Just when Malcolm Smith, a New Zealand Conservation Department officer was thinking all would be lost, he received help for a familiar Mahia beach local. That local’s name is Moko, a female bottlenose dolphin.
Smith said he as he became cold, wet and tired Moko came to the rescue of the two whales. She seemed to communicate something to them and then guided the whales to safety.
Smith thinks Moko’s intervention with the whales did make the difference between life and death for them. Smith had tried to push the pair back out to sea, but they were having nothing to do with that action.
Moko is best known for playing with local swimmers and pushing kayaks through the water with her snout.
Smith said the dolphin made contact with the whales and “basically escorted them about 200 yards parallel with the beach to the edge of the sandbar. Then she did a right-angle turn through quite a narrow channel and escorted them out to sea.”
The two haven’t been seen since Monday but, Moko is back to her playful antics.
The esoteric opportunity to ‘think about whales’ linking man with the whales and the oceans? Essay contests winning the President Prize of the Ishinomaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry written by a second grader?
All this and more can be found at the Japan whaling Association website.
I came across this website while doing research on the Australian Governments use of the Airbus A319’s first whaling surveillance mission.
With all the tensions growing and turmoil surrounding Japan’s dogged pursuit of it’s “scientific” whaling program I had to wonder why they continue to sail in such politically charged and unpopular waters. After all, what could possibly be learned from 900 dead minke that wasn’t learned from the first 35?
In the name of ’science’ isn’t even a clever cover-up. Not many are buying that thinly sliced excuse, but they may just be buying some thinly sliced whale meat. Waxing nostalgic for her school lunches, Chizue Yamagiwa, cooking expert, most fondly remembers “whale cutlet,” “fried whale meat,” and “whale soup.”
Yamagiwa says, “Thinking simply, there is nothing wrong in adding whales to our food options, which include poultry, pork and beef.” She goes on that as it is beginning to become quite chilly she will cook kujira-jiru, whale pot, in the evening. She describes it as a beautiful, colorful dish with the red and white of whale bacon and the green of the radish sprouts. She says, “I am sure it will invite me to more cups of sake this evening.”
Is whaling really a cultural issue or is it a propaganda issue? To borrow words from Ms. Yamagiwa, “Thinking simply” I’m thinking it may just be a commercial code kind of issue.
One thing is certain from my vantage point. I’d have to have more than “more cups of sake” to garner the ability to sit down to a steaming bowl of whale bacon soup.
Don’t miss this window into the thinking of the Japanese Whaling Association.
Adm. Robert F. Willard, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander appears to be in lock-step with with an administration that prefers to operate with the wool pulled over his eyes, or worse an administration that believes it can operate freely by pulling the wool over the eyes of its citizens.
In just one more example, that points to the fact George Orwell was a card-carrying-visionary, we are being asked to swallow ‘revisionist history’.
Willard has stated there is no scientific basis to believe navy sonar is having any affect on sea mammals! The U.S. navy is funding a portion of a $3 million dollar study to determine what if any affect their sonar has on the Beaked Whales, formerly around the Big Island of Hawaii. Formerly? Beaked whales were only spotted 2 times in 17 days off the Kona coast.
$3 million dollars is approximately the cost of 15 minutes…yes, 15 minutes of war in Iraq. Remarkably we are being asked to applaud a 3 million dollar study!
I challenge the twice-speak being dished out by Willard “The frustration and challenge is that we are being asked to put mitigating procedures into place, or to not operate and restrict our freedom of operations, without any foundation whatsoever,” There is a foundation, there is scientific evidence, there is solid and historic data proving military and commercial sonar does have a deleterious affect on sea mammals.
Any 5 year old, would be able to tell you he, wouldn’t make it through his preschool class wearing a blindfold.
It has long been known that whales navigate their terrain using a complicated system of sonar. Sounds are analyzed by a structure in their heads called the ‘melon’. We know for a fact that the sounds produced by whales are used to communicate as well as navigate. The water amplifies the sounds emitted by the whales and these sounds can carry for many hundreds of miles.
