Whales save seal from orcas

There are plenty of stories of cetaceans saving humans. Indeed, Jonah was rescued by a whale when he was thrown overboard, and there have been tales of dolphins assisting swimmers in distress or shielding them from circling sharks.Killer whales, however — themselves a species of dolphin — didn't get their name for nothing. Early Basque whalers called them whale killers when they saw them attacking other whales. Hunting like a pack of wolves, orca know no fear. They'll tear the throats from grey whale calves, and have even been known to take chunks out of sperm whales — the largest predators that ever lived.But here's a sight to gladden the eye. Earlier this year, Californian scientists Robert L Pitman and John W Durban sailed to the Antarctic in search of killer whales. They were looking for a possible new species, known to hunt Weddell seals — one of the plumpest of the pinnipeds (the suborder that includes seals and sea lions) — by washing them off ice floes with their wake.That's what was happening here — until a group of humpback whales arrived on the scene. Unlike orca, which are odontocetes or toothed whales, humpbacks are mysticetes, harmless leviathans with only baleen plates in their mouths.Doubtless open-mouthed themselves, Pitman and Durban — along with a film crew from the BBC Natural History unit — watched as one seal, swept into the water by the orca, swam towards the humpbacks.As the killer whales moved in, the plucky pinniped leapt on to the vast ribbed belly of a humpback, and nestled in the animal's armpit. Not only that, but when a wave threatened to return the seal to danger, the humpback used its massive flipper (at five metres, the longest in the animal kingdom) to nudge it back on."Moments later the seal scrambled off and swam to the safety of a nearby ice floe," wrote the scientists. They believe the seal triggered a maternal defence mechanism in the humpbacks. Whatever the truth, it's a heartening tale. But spare a thought for the orca. They've got kids to feed, too.

Trouble In The Pipeline For Grey Whales

The fate of the world's few remaining Western Grey Whales now rests on the outcome of appeals to Russian authorities and courts following the refusal of an oil consortium to consider alternatives to a proposal to lay an oil pipeline through a shallow lagoon crucial to the whales' food supplies.Last month the Russian government ignored an outcry over project impacts on Piltun Lagoon to grant approval for the pipeline, part of the Sakhalin-1 project which includes oil giant Exxon and Russian, Japanese and Indian oil companies.Only around 130 Western Gray Whales are left worldwide, including some 20 females able to reproduce. They gather in the seas around Sakhalin in Russia's far east for four months to feed and build up the fat to survive the rest of the year.Piltun Lagoon produces organic matter crucial for benthos such as as sea stars, oysters, clams, sea cucumbers, brittle stars and sea anemones which form the Grey Whale's main food source.The Moscow Tagansky Court last week accepted an action from local Sakhalin NGOs including the Sakhalin Association of Indigenous Peoples and Sakhalin Environmental Watch, as well as the Rodnik Law Centre demanding revision of the state environmental expertise conclusion which ignored scientific advice that the pipeline route should be changed.That report, commissioned by WWF-Russia, Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, was presented to Russia's minister of nature resources, Yury Trutnev, earlier this year after the consortium rejected an offer to negotiate a new route for the pipeline.WWF-Russia has this month written to Minister Trutnev, asking him to stop the Exxon project."Exxon cannot be considered an environmentally responsible company if it constructs a pipeline contrary to the opinion of Russian and international conservation experts," said Alexey Knizhnikov, WWF-Russia oil and gas environmental policy coordinator.WWF is currently negotiating with the government on the creation of a marine protected area in the Piltun lagoon. If the protected status is confirmed the oil pipeline construction should be forbidden in the lagoon.Source: World Wildlife Fund.

