Little is known about the dwarf minke whale, a subspecies of the northern hemisphere minke, which is yet to be given a formal taxonomic description. A team of researchers from the Minke Whale Project is harnessing citizen science in a bid to better understand the mysterious cetaceans. In Issue 09 of Oceanographic, underwater photographer Craig Parry heads out to the Ribbon Reefs to discover more.

A section of the Great Barrier Reef known as Ribbon Reef 10 is one of the most northerly migration destinations of dwarf minke whales, a subspecies of the northern minke whale, which typically visit on their seasonal journeys north from the Southern Ocean. It is presumed the whales complete this migration to warmer waters to breed, just as other whales do. Unlike other baleen whales, however, nobody has encountered dwarf minkes mating in the area, so the motivation for migration currently remains a theory. It is one of many mysteries regarding these little-understood cetaceans.

Earlier this year I joined an expedition to Ribbon Reef 10 in search of dwarf minkes, joining researchers from the Minke Whale Project (MWP), an organisation based out of North Queensland’s James Cook University in Australia. The MWP is working to better understand the biology and behaviour of a whale group only recognised as a subspecies as recently as the 1980s. While occurring throughout the southern hemisphere, the northern Great Barrier Reef aggregation area is the endpoint of the subspecies’ recently discovered north-south migration route to and from the Southern Ocean. Relatively new to marine science means one thing: lots of questions.