In 2005, after listening to the ’songs’ of the whale for 9 long years, Dr. Christopher Clark, Cornell University said, “We now have evidence that they (whales) are communicating with each other over THOUSANDS of miles of ocean….”
The whales use a ‘mental’ map of the sea beds they have charted by sonar, just in the same way ships map the unseen terrain of the sea.
The notion that navy and commercial sonar is adversely affecting all sorts of sea creatures in not a new one and in fact dates back several decades. For us to be asked to again swallow that this concept is one in its infancy is another insult.
If they say it, it must be so? Give us a collective break!
7 years ago several beaked whales washed ashore in the Bahamas. These whales were hemorrhaging blood into their skulls; they beached themselves and died. Why? Another unsolved mystery? The U.S navy was conducting exercises, at that time, in that area, using high intensity sonar!
Did the use of ‘high intensity sonar have anything to do with the injuries and deaths of those whales?
The only US-Indian treaty that expressly gives a tribe the right to hunt whales as well as seals is the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. In the late 1920’s the Makah themselves suspended whaling because the population of Gray Whales had become so diminished from commercial whaling that began in the mid-ninetieth century,
The Gray Whale was placed on the federal endangered species list essentially banning the hunt for Gray Whales by anyone. The Makah’s had already stopped whaling in the 20’s so the ban had no relevant point to the tribe at that time.
When the Gray was removed from the endangered species list, in 1994, the point became one of the US federal government’s responsibility to live up to the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. As it was determined that the population of the Gray Whales was at a healthy number, a lawsuit was brought against NOAA fisheries in 1997 which led to the Makah’s being granted a quota of 5 ’strikes’ per year until 2002. The quota of 5 was set by the ‘whaling commission’.
The Makah resumed whaling in 1998. It is widely recognized that the tribe has only taken one whale since then, which was an adult female taken in 1999. An agreement was reached that after the quota period expired in 2002 the Makah would have to obtain a waiver before a hunt. So in February 2005 the Makah did just that…The US government is ‘reviewing the Tribe’s request’.
Is it reasonable for the federal government to take more than 3 1/2 years to review the Makah request to grant or deny the waiver?
Was Saturdays strike on the Gray Whale by some members of the Makah tribe a direct result of the frustration felt by having to wait more than 43 months for the thumbs up or down from the government?
The Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr, is afraid Saturday’s killing of the Gray Whale will affect the Makah’s case to be granted their waiver, and reaffirms the tribe did not authorize the killing of the whale over the weekend. He promises to prosecute ‘those responsible’.
Of the 5 men detained and later released on bail 2 of them were participants in the legal 1999 hunt. One of the men said he wasn’t ashamed of what he had done, and he was feeling ‘kind of proud’ and that he should have done it years ago.
Brian Gorman, A spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that has taken 43 months to review the Makah request for a waiver said he does not believe Saturday’s whale killing will affect the tribe’s application.
What a sad state of affairs. The whale, now at the bottom of the sea, serving no one and 5 men facing fines of up to $20,000.00 each and a year in prison.
As is common when stories break there are several conflicting sides to this one. More information coming points to the fact that the Gray Whale that was shot by Makah tribe members was in fact intangled in fishing lines at the time it was shot.
As explained at the Makah website, modern day hunting is done with a spear from a 36 foot canoe.which is carved from a single cedar log. A harpooner in the bow of the canoe uses a steel harpoon mounted on a wooden shaft about 7 feet long. This is connected by ropes to buoys and then to the canoe. A rifleman using a .50 caliber rifle is then expected to ‘dispatch’, immediately kill, the whale by shooting it in the back or base of the skull.
Clearly the manner in which the Makah’s have outlined, as their methods for taking a whale, are the same reasons conflicting reports are being recounted by witness’s.
In aerial photos taken of this incident there are clearly orange buoys strings behind the injured Gray Whale, also a harpoon is clearly visible. Are these buoys in fact those that would be connected to the actual harpoon, and not a fishing net? Also are the reports of the whale being shot with a .50 caliber machine gun in fact in error and did the shots come from the Makah chaseboat and a .50 caliber rifle?
