Goodbye Whale Babys.

     This will be my final post for this blog. I have never enjoyed a subject matter so much and It really was a joy to write about something I love so much on a regular day basis. Although I hope people don't take me lightly when I talk about the whales and their extinction, It will be here sooner then anyone would have wanted or expected if we continue to whale, and use fish nets how we are currently. Get involved and help save our future whale babies. I thank you all for reading my blog, or even just a post or two. Blogging has helped me as a writer really research and get involved completely with a subject and learn  creativity to find new things to say about the same subject matter for many recurring posts.

     One day I plan on having another Whale blog but hopefully all of my own findings and explorations with whales. It is something I want to make a career out of and I know I have that will power to make it happen. So see you on Discovery Channel and Animal Planet one day, and remember with every whale that dies thats 40 million krill that will survive, Krill-Tastrophe!  
                      SAVE THE WHALES!

Tag, your it.

     There are many ways that scientists can collect data from whales without harming them. Which is the number one most important thing to consider when approaching whales. Tagging is a process in which scientists attach small tracking devices along the body of a whale to trace their whereabouts and depths of the ocean the whales are diving. Thus giving them info about where they are breeding, warmer waters, and migration patterns for these huge mammals.  Finding them a save place to live and thrive is desirable and thanks to new technology and Critter Cams, small video cameras are easily attached and safely detached over time not hurting the mammal in any shape or form. The whale has no idea it is even there. According to scientist off the coast of New England using these Critter cams, they have even been able to find out that whales have a favorable left and right hand essentially like humans. About 90% turn one way, about 8% another way and a few confused percents, which is said to be about to same handiness ratio percents of majority other species and humans as well.

Suction cup tag being applied
      To me as a young aspiring scientist this sort of stuff is so powerful and almost dream worthy. Being able to simply suction cup and video camera onto the back of a huge whale, then sit back and watch its movements, see what it sees, be able to experience exactly what it is that these creatures do. It is ever changing how much we find out about these animals it will only held us protect them more and I dream to be apart of it when I complete my schooling. Check out this video of a whale camera, Tagging Along with Whales. It is the team from New England and what they do to find out more about whales and their behaviors and way of life. Enjoy! 

Fish nets = Endangerment

"He came up to us and like mouthed thank you, it was pretty awesome." Said Dave Anderson, an experienced marine naturalist and the man who after 7 hours of intense net cutting from a boat, freed a huge California Grey Whale off the coast of Dana Point California.

The Grey Whale caught in a gill line.

      March 27, 2012 a whale was spotted hung up in a gill net set out. A gill net is a huge curtain like net 20 feet below the waterline that is weighed down for certain animals to be captured. But everyone knows that our ocean is a huge vast diverse ecosystem and there is much more animals then just one likely to get caught up in a huge net. Once this trapped whale was spotted he was babysat for the night while supplies was gathered for his escape. His name was Bart, and boy oh boy was he transporting organisms along this net. They say that this poor whale seemed to have been dragging the net for about a week and had dozens of sea creatures caught in its wrath. After a long seven hours Bart made a huge dive taking buoys underwater and then was FREE!
     Everyone who was working to help save the whale was rejoiced to save at least one life. Dave Anderson said that thousands of sea creatures die from these nets and he is thankful to save at least one. I can admire this attitude and I wish I could have been there for such an amazing act of kindness in humanity. A lot of people would have seen the whale and perhaps killed it or simply left it floating struggling and caught up in the net.

     Not many whales get this lucky so I am sure Bart showed his appreciation. It was a special day. Unfortunately not for a 30-ton Sperm whale who was not able to survive after being caught in a fishing net in Jask, Iran on November 2, 2012. It is estimated about 150 large whales loose their lives to these nets a year. That is a devastating number with the small about of beautiful whales still around. Gill nets are illegal in some states, I say it is time we make the push to federalize this law and make all fishing nets with out some sort of permit or proof of "restocking" the ocean, should not be aloud. It will soon become  visibly noticeable that these fishing nets are really depleting our oceans. Write your senator, and remember; FISH ARE FRIENDS NOT FOOD.

My Favorite Whale.

      It has been a few long weeks talking about the conservation of whales, and how we must fight to save our sea creatures numbers. But this blog I am going to talk about a lighter topic which is one of my favorite types of whales and about them.
Cachalot, Also known as the Sperm Whale. French for tooth or big tooth. The Cachalot is the largest toothed whale and the last living species of the Genus, Physeter. They were the first whale I laid my eyes on in person and have some special beauty to me. When I picture a whale they have the shape and body type that quickly comes to mind. 