Court wrestles with case on Navy sonar, whales

The Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday over how to resolve a long-running dispute over whether environmental laws may be used to limit the Navy's use of sonar to protect whales. The court heard arguments in the Bush administration's appeal of court rulings that restrict sonar in submarine-hunting naval training exercises off the Southern California coast. Sonar can interfere with whales' ability to navigate and communicate.The training is "vitally important" for sailors who may be deployed around the world in search of enemy submarines, Solicitor General Gregory Garre told the justices. Garre said there is scant evidence over 40 years of exercises off the Pacific Coast that the Navy's sonar harms whales and dolphins.Richard Kendall, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the sonar's piercing sound was comparable to the noise of a jet engine magnified 2,000 times in the courtroom.A species of whales called beaked whales are particularly susceptible to harm from sonar, which can cause them to strand themselves onshore, Kendall said.The case left one justice, Stephen Breyer, wondering how a judge should balance national security concerns and environmental interests."You are asking us who know nothing about whales and less about the military to start reading all these documents to try to figure out who's right in the case where the other side says the other side is totally unreasonable," Breyer said.The exercises have continued since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in February that the Navy must limit sonar use when ships get close to marine mammals.Kendall told the justices that the Navy is managing under the restrictions, saying eight of 14 planned exercises have been completed since the restrictions took effect.This round of training is scheduled to be completed by January.Separately, the Navy has agreed to similar limits on anti-submarine training off the coast of Hawaii to settle a lawsuit.But Garre said the issue for the court is whether federal judges should have stepped in to force changes to the training when the government's first environmental assessment found there was little prospect of harm.The Navy's own environmental assessment of using sonar during the 14 training exercises off the California coast found that it could disturb or harm an estimated 170,000 marine mammals, including possible temporary hearing loss in at least 8,000 whales.The administration also says the president has the power to override federal court rulings on environmental laws during emergencies that include harm to national security. The Navy says it already has taken steps to protect beaked whales, dolphins and other creatures and is balancing war training and environmental protections.Justice David Souter ridiculed the idea that the administration could declare an emergency to try to get around complying with environmental laws. The Navy opted not to conduct a more rigorous environmental study, an environmental impact study, before beginning the long-planned exercises, Souter said."If there's an emergency, it's one the Navy created simply by failing to start EIS preparation in a timely way," he said.Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also suggested that the Navy could have avoided the court fight by producing the impact study before the exercises began.Justice Samuel Alito suggested that he found little evidence in the court record that the marine mammals would be harmed by the sonar use. Alito also said there was "something incredibly odd" that a single federal judge, who issued the first order against the Navy in this case, would be able to force changes in the exercises. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia also appeared supportive of the government's case. An injunction by U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles early this year created a 12-nautical-mile no-sonar zone along the coast and ordered the Navy to shut off all sonar use within 2,200 yards of a marine mammal. The 9th Circuit sided with the lower court and said the Navy must abide by the injunction. However, while the litigation was under way, the appeals court gave the Navy permission to use sonar closer than the restrictions allow during critical maneuvers. The case is Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 07-1239.

U.S. Navy Sonar Linked To Whale Strandings, Environmental Scientists Argue

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a series of lower court rulings that restrict the Navy's use of sonar in submarine detection training exercises off the coast of Southern California. The court is due to hear the case after its term begins again this month.

For many years, professor Chris Parsons has been tracking the patterns of mass whale strandings around the world. In his most recent paper, "Navy Sonar and Cetaceans: Just how much does the gun need to smoke before we act?" Parsons and his co-authors bring together all of the major whale and dolphin strandings in the past eight years and discuss the different kinds of species that have been affected worldwide. They also strongly argue for stricter environmental policies related to this issue.
"Generally, if there is a large whale stranding, there is a military exercise in the area," says Parsons. "Sonar is killing more whales than we know about."
Parsons is a national delegate for the International Whaling Commission’s scientific and conservation committees, and on the board of directors of the marine section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He has been involved in whale and dolphin research for more than a decade and has conducted projects in South Africa, India, China and the Caribbean as well as the United Kingdom.
Though Parsons believes that there is a good chance the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Navy, he thinks there is a chance for a win-win situation on both sides.
"If the Navy uses proper mitigation efforts, it can still perform its exercises and affect less of the whale population," he says. However, he argues they need to avoid sensitive areas completely, and have trained, experienced whale experts as lookouts when performing these exercises—"not just someone who has watched a 45-minute DVD, which is sadly the only training most naval lookouts get with respect to finding and detecting whales."
Even with all these efforts, however, Parsons worries that sonar is affecting many more whales than we even know about. "Eventually the Navy may have to reconsider the use of certain types of sonar all together. They could be wiping out entire populations of whales, and seriously depleting others."
Journal reference:
Chris Parsons et al. Navy Sonar and Cetaceans: Just how much does the gun need to smoke before we act? Marine Pollution Bulletin, (in press)
Adapted from materials provided by George Mason University.

Exxon-led project faces Russian lawsuit over endangered whales

Russian environmental groups launched Friday legal action against an oil and gas project led by US energy giant Exxon for threatening critically endangered whales in Russia's far east. The Russian government last month gave the consortium the green light to construct a pipeline across a Sakhalin island lagoon that produces organisms on which the world's last 120 to 130 Western Gray Whales survive."We have decided to challenge in court the positive findings of the state experts," Ekaterina Gretchuchkina, the chief lawyer for the Russian environmental group Rodnik, told a Moscow press conference.Rodnik filed the lawsuit at a Moscow district court together with the non-governmental Sakhalin Environment Watch and an association of indigenous people.Separately, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has sent a letter to Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev, asking him to stop the project.Earlier this year, the WWF, Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare presented Trutnev's ministry with a scientific report arguing for the pipeline route to be changed.The report said there were only around 130 Western Gray Whales left worldwide, including some 20 females able to reproduce. They gather in the area for four months to feed and build up the fat to survive the rest of the year.The international consortium in the Sakhalin-1 project -- which also includes Russian, Japanese and Indian oil companies -- rejected an offer to negotiate a new route.