In any case reports are that the whale lived an agonizing 10 hours after being shot before dying. Was the slow death of the Gray Whale due to the interrupted hunt by the Coast Guard? All is speculation at this point, but one thing is clear; the whale should never have been allowed by any party to suffer a 10 hour death.
One thing is clear: This is a bad deal for all involved.
The Gray whale that died June 3, in Metchosin after beaching himself probably died from starvation. This young guy was the 5th dead whale, 3 of which were Gray whales, to show up in the area. It was a bad month for the Gray whales.
Dr. Stephen Raverty told The Vancouver Sun he didn’t believe there was a pattern of whale deaths emerging and that it was probably a coincidence…Probably because their bodies weren’t sinking…Probably because they were showing up in more accessible places. Raverty said, “this animal is quite emaciated. It probably starved…”
Probably. I’m not a rocket scientist, I’m not a Gray whale or Grey whale expert, but how many dead gray whales or other species does it take to make a pattern? Pattern or not, one thing is certain; the sea is not a safe place for sea creatures.
A Gray whale washed up in Boundary Bay on May 17th, and a few days later another Gray whale died on the beaches of the Oregon coast.
The dead Oregon Gray whale was a female 5-10 years old. She may have starved to death too. Adding insult to injury, this poor thing was stripped of her baleen on the right side of her jaw after she died. Someone also took parts of her body and skin proving some people have no respect for the dead, let alone the living. In the USA taking marine mammal parts is a federal crime.
Biologists have speculated the emaciated Gray whales had reached their ‘carrying capacity’. Their migration back and forth from Baja California to breed and birth, to the Arctic Circle to eat, requires a huge amount of energy. They need refueling that used to come from the previously nutrient rich, shallow waters of the Chirikov Basin in the north Bering Sea.
Global Warming is having a huge impact on marine health, and the future doesn’t look rosy for the Gray whales. Loss of habitat for food sources are only one cause for alarm, there may loom an even bigger threat from the US, Canada and even Russia to the Gray whale. We’ll look at that tomorrow it’s a biggy.
Gray whales that have been feeding in the Northern Bering Sea for thousands of years are finding their favorite food is disappearing.
In June The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) counted 1,018 Gray whale calves passing Point Piedras Blancas off the California coast. That number being up from 2001 when only 945 were counted. That sounds like a good thing until we find out more and more of them are looking ’skinny’.
These fattened numbers lead Wayne Perryman, NOAA biologist to tell the Chronicle “In the short term, they (Gray whales) appear to be doing well based on our monitoring of reproduction, but we really don’t know how the long-term warming trend is going to affect this population.”
Well, now scientists are getting a better understanding of how Global Warming is affecting these animals. In May a Canadian researcher said the Gray whales in the eastern Pacific were “facing starvation”.
William Megill, from Earthwatch, reported finding Gray whales off the coast of Mexico “that were starving” over this past winter. In 1993 their numbers were reported as being in the 25,000 range while this year those numbers have fallen to about 18,000.
Eastern Pacific Gray whales eat small shrimp, which live at the bottom of the Bering Sea. These tasty fatty amphipods have all but disappeared, Global Warming being the the ultimate culprit.
Researchers say the warmer El Nino weather of 1998 and 1999 reduced oxygen levels, resulting in fewer tiny crustaceans for whales to dine upon.
The Gray whales that migrate from Mexico to the Bering Sear are stopping along the way to munch down on foods less high in fat content. These non-traditional food sources are also leaving the whales open to new types of parasites. This could be accounting for the ’skinny whales syndrome’. The skinny Gray whales were first spotted this winter off the coast of Baja California where they breed and nurse their calves before their summer trip to the Arctic.
One of the reasons for the disappearing amphipods is the loss of ice and warming waters in the north. The warmer waters are inviting new types of fish to migrate further north causing even the oceans to now have an immigration problem. The new immigrants are in turn eating more of the tiny shrimp leaving less food for the Gray whales.
The tiny amphipods are disappearing not only because there are more ‘customers’ dining in the Bering Sea, but because they are also being starved out. The amphipods eat an alga that rains down from mats that hang below ice sheets.
