- Pod of killer whales trapped in sea of ice just off Japan’s coast and there’s nothing officials can do but wait: ‘We have no choice’ New York Post
- A pod of killer whales trapped in drift ice off northern Japan has apparently safely escaped ABC News
- Orcas gasp for air whilst trapped in drift ice off the coast of Japan BBC.com
- Pod of orcas trapped by ice, fighting for life off coast of Japan, drone footage shows USA TODAY
- Have Japan’s trapped orcas ‘escaped’? Nation holds breath as case highlights changing nature of Hokkaido’s drift ice South China Morning Post
Tag Archives: whales
Nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australian beach euthanized after rescue efforts #shorts – CBS News
- Nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australian beach euthanized after rescue efforts #shorts CBS News
- ‘I don’t want to hear the gunshots’: how the Isle of Lewis battled to save 55 stranded whales The Guardian
- Officials make ‘hard decision’ to euthanize whales after mass stranding in Western Australia CNN
- Why do whales strand? Drone vision could help provide the answer | ABC News ABC News (Australia)
- Last of nearly 100 pilot whales that beached on Australia’s coast are euthanized after rescue fails The Associated Press
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Last of nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australia beach are euthanized after getting rescued – then re-stranded – CBS News
- Last of nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australia beach are euthanized after getting rescued – then re-stranded CBS News
- Nearly 100 whales die following mass stranding along Australia’s southern coast Yahoo News
- WATCH: Officials, volunteers race to save stranded pilot whales | #shorts PBS NewsHour
- Last of nearly 100 whales beached in Australia euthanized despite massive attempted rescue effort Fox News
- Rescuers race to save stranded pilot whales in Australia after mass beaching — video Guardian News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Last of nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australia beach are euthanized after getting rescued – then re-stranded – CBS News
- Last of nearly 100 pilot whales stranded on Australia beach are euthanized after getting rescued – then re-stranded CBS News
- Nearly 100 whales die following mass stranding along Australia’s southern coast Yahoo News
- WATCH: Officials, volunteers race to save stranded pilot whales | #shorts PBS NewsHour
- Last of nearly 100 whales beached in Australia euthanized despite massive attempted rescue effort Fox News
- Rescuers race to save stranded pilot whales in Australia after mass beaching — video Guardian News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Top Dogecoin Whales Offloaded Over $123,000,000 DOGE As the Memecoin Pumped 30% Amid Twitter Logo Changes – The Daily Hodl
- Top Dogecoin Whales Offloaded Over $123,000,000 DOGE As the Memecoin Pumped 30% Amid Twitter Logo Changes The Daily Hodl
- 1.4B DOGE Dumped by 2 Whales After Elon Musk Changed the Twitter Logo to Dogecoin: Data CryptoPotato
- Elon Musk’s Twitter Love For Digital Currency Dogecoin ‘Revealed’; 360 Degree With Anjilee Istwal India Today
- Dogecoin (DOGE) Price Massive Surge Seems Imminent – Predicts Santiment Coinpedia Fintech News
- Elon Musk’s Influence On Dogecoin Price Action: Big Eyes Coin Takes Note And Follows Suit Analytics Insight
- View Full Coverage on Google News
650-pound fossil whale skull found in Maryland
A Pennsylvania family discovered a 650-lb fossil whale skull on the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland.
Cody Goddard, his wife, and their son were on Matoaka Beach in Calvert County when they saw a large, hardened block of sediment laying on the beach. According to the Calvert Marine Museum, the sediment had an “unusual” fossil protruding from one end.
The discovery was made in October, but due to the fossil’s sheer size, it took about two months for the fossil to be extracted.
The whale skull fossil was about five and a half feet long, 18 inches wide, and weighed approximately 650 pounds, according to the curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum, Stephen J. Godfrey.
Godfrey was contacted by Goddard about his discovery in October and worked with him to examine the large fossil.
Godfrey stated that the weight of the fossil mostly came, not from the skull itself, but from the unusual, cemented sediment that had formed around the skull.
“In a way, it created its own sarcophagus – its own little burial chamber that preserved it for millions of years and for us to be able to find,” he said.
On Dec. 19, Godfrey and his team from the Calvert Marine Museum Fossil Club successfully removed the fossil from the beach and brought it to the bayside museum for further research.