It’s All In The Hips: Early Whales Used Well Developed Back Legs For Swimming, Fossils Show

The crashing of the enormous fluked tail on the surface of the ocean is a “calling card” of modern whales. Living whales have no back legs, and their front legs take the form of flippers that allow them to steer. Their special tails provide the powerful thrust necessary to move their huge bulk. Yet this has not always been the case.

Reporting in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, paleontologist Mark D. Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History describes new fossils from Alabama and Mississippi that pinpoint where tail flukes developed in the evolution of whales.
“We know that the earliest whales were four-footed, semi-aquatic animals, and we knew that some later early whales had tail flukes, but we didn’t know exactly when the flukes first arose,” said Uhen. “Now we do.”
The most complete fossil described in the study is a species called Georgiacetus vogtlensis. Although not new to science, the new fossils provide some very significant new information. In particular, previously unknown bones from the tail show that it lacked a tail fluke. On the other hand, it did have large back feet and Uhen suggests that it used them as hydrofoils. Undulating the body in the hip region was the key factor in the evolution of swimming.
The very different body forms seen in the lineage of whales point to very different methods of swimming underwater. Previous studies have proposed a possible process to evolve from the ancestral form, paddling with all four legs, to the modern-day whale in which the tail oscillates up and down. Living vertebrates that are capable swimmers employ a whole range of different techniques, including five particularly well defined methods: quadrupedal paddling, paddling only using the back legs, undulation of the hips, tail undulation, and tail oscillation.
Interestingly, it had been suggested that during whale evolution each of these steps occurred in turn, but that the hip undulation stage might have been by-passed. The new discoveries indicate that the complete opposite was true, and as Uhen says “wiggling hips were a significant step in the evolution of underwater swimming in whales.”
So now we know that Elvis was not the first to owe success to undulating hips!
Adapted from materials provided by Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Whales shedding blubber, Japan study says

Japan, under fire overseas for whaling it justifies as research, has released its findings -- whales are losing blubber because ocean resources are growing scarce. But critics said the recent study, which involved the slaughter of thousands of whales, is little more than window-dressing for Japan's pursuit of commercial whaling.Japan is frequently criticised by the West for conducting annual whaling missions under the pretext of "lethal research" when most of the meat ends up in supermarkets, restaurants or school lunches.Japan says that whaling is part of its culture but contends that it does not violate a 1986 international moratorium on hunting as it is conducting research. Only Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium outright.The study used research on 6,779 whales, of which more than 4,500 were killed including some which were pregnant.It found that the oceans are facing a shortfall of krill, a vital component of the food chain, due to climate change and the recovery of species such as humpback whales.According to the study, Antarctic minke whales shed nine percent of the blubber over 18 years, corresponding to an annual weight loss of 17 kilograms (38 pounds).Blubber is vital for whales because it helps to retain heat in cold waters and store energy and nutrition. Minke whales swim to the Antarctic every summer to feed and to warm waters during the winter to breed.The study, led by Kenji Konishi of Japan's government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research, called for further study on krill, saying that the very future of the eco-system was at stake.Investigating "the dynamics of the widely distributed krill population is quite difficult, so that monitoring energy storage by a krill consumer, such as the minke whale, can be most useful," it said.The study was published in Polar Biology, a journal with editorial offices in Germany and Alaska, after several other journals rejected it, a researcher said.Conservationists dismissed the study and said that researchers could also use non-lethal methods such as sonar to gauge krill populations or ultrasound to monitor whales."There is no need to kill whales to study them. 'Research' whaling is just commercial whaling under another name," said John Hocevar, oceans specialist at environmental group Greenpeace.In any case, blubber thickness is "not a very good indicator" of health in whales, he said, recommending instead measuring the ratio of girth or length compared with the ocean giants' weight.Conservationists also worried about the study's suggestion that the lower availability of krill was due to recovering populations of humpbacks and other big whales.Last year, Japan planned to kill humpback whales for the first time in decades. It dropped the idea due to international pressure, including protests in Australia, where humpback watching is a popular pastime.Greenpeace blamed global warming and the subsequent melting of sea ice for the shortage of krill as ice provides sanctuary for the tiny animals."If we want to solve this problem, humans need to deal with global warming," said another Greenpeace marine specialist, Wakao Hanaoka. Hocevar said: "While some species have started to recover, no whale population has reached the level it had before industrial whaling began."

