
Sustaining this research relies on external funding for fieldwork, including boat surveys and aerial photography, as well as maintaining long-term datasets and training the next generation of South African marine scientists.
Vermeulen views the connection between public participation, research, and policy as a continuous cycle that directly informs national and international conservation discussions.
“Public support helps sustain research, research generates evidence, and that evidence can inform conservation decisions,” she said. “That closes the loop.”