According to Godfrey, the skull is around 12 million years old, based on the sediment age along Calvert Cliffs. The skull came from a baleen whale, a type of whale that uses its teeth to filter its prey, plankton, from ocean water.
Compared to modern baleen whales, such as humpback whales, the prehistoric whale the skull came from was quite small and narrow at 5 1/2 feet long and about 18 inches wide.
“This would have been a very hydrodynamic type of whale, so it could probably swim fairly quickly,” Godfrey said. “And, of course, you’d want to because you have Megalodon swimming at that time, and you’re doing all you can to avoid being Megalodon’s next meal.”
Godfrey noted that the skull would be more completely analyzed in about two months, which will be the amount of time needed to remove the hardened sediment surrounding the skull.
When the skull is free of sediment, Godfrey and his team will be able to determine which baleen whale species the skull belonged to.
According to the Calvert Marine Museum, the skull — called “Cody” after Cody Goddard — is the most complete fossil whale skull ever recovered from that section of Calvert Cliffs.
NJ governor: No pause in wind farm prep after 7th dead whale
BRIGANTINE, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey’s governor said Friday he does not think undersea preparations for offshore wind farms should be halted in response to a recent spate of whale deaths in New Jersey and New York.
Democrat Phil Murphy spoke after lawmakers at the local, state and federal levels called for a temporary pause in ocean floor preparation work for offshore wind projects in New Jersey and New York after another dead whale washed ashore in the area.
Also on Friday, most of New Jersey’s environmental groups warned against linking offshore wind work and whale deaths, calling such associations “unfounded and premature.”
The death was the seventh in a little over a month. The spate of fatalities prompted an environmental group and some citizens groups opposed to offshore wind to ask President Biden earlier this week for a federal investigation into the deaths.
The latest death Thursday was that of a 20- to 25-foot-long (6- to 7.6-meter-long) humpback whale. Its remains washed ashore in Brigantine, just north of Atlantic City, which itself has seen two dead whales on its beaches in recent weeks.
There was no immediate indication of what caused the latest death. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, based in Brigantine, said it and several other groups were formulating plans Friday for a post-mortem examination of the whale’s remains before the animal’s carcass is disposed of, most likely through burial on the beach.
“We should suspend all work related to offshore wind development until we can determine the cause of death of these whales, some of which are endangered,” said New Jersey state Sen. Vince Polistina, a Republican who represents the area. “The work related to offshore wind projects is the primary difference in our waters, and it’s hard to believe that the death of (seven) whales on our beaches is just a coincidence.”
Murphy said he does not think pausing offshore wind prep is necessary.
“This is tragic, obviously,” he said.
Murphy cited the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which earlier this week said that no humpback whale — the species accounting for most of the recent whale deaths in New Jersey and New York — has been found to have been killed due to offshore wind activities.
“They have said it’s been happening at an increased rate since 2016, and that was long before there was any offshore wind activity,” the governor said. “It looks like some of these whales have been hit by vessels.”
Orsted, the Danish wind power developer tabbed to build two of the three offshore wind projects approved thus far in the waters off New Jersey, said its current work off the New Jersey coast does not involve using sounds or other actions that could disturb whales.
It did not say what specific type of work it is doing off New Jersey and did not answer that question in an email to The Associated Press on Friday.
The Clean Ocean Action environmental group said such site work typically involves exploring the ocean floor using focused pulses of low-frequency sound in the same frequency that whales hear and communicate, which could potentially harm or disorient the animals.
Brigantine’s mayor, Vince Sera, joined in the call for a temporary halt to offshore wind site prep, as did U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican congressman representing southern New Jersey.
At a news conference Monday in Atlantic City, the groups calling on Biden to probe the deaths said offshore wind developers have applied for authorization to harass or harm as many as 157,000 marine mammals off the two states.
NOAA said 11 such applications are active in the area but involve nonserious injuries or harassment of marine animals, not killing them.
“NOAA Fisheries has not authorized, or proposed to authorize, mortality or serious injury for any wind-related action,” agency spokesperson Lauren Gaches said.
Most of New Jersey’s major environmental groups said this week that they support offshore wind energy.
