"Blerg," says the whale
Courtesy Michael CATANZARITIA Caribbean whale of an as of yet undetermined species did its best to humanely end the ridiculous lives of two British millionaires, but the attempt was ultimately unsuccessful.
By either striking the 47-foot yacht, or shrewdly allowing the yacht to strike it, the whale placed a small hole in the $245,000 boat, which began to slowly fill with the warm, salty water surrounding the British Virgin Islands.
After feeble attempts at stuffing pillows into the hole, the couple retreated to the lifeboat to preserve their ludicrous existence. One of the humans did, however, briefly return to the damaged and sinking vessel for a change of clothes, not wanting to be seen in her “sailing boots and shorts” when rescued. No doubt overcome with depression by this final site, the whale made no further attempts to separate the sailors from their lives.
An equally ridiculous pair of yacht owners rescued the shipwrecked couple some hours later. The whale has not been reached for comment. (It’s probably dead anyway.)
Tags : Those darn sperm whales: Video captures them stealing a free lunch
Sperm whales might just be those mean kids of the ocean who shake you down for your lunch money. Or, they may simply be pretty smart hunters who've figured out how to get the better of human technology and steal fish off of commercial fishing lines in the ocean. Watch some amazing video (below) of a sperm whale "cleaning off" a fishing line.
Here's a link to the National Geographic report on this phenomenon.
Whale watching: Crittercam reverses the viewpoint on ocean behemoths
One of the best afternoons of my life was spent on a boat off of Cape Cod watching humpback whales frolicking. Now, in the video below, the roles are reversed thanks to the "Crittercam." The new technology used to give us an animal's-eye-view of the world has been strapped on a humpback to show us what they see in the waters. Enjoy.
After being hunted nearly to extinction a century ago, the North Atlantic right whale is starting to make a comeback. Though still critically endangered, it's population has tripled in recent years, and this year has already shattered the record for live births.
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its ruling on the sonar conflict between the U.S. Navy and Pacific ocean whales. You're happy if you're the Navy, sad if you're a whale. Here's the link to the initial report of the case from earlier this fall.
Pipe down: What's causing all this noise we're hearing down here under the water?
Courtesy Whit Welles“Hey, quiet down up there. We can’t hear a thing down here.”
No, it’s not the lament of some landlord who’s rented out the upper level apartment to a rock-and-roll loving tenant. It’s a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court right now pitting whales off the coast of California against the U.S. Navy.
Justices heard oral arguments yesterday on the case. Environmentalists are challenging the Navy’s claim to perform training exercises along the California coast which use extensive and strong sonar transmissions. The sound waves of those sonar blasts can harm whales and other marine mammals, petitioners contend, with sounds that can be up to 2,000 times louder than a jet engine. Some scientists feel that sounds that loud can cause whales to lose hearing loss, bleed on the brain and possibly lead to mass strandings on beaches.
Decision spot: The U.S. Supreme Court is the site of a pending decision pitting U.S. Navy sonar training exercises against the health of marine mammals like whales.
Courtesy Thor CarlsonThe Navy says that strong sonar level is critical to be able to detect submarines that can elude weaker modes of sonar.
Based on justices’ questions and reactions, however, it appears that court is leaning toward siding with the Navy and national security concerns.
Here’s a full report on yesterday’s court session. Justices were pretty upfront in stating their lack of expertise in mammal biology and national defense matters.
So if you had to decide on this conflict, where would you come down on this question? Does the health and a comfort of whales trump national security? Is loud sonar just an unfortunate byproduct of keeping our national interests safe? Share your thoughts here with other Buzz readers.
Could it be?: Precious ambergris? Or just beach cheese.
Courtesy saraeOh, Fergie, you’ve ruined my life. And music.
Anyway, New Zealand seems to be a little grosser these days. Several huge, greasy “lumps” have been found on the shores of the North Island in the last week, leaving locals confused, disgusted, and hopeful that a fortune in whale puke is right around the corner. (This may be the default feeling for kiwis, but I don’t follow the news there enough to say for sure.)
The 1000-pound lumps are whitish, lard-like, and a little smelly. The dogs of the beachcombers who first discovered the objects were reportedly reluctant to touch or eat the material, which is a strange thing for a dog that has found something on the beach.
Locals were quick to assume that the lumps could be precious ambergris, highly valuable whale vomit used in cosmetics, and were seen hacking chunks off of the mystery blobs. Their retirements, they reckoned, would be full of featherbeds and yams. (Again, I’m sorry, I just don’t know what New Zealanders are into.)
Ambergris’ name comes from the French for “grey amber” (as opposed to “brown amber,” fossilized tree sap), and is in fact, for those of you behind on your cetology, sperm whale puke. Sperm whales, like the rest of us, love to puke. And it’s important that your average sperm whale gets a good puke in now and again to eject any sand or stones they might have taken in over the course of… you know, I don’t really understand sperm whales any more than New Zealanders. But somehow they get grit in them, and they regularly and easily hurl it out. It seems, however, that some materials, like the beaks of cuttlefish and squid, are particularly irritating to whale guts, and something different happens—a special puke. It’s not known if the ambrein (the fragrant main ingredient in ambergris) comes from the beaks themselves, or if the chemical comes from the whale’s digestive process acting on the offending materials, but eventually a big ball of pasty goo is formed inside the whale, ready to be puked out. The ambergris initially smells pretty foul, but after floating around for a while, and being hardened and broken down by sunlight, it becomes a very complex and valuable material. Depending on the quality, it can fetch up to $15,000 per kg from perfume makers, to be used as a high-quality fixative.
Giant squids come in, I like to think, as an appropriate source for this bizarre, valuable material. Sperm whales are, after all, the prime predators of the giant squid, and giant squid have awfully big, gut-irritating beaks. It’s a link I like to make.