Dozens of massacred narwhals found on Greenland coast

Dozens of massacred narwhals, an Arctic whale with a single long tusk, have been discovered on the east coast of Greenland in what local police said Thursday could be a case of poaching. "We received a complaint that there may have been a possible violation of the Greenlandic law regarding the protection of narwhals, after the discovery of cadavers in Illoqqortoormiut," the deputy chief of Greenland police Morten Nielsen told AFP.A scientific expedition from New Zealand discovered the carcasses as they sailed along the coastline "about two weeks ago," Nielsen said.According to Danish and Greenlandic media, 48 animals were killed, but police refused to confirm those reports.People in Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, are authorised to hunt narwhals "but there are rules that say you can't shoot females and that you have to remove the body" after killing the animal, Nielsen said.There were females and calves among the dead, Danish news agency Ritzau reported, adding that only the males' long tusks and some meat had been removed from the carcasses."We're now trying to investigate the incident and figure out what has happened and if the law has been broken," Nielsen said.Narwhals can grow up to five metres (16 feet) in length and live primarily in the Arctic Ocean.Males have a single long, twisted tusk that protrudes from the upper left side of the jaw and which can grow up to three metres (10 feet). It is sought after by poachers for its ivory.Some females may also grow tusks, albeit much smaller.The export of narwhal tusks is banned in Greenland, and imports are banned in the European Union, according to Ritzau.

Japan ends whale hunt with 211 catches

Japanese whaling ships will start arriving back back home Saturday after catching 211 whales during their three-month voyage in the northwest Pacific, the fisheries agency said. The main ship of the six-vessel fleet, 8,044-ton Nisshin-maru, will arrive in Tokyo on Saturday, with the rest returning to their ports by the end of the month, the agency said.Since they left on June 6, the ships caught 100 sei whales, 59 minke whales, 50 Bryde's whales and two sperm whales, the agency said Friday.The Japanese government, which says whaling is part of the national culture, plans to kill around 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium that allows "lethal research" on whales.Japan's last catch in the Antarctic Ocean earlier this year came to little more than half of that due to harassment by Sea Shepherd activists, who hurled stink bombs and hopped onto the whaling ship.

Lost baby whale euthanised in Australia

A lost baby whale which captured hearts around the world as it tried to suckle from an Australian yacht it thought was its mother was killed Friday to end its suffering, wildlife rangers said. "The calf has been quietly and humanely euthanised," National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesman Chris McIntosh told AFP. "It was a sad moment, but it went quietly to sleep."A vet on board a small boat in Pittwater Bay near Sydney's Palm Beach first administered an anaesthetic through a large needle, by simply leaning overboard and injecting the weakened humpback calf, he said.The animal, nicknamed Colin, was then moved onto the beach and given the euthanasia drug behind screens under tight security, with a small group of protesters kept outside an exclusion zone.The calf's fate had been the focus of growing concern in Australia as efforts to reunite it with passing pods of humpback whales failed and a series of desperate rescue proposals was made.The army was asked whether it could help float Colin back out to sea while a scientist suggested it could be fed formula milk through an artificial teat.An Aboriginal 'whale whisperer' was brought in to comfort him on Thursday, singing ancient songs which brought Colin to the side of the national parks' boat, where it lifted its head and allowed itself to be patted."He felt really lonely and he wanted to be with his mother and family," said Bunna Lawrie of the Mirning tribe from the Great Australian Bight.But the head of the national parks service, Sally Barnes, said that while the decision to euthanise the whale was difficult there was no other option."It was suffering extremely so we've had to make the very difficult decision," she said.The calf was first spotted on Sunday and had weakened rapidly over the past couple of days without the daily 230 litres of mothers' milk which it would normally consume.In a remarkable effort to return it to the ocean, the calf was lured out to sea on Monday by a 'mother ship', a whale-sized yacht from which it had been trying to suckle after apparently being abandoned by its mother.But after failing to find its own mother or an adoptive parent among the pods of whales passing Pittwater, Colin returned to the bay and again began trying to suckle yachts.The humpbacks are on the return leg of an epic annual round trip from the Antarctic to tropical waters to breed, and they can be seen ploughing homewards not far off Sydney's beaches on most days.Experts say that the passing whales and Colin would have been able to communicate, but that the chance of him being adopted was always extremely slim.The whale's body was taken to Sydney's Taronga zoo, where an autopsy will be carried out.

Drilling Could Be Nail In The Coffin For World's Most Endangered Whale Population

"Offshore oil and gas development in Bristol Bay would be the wrong step for the right whale," said Margaret Williams, director of WWF's Bering Sea program. "This is a risk we simply can't afford to take. It would jeopardize the nation's most important fishery, the hundreds of communities that rely on fishing and a treasure trove of wildlife."

