Michael Andrew Bigg (December 22, 1939 – October 18, 1990) was an English-born
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
marine biologist who is recognized as the founder of modern research on
killer whales.
[ With his colleagues, he developed new techniques for studying killer whales and conducted the first population census of the animals. Bigg's work in ]wildlife photo-identification Photo-identification is a technique used to identify and track individuals of a wild animal study population over time. It relies on capturing photographs of distinctive characteristics such as skin or pelage patterns or scars from the animal. In ce ...
enabled the longitudinal study of individual killer whales, their travel patterns, and their social relationships in the wild, and revolutionized the study of cetaceans
Cetacea (; , ) is an infraorder of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel th ...
.
Early life
Born Michael Andrew Bigg in London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1939, his family moved to the west coast of Canada when he was eight years old. In his youth, Bigg enjoyed exploring the British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...
wilderness. According to his father, newspaper publisher Andy Bigg, Michael's early life experiences ingrained in him an immense love of nature. Bigg attended Cowichan Senior Secondary School in Duncan, British Columbia
Duncan (pop. 5,047 in 2021) is a city on southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It is the smallest city by area (2.07 square kilometres, 0.8 square miles) in Canada. It was incorporated in 1912.
Location
The city is about 45 ki ...
and then the University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thr ...
, where he studied falcon
Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.
Adult falcons ...
s, water shrews, and harbor seal
The harbor (or harbour) seal (''Phoca vitulina''), also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere. The most widely distributed species of pinniped (walruses, eared se ...
s. His PhD, awarded in 1972, was based on the reproductive ecology of harbor seals.
Killer whale research
In recent decades, the public has come to appreciate and be fascinated by killer whales. However, for at least a century before the mid-1960s, killer whales were widely feared as dangerous, savage predators, a reputation based on rumor and speculation. In the waters of the Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Thou ...
, the shooting of killer whales was accepted and even encouraged by local governments and moreover by other governments throughout the world. During the mid-1960s and early 1970s, a change in global opinion saw the development of public & scientific awareness of the species, starting with the first live-capture and display of a killer whale known as ''Moby Doll'' that had been harpooned off Saturna Island
Saturna Island is a mountainous island, about in size, in the Southern Gulf Islands chain of British Columbia, Canada. It is situated approximately midway between the Lower Mainland of B.C. and Vancouver Island, and is the most easterly of the ...
in 1964.[
]
Census
Between 1962 and 1973, at least 47 killer whales from the British Columbia and Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
coasts were captured for display in captivity, and at least 12 more whales died during capture attempts. It was assumed that the killer whale population in these waters numbered in the thousands; however, as a standard wildlife-management practice for "harvestable" animals, the Canadian government determined that a census should be done.[ In 1970, Bigg became head of marine mammal research at the Canadian ]Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO; french: Pêches et Océans Canada, MPO), is a department of the Government of Canada that is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs in support of Canada's economic, ecological and sc ...
Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo
Nanaimo ( ) is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. As of the 2021 census, it had a population of 99,863, and it is known as "The Harbour City." The city was previously known as the "Hub City," which was ...
, British Columbia and was given the task of the census.
Bigg's first technique was to send 15,000 questionnaires to boaters, lighthouse keepers, fishermen, and others who frequented the British Columbia coast, asking them to record killer whale sightings on one day.[ No other animal census of this kind had been performed anywhere in the world.] The results of the survey taken on Tuesday July 27, 1971, indicated that the number of killer whales in the British Columbia region of the area was at most 350, drastically fewer than had been assumed.[ Similar surveys in the following two years and subsequent work with photo-identification techniques (described below), substantiated the results.
In 1976, Bigg submitted his report, indicating that the rate of captures from such a small population was unsustainable and recommending restrictions on the capture of killer whales from Canadian waters. The same year, the U.S. ]National Marine Fisheries Service
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is a United States federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for the stew ...
conducted a killer whale survey in the Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
coast, which also yielded low numbers, and public opinion had begun to turn against whale capture. Since 1976, no killer whales in British Columbia or Washington waters have been taken for captivity, with the exception of Miracle, a young killer whale that had been discovered starving and with bullet wounds.[ Killer whales for aquarium display continued to be taken from ]Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
until 1989, when that country banned further captures. Since that time, killer whale populations at marine parks have been in decline with only a few small-scale captures that have occurred in Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, and Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
.