“The climate crisis demands that we quickly develop renewable energy, and offshore wind is critically important for New Jersey to reach the state’s economic development and environmental justice goals,” the groups said in a statement.
The groups include Clean Water Action, Environment New Jersey, the Sierra Club, New Jersey Audubon, NY/NJ Baykeeper and others.
“Blaming offshore wind projects on whale mortality without evidence is not only irresponsible but overshadows the very real threats of climate change, plastic pollution, and unsustainable fishery management practices to these animals,” said the Sierra Club’s New Jersey director, Anjuli Ramos-Busot.
“We need to base our decision making on science and data, not emotions or assumptions,” added Allison McLeod, policy director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.
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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Whales can have an important but overlooked role in tackling the climate crisis, researchers say
CNN
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The world’s largest whales are more than just astonishing creatures. Much like the ocean, soil and forests, whales can help save humanity from the accelerating climate crisis by sequestering and storing planet-heating carbon emissions, researchers say.
In a paper published Thursday in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, climate researchers suggest that whales are important, but often overlooked, carbon sinks. The enormous size of these marine mammals, which can reach 150 tons, means they can store carbon much more effectively than smaller animals.
And because whales live longer than most animals, some for more than 100 years, the paper said they could be “one of the largest stable living carbon pools” in the ocean. Even when they die, whale carcasses descend to the deepest parts of the sea and settle on the seafloor, trapping the carbon they’ve stored in their stout, protein-rich bodies.
An indirect way whales can be critical carbon sinks is through their feces. Whale poop is rich in nutrients which can be taken up by phytoplankton — tiny organisms that suck up carbon dioxide as they grow. When they die, phytoplankton also sink at the bottom of the seafloor, taking tiny bits of carbon in their carcasses.
The process of carbon sequestration helps mitigate climate change, because it locks away carbon that otherwise would have warmed the planet somewhere else for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Yet whales are threatened, with six out of 13 great whale species classified as endangered or vulnerable due to threats including industrial whaling, which has reduced whale biomass by 81%, as well as entanglement with fishing gear, climate change-induced shifts in prey availability, noise pollution and more.
Heidi Pearson, lead author and researcher at the University of Alaska Southeast, said the research shows that protecting whales has a double benefit — helping to stem the biodiversity crisis as well as human-caused climate change.
The paper puts together all available research about how whales work as critical carbon sinks. As the need grows for nature-based solutions such as tree planting to help solve the climate crisis, Pearson said it is important to understand the ability of whales to trap carbon.
“You can think of protecting whales as a low risk and low regret strategy, because there’s really no downside,” Pearson told CNN. “What if we protect them and get ecosystem benefits in addition to carbon?” She said there was no risk to this strategy compared to other untested, expensive solutions to capturing and trapping carbon, such as geoengineering. There has been much research and analysis into whales’ contribution to carbon storage over the years.
In 2019, economists with the International Monetary Fund attempted to quantify the economic benefits of whales. The first-of-its-kind analysis looked at the market price of carbon dioxide, then calculated the whale’s total monetary value based on how much carbon it captures, in addition to other economic benefits like ecotourism. It put the average value of a great whale at $2 million.
But there remain big gaps in knowledge to fully determine how whale carbon should be used in climate mitigation policies. Asha de Vos, a marine biologist and founder of Oceanswell in Sri Lanka, said it’s important to recognize that whales have “more to offer than their beauty and charisma,” and that protecting them is key to a proper functioning ocean ecosystem.
“But, as the authors suggest, we mustn’t overemphasize the role of whales in these spaces as we do not have sufficient research,” de Vos, who is not involved with the study, told CNN. “Fundamentally, whales will not save our oceans or planet on their own, but they likely play a role in the larger system.”
As Pearson continues to research whale carbon in Alaska, particularly delving into the indirect pathways in which whales can be carbon sinks, she said she hopes the current paper pushes policymakers to consider whales as a significant part of climate mitigation strategies.
It’s another layer that links the biodiversity crisis to the climate crisis — but for now, Pearson said she and a team will go back out in the field to fully quantify the carbon impact of whales.
“Whales aren’t a silver bullet to saving the planet; it’s just one small thing that we could do amidst many other things we need to do for climate change,” Pearson said. “We just need to get the scientific story straight.”