bowhead, blue, fin, sei, humpback and sperm whales. A planned lease sale area in Bristol Bay overlaps with critical habitat designated for the eastern North Pacific right.
"Offshore oil and gas development in Bristol Bay would be the wrong step for the right whale," said Margaret Williams, director of WWF's Bering Sea program. "This is a risk we simply can't afford to take. It would jeopardize the nation's most important fishery, the hundreds of communities that rely on fishing and a treasure trove of wildlife."
On January 9, 2007, President Bush rescinded a long-standing presidential moratorium that prohibited drilling in Bristol Bay. In July the new Five Year Oil and Gas Leasing Program of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) - a U.S. government agency - goes into effect and includes plans for a lease sale in Bristol Bay and other areas along the U.S. coastline. Bills to block leasing in Bristol Bay are pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Oil and gas exploration in the Bristol Bay area would expose whales to noise pollution, oil spills, chemical pollution, vessel collisions and entanglement with or ingestion of marine debris. There are no reliable estimates of current abundance or trends for right whales in the North Pacific. According to U.S. government sources, there may be fewer than 300 of these animals left compared to a pre-whaling population of more than 11,000.
Bristol Bay is also the epicenter of the Bering Sea fishery whose commercial salmon, halibut, herring and crab fisheries generate more than $2 billion annually. Sport hunters and fishermen flock to the bay each year, pumping millions of dollars more into the economy. And the region's spectacular wildlife supports scores of Alaskan natives who rely on a healthy ecosystem for food.
"The MMS has calculated average estimates from drilling to generate a total of $7.7 billion, but that's just a fraction of the annual flow of $2 billion from the Bering Sea's renewable and sustainable fishery," said Karen Gillis, executive director of the Bering Sea Fishermen's Association.
Adapted from materials provided by World Wildlife Fund.

Oil, Gas Seismic Work Not Affecting Gulf Sperm Whales, Study Shows

Noise can be irritating and possibly harmful for everything from mice to humans – and maybe even 60-foot whales in the Gulf of Mexico.

In recent years, there has been concern that man-made noise may be a cause of stress for dolphins, whales and other marine mammals, but the results of a five-year study show that noise pollution – especially noise generated by seismic airguns during geophysical exploration for oil and gas – seems to have minimal effect on endangered sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico, say researchers from Texas A&M University who led the project and released their 323-page report today at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The multi-year $9 million study, the largest of its type ever undertaken and formally titled Sperm Whale Seismic Study in the Gulf of Mexico, was conducted by the Minerals Management Service and featured cooperation with the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The project brought together researchers from eight universities, but it was managed overall by Texas A&M's Department of Oceanography, with research scientist Ann Jochens and professor Doug Biggs serving as principal investigators.
"The bottom line is that airgun noise from seismic surveys that are thousands of yards distant does not drive away sperm whales living in the Gulf," Biggs explains.
"However, some individual whales feeding at depth reduced the rate at which they searched acoustically for their prey when scientists carried out controlled exposure experiments by bringing seismic surveys close by the whales. As a result, the oil and gas industry has agreed to a best-practice attitude that seismic surveys should shut down temporarily when towed airguns come within one-third of a mile of whales or groups of whales in the Gulf."
Though not often seen, sperm whales are regular visitors to and residents in the Gulf of Mexico. They are the largest of all toothed whales and can reach lengths of 60 feet or more and live 60 years or longer. Their primary diet is squid and fish and they have been known to dive as deep as 7,000 feet. Humans no longer hunt them for their oil, but the whale in Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick was a sperm whale.
Sperm whales are not often seen because they prefer to stay in the deep waters of the Gulf, usually in depths of 3,000 feet or more and at least 150 miles offshore, Biggs says.
"Sperm whales go to where their food source is, and that means very deep water. So folks that do see them are marine mammal observers who ride the seismic survey vessels and the workers on the big oil and gas rigs, and even that does not happen often," Biggs adds.
The primary concern facing the scientific research group was noise – there's more of it in the world's oceans than you might think. A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that the world's oceans are 10 times noisier since the 1960s, and at any one time, there are as many as 30,000 ships circling the globe.
Biggs says that over the course of five summers, 98 sperm whales were tagged with devices that relayed back critical data such as measurements about sound levels and behavioral aspects of whales, including tracking their movements. Of particular concern was the effect that loud low-frequency noises, such as those created by seismic activity, might have on sperm whales in the area.
Oil and gas companies prospect for subsea reservoirs by firing air guns during their seismic work, which government regulators thought might negatively affect sperm whale behavior. Also, the sheer volume of work being done in the Gulf was another concern: The Gulf of Mexico accounts for almost 70 percent of the oil and gas extracted from U.S. waters and there are thousands of oil and gas platforms in the region.
But the study found no unusual effects of controlled exposure to seismic exploration on the swimming and diving behavior by sperm whales in the Gulf, and also revealed a wealth of data about sperm whale biology and habitat.
"We now know that the sperm whales in the Gulf appear to be their own distinct stock – they show genetic and social differences from other sperm whales around the world," Biggs says.
"There are believed to be about 500 to 1,500 sperm whales that reside in the Gulf. Most of these are family groups of females and maturing young. When one family group socializes with another family group in the Gulf, they make very distinct sounds. Even though the family groups are visited by males that come into the Gulf from other oceans, their 'clicking' sounds, called codas, the Gulf sperm whales make appear to be different from most others made by sperm whale groups in other parts of the world.
"The five-year study has greatly contributed to our knowledge of sperm whales, especially those found in the Gulf of Mexico. It's also raised new questions we need to know more about, such as their feeding and breeding patterns. There's still a lot we don't know about these huge creatures."
Adapted from materials provided by Texas A&M University