Photo-identification techniques
In the early 1970s, Bigg and his colleagues discovered that individual killer whales can be identified from a good photograph of the animal's dorsal fin
A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through c ...
and saddle patch taken when it surfaces. Variations such as nicks, scratches, and tears on the dorsal fin, and the pattern of white or grey in the saddle patch, are sufficient to distinguish killer whales from each other.
Although it had been recognized that some animals could be identified from obvious distinctive features such as scars, Bigg and his colleagues discovered that the dorsal fin and saddle patch area of ''every'' killer whale was sufficiently distinctive to allow the individual to be reliably identified at sea using photographic techniques.[ The technique enabled the local population of killer whales to be ''counted'' each year rather than ''estimated''. It also allowed ]longitudinal study
A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of ob ...
of individual whales, their travel patterns, and their social relationships
A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
in the wild, and revolutionized the study of cetaceans.[ Just a few years previously, whale research had meant studying captive or dead animals, and the study of living wild whales had been virtually nonexistent.][
For killer whales, researchers arbitrarily chose the left side of the animal as the one to be used for identification. Bigg's team of killer whale photographers and spotters quickly grew to include hundreds of volunteers from along the coast, a project that was eventually formalized in 1999 as the B.C. Cetacean Sightings Network. In 1975, researchers examining thousands of black-and-white photographs began to assemble a catalog containing a photograph of every killer whale in British Columbia's waters, a catalog that has been continually updated and used to this day.][
]
Killer whale taxonomy and social structure
In 1976, federal funding for Bigg's killer whale research ended, and he was reassigned to other projects. It was not until the early 1990s after Bigg had died, that the Department of Fisheries & Oceans again began to provide funding for whale research on the west coast.[ Still, Bigg continued his research on his own time for 14 years. Marine biologist Graeme Ellis who began working with Bigg in 1974, said that in the times that funding for killer whale research was absent, "it had become so fascinating we couldn't let it go - for many years it was done with our own money and our own time."][
] In their book ''Guardians of the Whales'', Bruce Obee and Graeme Ellis wrote:
During this time, Bigg together with friends and associates, assembled what has been described as "one of the most thorough data sets for any wild mammal... the killer whale was transformed from one of the least known to among the best understood of all cetaceans."[ His records included births, deaths, diet, and social associations. Bigg and his colleagues gathered enough data to produce a complete family tree documenting the maternal-side relationships of every killer whale on the British Columbia and Washington coasts.
One of the key discoveries of Bigg's team was that there were two types of killer whales living near the British Columbia coastline: ''residents'' which ate almost exclusively fish, and ''transients'' which hunted marine mammals and other warm-blooded prey. Resident and transient killer whale societies are separate, and the two types tend to avoid each other. The resident killer whale population of British Columbia and Washington is further divided into two ''communities'', one northern and one southern, that do not interbreed.][
Another discovery was that resident killer whales have one of the most stable ]social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
structures of any animal species. Pods of killer whales had previously been assumed to consist of a few adult males and a harem
Harem (Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A hare ...
of potential female mates. Bigg's team slowly realized that killer whale pods are matrilineal
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance ...
: killer whales travel not with their mates, but with their mothers and maternal relatives. The basis of resident killer whale groupings is the rule that each animal travels primarily with its mother throughout their lives.[
Although his research was based in the eastern North Pacific, Bigg mentored killer whale researchers from around the world, who sought his advice for their own studies.][
]
Other research
Although he is best known for his work with killer whales, Bigg spent most of his career studying other marine mammals. He researched northern fur seal
The northern fur seal (''Callorhinus ursinus'') is an eared seal found along the north Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. It is the largest member of the fur seal subfamily (Arctocephalinae) and the only living species in t ...
s in British Columbia and the Pribilof Islands
The Pribilof Islands (formerly the Northern Fur Seal Islands; ale, Amiq, russian: Острова Прибылова, Ostrova Pribylova) are a group of four volcanic islands off the coast of mainland Alaska, in the Bering Sea, about north ...