Anyhow, a lot of New Zealanders were set on making their fortune with this so-called whale puke. Ambergris, however, is said to burn with a blue flame when lit, and give off a pleasant aroma. When the mystery material was subjected to this test “it just melted and really stank.” Ooh. Ouch.
After this revelation, guesses on the material compositions were downgraded from ambergris to lard or cheese—“possibly brie.” The lumps are, it should be noted, about the size and shape of 44-gallon drums, which should have been a tip-off. But whatever.
Science Buzz Creature Spotlight: The Crocowhale
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
The Ambulocetus: Not looking very fearsome at the moment, but it's thinking horrible, horrible thoughts.
Courtesy ArthurWeasleyIt’s Friday, y’all, and you know what that means!
No, not falling asleep at a booth in Applebee’s (should have gone to TGIF, right?)!
No, not a methadone suppository (not from me, anyway)!
And, no, not matching butterfly tattoos (that’s a Saturday thing)!
What’s left? Why a Science Buzz creature feature, of course! Sure, Friday has never been Creature Spotlight day before, sure, and, yes, it’s unlikely that I’ll remember to do it next Friday… But, hey, we’re Buzzketeers, right? We live in the now.
And so, with a small current science introduction, the creature of the week:
The crocowhale* (also known as ambulocetus, or “walking whale”).
If you’re keeping up on your cetacean evolution paleontology, you might have noticed this story recently. The ancestors of whales, paleontologists are quite certain, were land animals. Finding the evolutionary steps of their return to the water has been a challenge, however.
The distant ancestors of whales were carnivorous ungulates (ungulates are hoofed animals), that probably looked a little like dogs (with hooves). At some point these creatures began adapting to live and hunt in and around the water, eventually evolving into fully aquatic species.
Living vertebrates that swim employ a variety of propulsion methods. Several swimming styles seem to develop in sequence as a group of animals becomes more fully adapted to living in the water: swimming with four legs, paddling with just the back legs, undulation of the hips, undulation of the tale, and finally oscillation of the tail. The sequence of whale ancestor fossils seemed to follow this pattern (with modern whales having lost their hind legs to propel themselves with just their tails), except that for a long time it appeared that the step of swimming by hip undulation.
Recent fossil discoveries, however, show a whale ancestor that appeared to have a long fluke-less tail (it didn’t have big tail fins, like a modern whale), along with long hind legs and large, webbed feet. The skeleton seems to indicate that this creature would have propelled itself by undulating its hips, using its webbed hind feet as hydrofoils. And so, la de da, we have an important step in whale evolution in the bag. But, for the creature spotlight, we’re going back a couple branches in the cetacean family tree.
Before the group had evolved to the point of the hip wiggler above (called georgiacetus, by the way), there was the ambulocetus. Ambulocetus was a creature that probably still spent some of its time on land. It was about 10 feet long, and moved around on short, powerful legs. With its eyes and nostrils located on top of its long head, it probably looked something like a furry crocodile. Indeed, paleontologists think that ambulocetus probably acted very much like a crocodile, and filled a similar ecological niche.
Ambulocetus could have waited for large prey almost entirely submerged in shallow water, with only its eyes and nostrils breaking the surface. When something worthwhile came down to the water’s edge, it could have launched its body out of the water with its particularly powerful hind legs, ambushing its prey. The ambulocetus would have then dragged its struggling meal back into the water, and waited for it to drown. Yes! Crocowhale!
Here’s a cool illustration of ambulocetus in action.
* “Crocowhale” is a brand new term, and while I’m all for you using it in everyday life, don’t put it in any biology papers or anything. Yet.
Whale in action: Whale watching off the coast of Iceland
Courtesy Jake RyanRecently discovered fossils of a previously known species of early whale called Georgiacetus vogltlensis are giving new insight into how whales eventually developed tail flukes.
Paleontologist Mark D. Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History at The University of Alabama found the fossils in Alabama and Mississippi. Georgiacetus lived 42 million years ago during the Eocene epoch. It was about 11 feet in length and had four limbs, although its rear leg bones weren’t attached to its body and were probably worthless for walking. (The Buzz's ARTifactor covered an earlier story about whales and their legs you can view here).
The new fossils contained previously unknown bones in Georgiacetus’s tail region. Study of the additional tailbones show that the whale ancestor had no fluke. It did, however, have large back feet, and appears to have propelled itself in much the same way modern whales do by undulating its hips in a wave motion.
"When whales move their flukes through the water, it creates a force to move them forward. Georgiacetus is doing something similar with its feet,” Dr. Uhen said.
Swimming vertebrates employ a number of swimming methods, such as paddling with all four limbs, paddling with only the back limbs, tail wiggling, and tail oscillation, and undulation of the hips. The last method – hip undulation - was thought to have been skipped by whales during their evolution, but this new fossil evidence shows otherwise.
The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published Uhen’s study in its recent issue.
LINKS
Story in JVP
Story on Fossil Science
Fox News story
Lots of links about whales and whale evolution
Mmmm...that's good eatin': It takes less energy to harvest seafood, including whale, than to raise animals on a farm.
Courtesy Sparky Leigh
The Norwegian whaling lobby has released a study, comparing how much energy is required to produce a pound of whale meat vs. a pound of beef, chicken, or other livestock. The results: one pound of chicken produces 2.4 times as much greenhouse gas as one pound of whale meat; pork produces 3.4 times as much; and beef 8.3 times as much.
Greenpeace quickly pointed out that this has nothing to do with whales themselves; all farm-raised meat requires a lot of energy. Catching fish and other seafood produce similar amounts of gas. Many whale species are threatened or endangered, and protected by international treaties. Nations that do a lot of whaling object to these restrictions.
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