Hopes fade for lost baby whale in Australia

A desperate baby whale abandoned by its mother was still trying to suckle from yachts in an Australian harbour Wednesday as last ditch efforts were being made to save it from death. Sailor Peter Lewis said he was woken shortly before dawn at his mooring in the vast and scenic Pittwater bay near Sydney's Palm Beach by "strange sounds on the outside of the hull of the boat.""It sounded like a bit of a vacuum cleaner on the bottom of the boat. I finally got up and here's this whale suckling the side of the boat," he told commercial radio. "It was a very, very sad sight."The calf tried to suckle for about an hour, then "it just seemed to give a sigh out at one stage as if, you know, this isn't working," Lewis said.The whale calf is believed to have only days to live and mercy killing might be the only way to end its suffering, experts say.But with public concern over the calf's fate growing, a scientist suggested it could be fed formula milk for human babies through an artificial teat until a plan had been devised to take it back to sea.A spokeswoman for the wildlife organisation IFAW told AFP, however, that the calf would need up to 230 litres of milk a day, and experts close to the rescue efforts said it was not an option.Wildlife rangers on Monday successfully used a yacht which the calf appeared to believe was its mother to lure it out to sea in the hope it would link up with other humpbacks passing by on their annual breeding migration.But, although pods of whales were seen in the area, the calf failed to find its own mother or a surrogate and returned to the yacht moorings in the bay."The whale is clearly getting weaker because it probably hasn't had food for about five days," Department of National Parks and Wildlife spokesman Chris McIntosh told AFP after a veterinary assessment Wednesday.Euthanasia was "the most likely outcome, but we are not at that point yet," he said.A further assessment of the whale would be made on Thursday and a decision would then be made on what would be best for the whale.Unless there was some "magical event" such as the calf communicating with and being picked up by a passing pod "there aren't many options other than euthanasia," he said.It would be difficult to lure the calf out to sea again now that it had lost its strong attachment to a particular boat, and attempts to herd it would cause unacceptable stress, he said.The humpbacks are on the return leg of a remarkable annual round trip from the Antarctic to tropical waters to breed, and they can be seen ploughing homewards not far off Sydney's beaches on most days.

Gas facility threatens whale nursery

Kimberley whale nursery under threat, says green groupArticle from: PerthNowNarelle Towie, environment reporterAugust 13, 2008 06:45pmA NEWLY discovered nursery for humpback whales will be destroyed if industrialisation of the Kimberley goes ahead, an environmental group claims.The Wilderness Society said the whale playground recently discovered at Camden Sound off the coast of Broome would be in grave danger if proposed gas projects for the area go ahead.Read more about the newly discovered whale playground hereJapanese company Inpex want to build a Natural Liquid Gas processing plant on Maret Island, which sits 300km from the area used by whales to teach their young to feed, breach and navigate currents. "You can be guaranteed if the proposals go ahead the use of barge tankers in the area will have a significant impact on humpback whales and it would interfere with their breeding, their calving and general migration," The Wilderness Society's WA state coordinator, Robert Robertson said. "There are all sorts of concerns about blasting and seismic testing interfering with the whales as well." Today Inpex reiterated that Maret Island is "the best location" for mining gas from the Ichthys gas fields - 150km from Maret Island - that are estimated to be worth an estimated $10 billion a year in revenue. The WA Government is being encouraged to approve development of the LNG processing hub and unlock the potential wealth, along with 4000 new jobs. But the Government wants to merge other gas projects also being promoted for the area and only build one central hub in order to minimise environmental damage. While the decision is being made on where the processing hub will exist, the Northern Territory is urging Inpex to move operations north to Darwin. Mr Robertson said the Kimberley marine ecosystem was similar to the Great Barrier Reef but without any of the protection. He said that talk of turning the Kimberley into WA's new Pilbara was dangerous and ill-informed and ignored the many strong environmental reasons why such a move would be a disaster. "We are calling on both major parties to commit to protecting the globally significant natural and cultural values of the Kimberley and to ensuring that the region's indigenous communities gain far greater benefits and opportunities from existing Kimberley industry including tourism and sustainable fishing," he said.