     Sperm Whales have a huge head which is filled with a substance called Spermaciti. It is said to have some effect on the buoyancy of the whale, helping them swim down and float to the surface as well. This is where the word sperm in Sperm Whale comes from, not like whales reproductive sperm. That is a common misconception.  Full size male Sperm whales have been spotted up to 67 feet long, and 58 tons. Thats huge, but they say that whaling over the years has caused the species to seem smaller in size then before the second World War Because they are no longer able to grow to their full potential before they were killed, causing the breeding size to naturally shrink. Only in sperm whales, the head takes up about 1/3 of the actual body size. Making them probably the most distinctive of whales.

     Sperm whales contain the largest brains ever, modern, and extinct. About five times heavier then a humans at about 15-18 lbs. Although Sperm whales have the largest brains I find it interesting that they do not have the highest EQ level. Encephalization Quotient which according to Harvard research is essentially a Brain size, to body size intelligence number. But that does not discredit Sperm Whales as far as I am concerned. They are still beautiful amazing creatures that help our oceans ecosystems thrive and survive. So now I ask of you, Whats your favorite Whale species?

Beauty In Song.

 

      Have you ever heard whale recordings? Or like I previously suggested went whale watching? I keep going back to this because it is really what makes them so beautiful and unique. Whales communicate in deep and high frequency songs, about 20Hz-10kHz.

      A Researcher from University of Washington, Kate Stafford, first got a glimpse of these songs and instantly wanted to hear more. So she got a group together and they set up sound recorders on the bottom of some icy waters past Greenland to see what kinds of songs they could capture. A year later it appeared that they had what was 5 months of straight song like material from a group of critically endangered Bowhead Whales. No other research like this had been captured since they were nearly  hunted to extinction in 1970's. On their tapes Stafford said that they had at least a song for every hour recorded. A paper that tells more about the details of the whale songs made the feature page on the article Endangered Species Research.

     Reading these types of articles are so interesting to me and I enjoy that we can find little happy moments in simply placing a recorder at the bottom of the ocean and let the whales create relaxing music for us. They cropped a few of the recordings into actual songs and they are quite beautiful and calming. I encourage you to check them out for yourself and join the hunt in saving the Whale species. Here is the link vvv 

Whale Songs. 

     

An Old Surpise

In a paper published Tuesday in the journal "Current Biology" researchers from New Zealand and the united states speak of their discovery; "For the first time we have a description of the world's rarest and perhaps most enigmatic* marine mammal."NYDailyNews 

 
        The main reason the picture to my right is a drawing and not a realistic picture is because this whale blog will be a special breakthrough whale who hasn't ever been photographed alive. I didn't want to post a picture of another dead whale when I love them so much. The species is so rare that it is categorized as "Data Deficient" by IUCN* and not listed by CMS*. Although not until December 2012 was this animal ever actually seen since the 1950's. Scientists still know quite a bit about the animal however, from bone and skeletons collected and analyzed from over the years. These whales were said to have the ability to  dive down to 800m. Thats insanely deep, even for whales. Also these dives could last up to 87 minutes at those depths. 
     In November 2012 when two Spade tooth beaked whales were beached on Opape shore in New Zealand, measurements were taken and a mother, about 17 feet lie beside her son, who was about 11.5 feet in length. Thats about double and triple my height.  I am Imagining something so big just lying lifeless upon the beautiful shore, it makes me think how those whales got there, what happened? and what can we do to prevent it? Although it also makes me think just how crazy that this animal we have hardly ever seen just appears and all the sudden we have specimens to study. Hopefully there will be more where they came from in a more live manner.  By learning about species from our pasts we can hopefully predict how to preserve the ones we have today and new ones of tomorrow at the best of our ability. 
      If you don't believe me when I say that these creatures are some of the most graceful surprising in our world, go find out for yourselves, Whale watching is available pretty much anywhere there is a coast. Enjoy!     
                                                                      

*Enigmatic-Adj. Difficult to interpret or understand; mysterious. 

*IUCN- International Union for Conservation of Nature
*CMS- Content management system 

Japanese Whaling.

Japan’s Whaling.