of Alaska. In 1972, Bigg organized a sea otter conservation translocation of Pacific sea otters from Alaska to Vancouver Island, a population that continues to thrive. He also conducted research on Steller sea lions, California sea lion
The California sea lion (''Zalophus californianus'') is a coastal eared seal native to western North America. It is one of six species of sea lions. Its natural habitat ranges from southeast Alaska to central Mexico, including the Gulf of C ...
s, and harbor seal
The harbor (or harbour) seal (''Phoca vitulina''), also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere. The most widely distributed species of pinniped (walruses, eared se ...
s.[
]
Death
In 1984, Mike was diagnosed with leukemia
Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...
. While ill, he continued to work to complete his final report on killer whales, and was able to see it in print shortly before he died on 18 October 1990. He was 51. Bigg was survived by a son Colin who died in 2009, his wife Silke, a daughter Michelle, two sisters Carol & Pamela, and his parents Andy who died in 2003 and Irene who died in 1993.[
Bigg's ashes were scattered in ]Johnstone Strait
, image = Pacific Ranges over Johnstone Strait.jpg
, image_size = 250px
, alt =
, caption = Johnstone Strait backdropped by the Vancouver Island Ranges
, image_bathymetry = Carte baie Knight ...
. Attendees, and the press, noted that more than thirty killer whales appeared in the waters in time for the ceremony.[ The Robson Bight Ecological Reserve in Johnstone Strait, which was designated as a killer whale sanctuary in 1982, was renamed the Robson Bight/Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve. The reserve includes one of the few "rubbing beaches" in the world, where killer whales gather to rub against smooth underwater pebbles.
A female resident killer whale born shortly before Bigg's death in 1990, is unofficially named "M.B." (her official name is G-46).][ The "Dr. Michael Bigg Memorial Bursary" was created at the ]University of Victoria
The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary insti ...
for students of marine biology. The Vancouver Aquarium created a scholarship program sponsored by the Wild Killer Whale Adoption Program. The "Michael A. Bigg Award" is presented annually to a graduate student whose thesis/dissertation research focuses on cetaceans toward the identification or conservation of cetacean habitat.
A male southern resident killer whale of J pod was named after Bigg, having been born in the year Bigg died. This whale is known as "Mike" (as given by the Whale Museum) and has an alphanumerical designation of J-26 (as given by the Center for Whale Research).
Selected works
*Bigg, M.A. 1982. ''An assessment of Killer Whale (Orcinus orca) stocks off Vancouver Island, British Columbia'', Rep. Int.Whal. Comm., 32: 655-666.
*Bigg, M.A., I.B. MacAskie, and G.M. Ellis. 1976. ''Abundance and movements of Killer Whales off eastern and southern Vancouver Island, with comments on management''. Arctic Biol. Sta., Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec. 20 pp.
*Bigg, M.A., G.M. Ellis, J.K.B. Ford and K.C. Balcomb. 1987. ''Killer Whales - a study of their identification, genealogy and natural history in British Columbia and Washington State''. Phantom Press, Nanaimo, British Columbia
*Bigg, M.A., P.F. Olesiuk, G.M. Ellis, J.K.B. Ford and K.C. Balcomb. 1990. ''Social organization and genealogy of resident Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) in the coastal waters of British Columbia and Washington State''. Report of the International Whaling Commission (Special Issue 12): 383-405.
References
External links
Robson Bight/Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve
Vancouver Aquarium
Documentary on killer whale photo-identification
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Vancouver Aquarium
Family trees and calls of Northern Residents
B.C. Cetacean Sightings Network
Ocean Treasures Memorial Library
Ocean Treasures Memorial Library/Dr. Michael A. Bigg Memorial
Ocean Treasures Memorial Library/His Legacy
Ocean Treasures Memorial Library/Photos
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bigg, Michael
Canadian marine biologists
Orca researchers
People from Duncan, British Columbia
University of British Columbia alumni
1939 births
1990 deaths
Deaths from leukemia
20th-century Canadian zoologists
Deaths from cancer in British Columbia