In Germany, wandering whale creates wonderment

Germans have been treated to the rare sight of a lone and wayward humpback whale swimming in the Baltic Sea, but marine biologists said it may be doomed because the waterway lacks the conditions such mammals need to survive. The humpback has been spotted several times near Rostock city in recent days, according to the biologists, who say such whales don't typically range too far into the Baltic.As the whale drew attention from newspapers and Web sites, Joerg Feddern, a biologist with the environmental group Greenpeace, worried that its presence in the Baltic is not normal.He said the last time a humpback was seen there was back in 2004, and that the Baltic is not the best place for the mammal."There's not enough food for a humpback whale in the Baltic Sea," agreed Klaus Harder, a biologist at German Ocean Museum for Sea Mammals in Stralsund. "Worst case scenario: The whale could starve to death."Though he's not seen the cetacean personally, Harder confirmed it is a humpback by comparing photos of the animal, dubbed "Bukie" by the German press, to the humpbacks he regularly worked with off the coast of Massachusetts when he lived in Boston.The humpback is a type of baleen whale, distinguished by its long, narrow flippers and large knobs on its head, jaws and body. Humpbacks can reach up to 52 feet in length and some 40 tons in weight, and feed largely on krill, small fish and plankton.As to why Bukie is in the Baltic, that's sparked debate of sorts.One theory holds that the whale got confused and swam into the sea. Another posits that the mammal may have been directed by currents or could have simply been following a school of fish."The Baltic Sea is a connecting sea to the North Sea. Fish and the whale could have easily followed the current flowing into the Baltic Sea," said Feddern.Another theory holds that the whale became confused because of ship traffic."It is also possible that the whale became confused because of underwater noises," Feddern said. "Ships are very loud underwater."Unfortunately for Bukie, finding a way back out and into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean could be hard due to the narrow opening of the funnel-shaped Baltic Sea."There are no signs for the whale to follow," Feddern said.He doubted that the whale could be led out of the sea. At most, the animal might have to be very carefully directed away from shallow water by navigating boats between it and the shore."This animal must find its own way out," he said.

Fears grow for lost baby whale who thought yacht was Mum

Fears were growing Tuesday for the survival chances of a lost baby humpback whale who tried to suckle from an Australian yacht in the belief it was its mother. Wildlife experts used the yacht to lure the calf out of Pittwater bay near Sydney's Palm Beach on Monday, hoping it would link up with other whales passing by on their annual breeding migration.But early on Tuesday the calf was reportedly spotted back in Pittwater, apparently having failed to find either its own mother or a surrogate, Department of National Parks and Wildlife spokesman Chris McIntosh told AFP."We successfully lured the calf about a kilometre out to sea -- probably the first time that's been done using a yacht as a surrogate mother," he said."Later we saw whales a bit further offshore and there was a slender chance it may have linked up with them, but this morning we have got reports that it has returned to the western shores of Pittwater."Mcintosh said the calf risked running out of energy through lack of food, being attacked by sharks, simply dying of hunger or beaching itself.Rangers were searching for the calf, which showed no sign of injury and was most likely rejected by its mother, and euthanasia might have to be an option if it became stranded, McIntosh said."We've consistently said it was a slim chance that it might link up with its mother or other whales but the reality is that in the wild, for various reasons, mothers sometimes reject their young," he said.The calf is estimated to be two months old, about five metres (yards) long and to weigh five tonnes, but it would still rely primarily on its mother's milk and its survival chances are seen as poor."Looking at its behaviour, the way it was nuzzling up to yachts would indicate it was primarily still suckling," McIntosh said."It really was trying to suckle, just below the waterline and against the keel, with its head engaged against the boat."The humpbacks are on the return leg of a remarkable 20,000-kilometre (12,500-mile) annual round trip from the Antarctic to tropical waters to breed, and they can be seen ploughing homewards not far off Sydney's beaches on most days.

Recovering Gray Whale population could help Puget Sound's declining marine birds

Recently published research funded by the UC Davis SeaDoc Society suggests that growth in gray whale populations may have unexpected benefits for other marine animals in trouble, such as diving sea ducks.SeaDoc Society Director Joe Gaydos, based on Orcas Island, Washington, said the finding was made in 2006 by Eric Anderson and Jim Lovvorn of the University of Wyoming as they studied the feeding ecology of ducks called scoters. Theirs was one of $250,000 in research projects that SeaDoc supported that year.The researchers were observing a gray whale near Sandy Point on Whidbey Island, about 30 miles north of Seattle. Gray whales suction-feed, sieving out ghost shrimp and other small sea animals from the sea floor. As they eat, the whales create giant pits and stir up clouds of invertebrates, which settle back to the bottom and flourish in the altered landscape left after the whales have passed.In a paper published in the May 2008 Issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series, Lovvorn and Anderson said they watched as 125 sea ducks (surf scoters and white-winged scoters) flew to the gray whale and began diving in its tracks, about 300 feet behind, with a few ducks diving as a group barely 15 feet from the whale.It was the first documented observation of an association between cetaceans and birds that feed on the sea bottom.Anderson and Lovvorn suggest that such increases could enhance feeding opportunities for scoters and other bottom-feeding animals during the critical spring period, when typical food is less abundant and nutritional requirements needed to prepare for migration and reproduction are high.More than 60 other fish and wildlife species in the Puget Sound region are listed as threatened or endangered, or are candidates for listing, Gaydos said. "Usually we are trying to deal with endangered species eating other endangered species, so this evidence that the recovery of one species could benefit the recovery of other is a welcome breath of fresh air."The SeaDoc Society (www.seadocsociety.org) works to ensure the health of marine wildlife and their ecosystems through science and education. A program of the Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), the SeaDoc Society has a regional focus on improving the health of the Salish Sea.