My third blog is coming to the subject of the opposers to the Sea Shepards, the Japanese and their Government’s view on Whaling. They say that Whaling is a tradition among the Japanese and it is loved country-wide. Although according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the industry only shipped 5k tons in 2011, where as 233k tons in 1962, when whaling was as it’s maximum in the Japanese people’s support. I don’t see much support and tradition in those numbers but they are consistent in funding the ‘Research’ program on whales. The IWC says itself, “Japan exploits a loophole in IWC legislation, and has never stopped killing whales despite the Moratorium. They simply assign themselves a permit to undertake ‘scientific whaling’ (ie. killing whales for the purpose of scientific research) and continue hunting whales as before.” It hurts me that the Whaling Commission in itself is not able to and/or willing to, I do not know the situation completely, stop the Japanese from killing such innocent and beautiful creatures that already have such falling numbers as these Whales. I mean if you actually look a where this whale meat is going it is to the market and in these Japanese peoples diets, They make a profit and that is why they keep it going. The IWC also says, “Japanese claim to be undertaking research by killing whales. However, most of the data collected by the Japanese ‘Scientific whaling’ programme is not required for management or conservation of whale stocks and is never published in reputable scientific journals.” Like what? How is this still going on? 

Whales are a huge part in our oceans food chain. “A blue whale for example can consume as much as 40 million krill per day so you can imagine the impact this would have on stabilizing the aquatic eco system if the blue whale species were to become extinct.” Says WhaleFacts.org.  For every whale that is killed that is literally 40 million times that number of krill extra a day, these aquatic animals are born in mass by minutes and would  result in a krill-tastrophe. So as you can see this Japanese Research is complete bologna, and should be stopped so our oceans don’t fill with krill and disappear of that Carbon rich whale poop.

Save The Whales. 

Paul Watson stands beside his beauty the Bob Barker.

The world today will either be stepping forward into an era where conservation and the environment really matter, or it will be stepping back into the Dark Ages, where the people of the world think that slaughter of whales using grenades, electric lances and shooting them with rifles is something that we should accept. -Ian Campbell (Former Minister of Environment for Australia).   

      This is the main concern of mine. How are our animals supposed to continue to evolve and thrive if we can’t stop murdering them? This Blog I will be Introducing the anti-whaling group from my last blog, the Sea Shepards. For Thirty-Five years a Mister Paul Watson has been running and organizing the group on missions to stop cruelty to animals. Most importantly, Whales. They currently air the show Whale Wars on Animal Planet, which is a show about the missions that these dedicated people pull off for their cause. They put their lives on the line as well as their families back home on pause to spare as many whales lives as possible. The whale population is at a clear decline and Japan has put themselves in line for the issue. Ever since I saw the first episode of this show I have followed the group of anti-whalers and wanted to look more into it. Blue whales are the largest, and also the rarest whales. “There were once 220,000 Blues in Southern Ocean, reduced to around 500 now (up to 3000 worldwide) by past overhunting. This represents a reduction to approximately 0.2% of their original Antarctic population (or 1.5% worldwide). Despite being protected since the 1960s, their numbers have not recovered.” - C. George Muller (Author of Echos in the Blue). What? Can you imagine if that was a culture of people how big of an issue it would be for them to have died but these beautiful sacred creatures such as whales, it is all just the Whaling commission shaking their finger at Japan. 

 
      The Sea Shepards have already done so much in the fight with saving whales. In 2012 they sent the Japanese whalers back to Tokyo with over 800 whales short of their annual quota. Although the most recent news is that Paul Watson had to reside because of court rulings, hopefully someone with the same passion and love for the animals will take over with some great Strategies to save the beautiful creatures, to the best of their ability.

Anything and Everything Whales.

Beautiful Humpback Whale spotted off Osa Peninsula. 

Have you ever seen a whale? Like actually looked at one? The size, the movement, the mechanics, It is so fascinating to me that this HUGE three bus length marine life creature can live underwater so gracefully, and have a diet of tiny plankton. The whale is my favorite animal and I have been in love with them for most of my life actually. Something about the shape is comforting to me and the water/ beach is where I have always wanted to spend my life. I started watching Whale Wars which is an Anti-whaling show where a group of protestors try to stop Japan from their whaling ‘traditions’, when I was really young and at those moments my inspiration grew. I thought if these people can fight for their cause then so can I. I then later decided instead of trying to get into danger and the trouble with the law, why not open and maine life sanctuary or work at one, that is my true dream and it has all really come from my love from whales. When you think of a whale you often think of the ocean. To me the ocean is one of the most beautiful things on this earth; the creatures, the mysteries, there is so much to learn and new stuff is discovered everyday. So the blog page I am to start writing will be exactly on this, Anything and everything whale related. 

Minke Whale Original by the famous American Artist Marcia Baldwin