Whales euthanized in New Zealand after washing up on Chatham Islands
Many of the whales were already dead, but the remaining ones had to be euthanized to minimize their suffering because they could not be put back into the water, the department added. That operation ended Wednesday, it said.
“This is a sad event for the team and the community,” Dave Lundquist, a technical adviser to the conservation department, said in a statement, adding that representatives of tribes that inhabit Chatham Island “were present to support” the department’s efforts. “Many people” were “affected” by the terrible scenes, he said.
Some 200 whales died just two weeks ago after stranding themselves on the west coast of Tasmania, an Australian island southeast of the mainland.
Efforts to save the whales that were not already dead when they washed up on the Chatham Islands were made more difficult by the archipelago’s remote location and the predators roaming the waters that surround it, the department said.
“We do not actively refloat whales on the Chatham Islands due to the risk of shark attack to humans and the whales themselves, so euthanasia was the kindest option,” Lundquist said.
Experts don’t always know why whales wash up on land, but it’s a relatively common occurrence that can also affect other marine animals such as dolphins. A “mass stranding” involves at least two animals, unless it involves a mother and calf. Pilot whales in particular are “prolific stranders,” according to the conservation department.
The largest mass stranding recorded on the Chatham Islands involved nearly 1,000 whales and happened more than 100 years ago, the department said.
The archipelago is extremely remote — it takes about two hours to fly from New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, to Chatham Islands Tuuta Airport — and “limited communications and challenging logistics” make operating there difficult, the department added.
When whales that strand themselves are not already dead or seriously injured, conservationists will in some cases work to “refloat” them into the water. This involves keeping the whales cool and wet on land to stabilize them before carrying them back into the ocean using tarpaulins or large floating platforms.
Because pilot whales are social mammals, their instinct is to stay with their pods; they might collectively strand themselves in an effort to help one injured whale or beach themselves even after they are refloated if they hear a whale’s distress call from land.
“So even when you got some animals successfully into deeper waters, it’s not uncommon for them to turn tail and come straight back in,” Karen Stockin, a marine biology researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, told The Washington Post in 2020.
In September, 32 whales were refloated outside Macquarie Harbor in Tasmania after the stranding there. The island’s Parks and Wildlife Service said several of them re-stranded that night. It said it would work to “re-float and release the remaining live whales.”
Lundquist said Wednesday that “all the stranded pilot whales are now deceased, and their bodies will be allowed to decompose naturally.”
“These events are tough, challenging situations,” the conservation department’s Chatham Islands team said in a statement. “Although they are natural occurrences, they are still sad and difficult for those helping.”
500 pilot whales die in mass strandings in New Zealand’s remote Chatham Islands
CNN
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Hundreds of pilot whales have died after becoming stranded near the shark-infested waters of a remote island chain in the South Pacific, according to rescue teams and conservationists.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation told CNN nearly 500 whales washed up in the Chatham Islands, 840 kilometers (520 miles) east of the main South Island, in two separate mass stranding events reported by residents over the weekend.
Dave Lundquist, a marine technical adviser for the department, said it does not attempt to refloat stranded whales in the area due to the risk of shark attacks to both people and the whales. The surviving whales were euthanized to prevent further suffering, he said.
“This decision is never taken lightly, but in cases like this it is the kindest option,” Lundquist said.
Daren Grover, general manager of rescue organization Project Jonah, said most of the pilot whales were already dead when they came ashore, and the survivors were in poor health.
“Having such a high number of whales in one location is unusual, but it’s certainly not unheard of,” he said.
In addition to the risk posed by sharks, it was “almost impossible” for rescue teams to travel to the Chatham Islands on short notice, he said, compounding the difficulty of saving the whales.
The mass stranding incident comes less than a month after about 200 pilot whales died on the coast of Tasmania in Australia.
It’s common for pilot whales to become stranded but the behavior is not well understood, according to the Department of Conservation. Most scientists believe that individual whales strand because they are diseased and coming to the end of their natural lifespan.
The Chatham Islands, which are home to about 600 people, are among the top three “stranding hotspots” in New Zealand. In 1918, the archipelago saw the biggest recorded stranding in the country of about 1,000 pilot whales, according to the department.