Study Shows Rise In Cornwall's Dolphin, Whale, And Porpoise Deaths

Four weeks since the shocking incident that led to the death of 26 dolphins near Falmouth, research sheds new light on the extent of the problems facing Cornwall's marine mammals.

A study by the University of Exeter and Cornwall Wildlife Trust, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation (July 7, 2008) has revealed a disturbing rise in the number of whales, dolphins and porpoises found dead on Cornish beaches. The frequency of these mammals, collectively known as cetaceans, found stranded on beaches in Cornwall has increased with a sharp rise in the last eight years. After analysing nearly 100 years of data, the researchers believe this could, in part, be due to more intensive fishing.
The research team analysed records of cetacean strandings from 1911 to 2006 from around Cornwall's north and south coasts and the Isles of Scilly. They found a marked increase from the early 1980s, with common dolphins and harbour porpoises being the worst-affected species. In total, fewer than 50 cetacean strandings a year occurred in Cornwall in the 1980s but numbers since 2000 have ranged from 100 to 250 per annum. The south coast of Cornwall experienced the most strandings, particularly around Mount's Bay (Penzance) and two of South East Cornwall's most popular beaches - Looe Bay and Whitsand Bay.
The researchers analysed records of 2,257 cetaceans, 862 of which were common dolphins. They found that, since 1990, at least 61% of incidents in Cornwall are the result of fishing activity, with animals being caught up in nets in a phenomenon known as 'bycatch'. The seas around Cornwall are known to be a major hotspot for large scale fisheries, with many vessels coming from other EU nations.
They analysed data from a rigorous recording scheme, run by Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Marine Strandings Network, which is backed up by full veterinary autopsies as part of a national programme run by the Zoological Society of London and the Natural History Museum.
Dr Brendan Godley of the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus said: "Many people were shocked by the recent graphic images of the mass dolphin strandings in Cornwall; the cause of which is still a matter of conjecture. We feel that the important message is that strandings have increased in recent years and that the majority are attributable to bycatch in marine fisheries. This is clearly a major issue that needs to be addressed by all stakeholders from Government and the fishing industry in addition to conservation organisations."
The researchers note, however that their findings could, in part, suggest that there are more cetaceans now living off our coastline, as a result of climate change bringing some animals further north.
Joana Doyle, Marine Conservation Officer for Cornwall Wildlife Trust says: "There are several things we need to do in order to safeguard the future of Cornwall's cetaceans. These include establishing a network of Marine Conservation Zones around our coast to protect the species and the habitats they depend on, working closely with the fisheries to develop and test bycatch mitigation measures and pushing for an EU wide ban of pair-trawling for seabass. The strandings and sightings data collected by Cornwall Wildlife Trust is incredibly important for monitoring the status of our cetacean species off the Cornish coast.
Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the University of Exeter are now seeking funding for a new project to conduct further research on cetaceans off Cornwall and to test bycatch mitigation measures.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Exeter.

Rare Beached Melon-Head Whale Rescued

A rescue team from SeaWorld rescued a 900-pound melon-head whale from Playalinda Beach near NASA.The species of whale, which is normally located 30 miles off the coast, rarely beaches itself, scientists said.Crews used a large sling, wet towels and spray bottles to move the whale off the beach.SeaWorld's veterinarian staff examined and treated the 8-foot-long male and transported it to Gulf World in Panama City.Officials said the whale may be the same one that washed ashore a few days ago in St. Augustine.Source: Local6.com

Whales stranded on Senegalese beach

Rescue efforts Wednesday could not save at least 30 long-finned pilot whales that became stranded overnight on a beach in the north of the Senegalese capital Dakar.Environmental expert Haidar el Ali said the 81 whales that became lodged on Yoff-Thongor beach represented the biggest mass stranding of whales for 30 years in the west African nation.Thirty-three whales did not survive and lay dead on the beach, but rescuers aided by local fishermen managed to dislodge 48 others and send them back to the ocean. Many of the stranded whales were thought to have been pregnant.Experts were at a loss to explain the stranding and some of the whale carcasses were taken to a local veterinary school to try and find answers, a marine official said.Pilot whales are members of the dolphin family but are considered by experts to behave more like whales.