Warmer waters, fewer ice sheets and less algae is a recipe for an Eco-system in crisis. The Gray whales are in trouble.
The old joke ‘if you want to feel like a real woman, then wash this shirt and get me a beer’ may actually have more truth to it than we previously thought.
I don’t mean to imply men don’t do laundry. But, the constant contact with household cleaners usually does fall upon the human female. So it’s remarkable to find a connection between a class of toxic chemicals widely used in household detergents and the feminization of male fish.
This development has been studied for about the last 10 years. Nonylphenol ethoxylates, (NPE) known as estrogenic, means contact with this chemical will actually stimulate the production of estrogen.
There’s some irony! Maybe washing shirts really does make me feel more like a woman.
I don’t know if the mature male fish that carry eggs in their testes exhibit female behavior, but eggs in the reproductive system is definitely a female trait.
Canada and Europe have tighter restrictions imposed on the use of NPEs than the US.
In the US the answer to the use of these toxic class chemicals appears to be awarding certificates, maybe bronze plaques to companies that voluntarily commit to the use of safer substitutes for NPEs. How’s that for feminization? Why not a nice scrapbook page for their memory book too?
Voluntarily reducing the use of toxic chemicals is a ‘good thing’ as Martha Stewart would say. Procter & Gamble and Unilever have voluntarily substituted NPE’s with other chemicals in their products. Wal-Mart is still trying to hop on the green-train by rewarding companies it does business with that find alternatives to NPEs.
The Sierra Club thinks it’s time the EPA takes action to restrict or ban the use of this class of chemical.
Feminized or intersex fish have been found nearly everywhere. This leads me to agree with the idea that more than on estrogen stimulating, endocrine blocking chemical is being introduced into the environment and in more than one way.
Meanwhile, male salmon are loosing their urge to swim up stream, and becoming more amiable to staying home with the kids and keeping house.
More tomorrow on Phthalates, Nonylphenol ethoxylates, the Feminization of Marine life and the Human Male.
International laws without teeth are useless. Unless and until we can find a way to enforce laws protecting our oceans, our seas and their habitat the rapid decline or our planet will continue.
Our representivites and our governments work for us. Think about that for a moment. We are in charge, we need to demand that when a law is passed there also is passed a way to enforce that law, and to fund the enforcement of that law. Passing any law without funding or a plan for enforcement should be illegal.
Nearly 35% of all whales found dead show signs of being hit by ships. These injuries include huge, horrible, deep gashes and blunt force trauma.
At greatest risk for injuries from ocean going vessels are the calves. Underdeveloped diving skills cause them to be more vulnerable. In some species ship strikes are the largest known cause of death.
Shockingly hundreds of these strikes go unreported. The small amounts that are reported are generally exposed when ships coming into ports are pushing a whale carcass pinned to their prows.
There are a variety of reasons whales are suffering from these hit and run accidents. Underwater noise levels have reached deafening levels making it nearly impossible for whales to hear approaching ships.
Meanwhile two dead whales, a young grey and an orca, have washed ashore in the space of a week at Nootka Sound and Boundary Bay only last week. Are they just the latest victims of hit and run?
Marty Haulena of the Vancouver Aquarium says most of the last five orcas to die in B.C. waters were the victims of some sort of ship strike.Necropsy reports provided little in the stranding of a mind boggling 33 pilot whales and 1 minke on a single day, January 14, 2005 near Oregon Inlet North Carolina USA. The following day 2 dwarf sperm whales stranded north of Cape Hatteras, N.C.
Over the past decade NOAA Fisheries Services scientists have concluded parasites, viral infections, biotoxins, acute noise in the oceans and traumatic injuries due to ship strikes are being counted among the reasons for sea mammal stranding.
What is the reason these hits are not being reported?Forcing ships to cut engine props while traveling across known migration routes would cut into industry’s bottom line. These engines cut deeply into marine mammals killing and wounding untold numbers daily.
For business the bottom line is a living.For whales the bottom line is living.
