Drone footage captures rare Bryde’s whale mother and baby feeding. There are only about 200 of the creatures known to swim in those waters.

HOSTILE WATERS | Namu was Ted Griffin’s greatest prize, a live killer whale, put on display at Seattle’s waterfront. The orca’s journey from wild to captive would spark a worldwide sensation and change everything we knew about "blackfish."

A thought provoking examination of our relationship with whales and the environment.

beach instruction

Jodie Lowe 2

Leigh Mansfield

beach training

Scientists have spent two years carrying out tests using decomposing whale flesh to test the common perception that buried carcasses attract sharks to beaches.

Tuna spotters, flying above the Bight to tell fishers where to steer their boats, have started working with whale researchers to help them take stock of populations.

With efforts to ban orca captivity gaining momentum around the world, some experts say it's time to stop treating dolphins "like dogs".

With sadness weve left the South Georgia Islands behind. We can imagine that many a passenger have felt similar emotions and in an effort to buoy our spirits Quark threw a BBQ on the aft deck What kind of craziness is this A bit frigid but stimulati

Swimming with Whales off Tonga

Researchers tracked changes in the crocodilian creatures’ inner ears to learn how they moved into the sea

The 61-year-old, who led NPB in home runs in 1988, is enjoying his new role in charge of the Wei Chuan Dragons, who will join ...

Healthy grey whales are four times more likely to become stranded when solar activity produces lots of radio noise, suggesting solar storms may be blinding their ability to sense magnetic fields

Fredrik Christiansen, Kate R. Sprogis, Jasmin Gross, Juliana Castrillon, Hunter A. Warick, Eva Leunissen, and Susan Bengtson Nash

An animal's body condition provides valuable information for ecophysiological studies, and is an important measure of fitness in population monitoring and conservation. While both the external body shape of an animal and its internal tissues (i.e. fat content) can be used as a measure of body condition, the relationship between the two is not always linear. We compared the morphological body condition (external metric obtained through aerial photogrammetry) of migrating humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) with their outer blubber lipid concentration (internal metric obtained through blubber biopsy sampling) off the coast of south-west Australia early and late in the breeding season (spanning ~4.5 months). The external body condition index of juvenile and adult humpback whales decreased by 26.9 (from 18.8% to –8.1%) and 12.0 percentage points (from 8.6% to –3.4%), respectively, between the early and late phase. In contrast, we found no intra-seasonal change in blubber lipid concentration, and no difference between reproductive classes (juveniles, adults and lactating females); however, the small sample size prevented us from effectively testing these effects. Importantly, however, in the 33 animals for which paired metrics were obtained, we found no correlation between the morphometric body condition index and the blubber lipid concentration of individual whales. The lack of a linear relationship suggests that changes in outer blubber lipid concentration do not reflect external changes in body shape, thus limiting the utility of outer blubber lipid reserves for individual body condition evaluation. The wider spectrum of change in body morphometry captured with aerial photogrammetry supports the use of body morphometry as a reliable and well-tested method.

Annebelle C. M. Kok, Lisette van Kolfshoten, James A. Campbell, Alexander M. von Benda-Beckmann, Patrick J. O. Miller, Hans Slabbekoorn, and Fleur Visser

Group-living animals must communicate to stay in contact. In long-finned pilot whales, there is a trade-off between the benefits of foraging individually at depth and the formation of tight social groups at the surface. Using theoretical modelling and empirical data of tagged pairs within a group, we examined the potential of pilot whale social calls to reach dispersed group-members during foraging periods. Both theoretical predictions and empirical data of tag pairs showed a potential for communication between diving and non-diving group members over separation distances up to at least 385 m (empirical) and 1800 m (theoretical). These distances are at or exceeding pilot whale dive depths recorded across populations. Call characteristics and environmental characteristics were analysed to investigate determinants of call detectability. Longer calls with a higher sound pressure level (SPL) that were received in a quieter environment were more often detected than their shorter, lower SPL counterparts within a noisier environment. In a noisier environment, calls were louder and had a lower peak frequency, indicating mechanisms for coping with varying conditions. However, the vulnerability of pilot whales to anthropogenic noise is still of concern as the ability to cope with increasing background noise may be limited. Our study shows that combining propagation modelling and actual tag recordings provides new insights into the communicative potential for social calls in orientation and reunion with group members for deep-diving pilot whales.

They have been living in a temporary facility for the past year to train them to use rocks for exfoliation and fatten them for the cooler temperatures.

For the second year in a row, the Government of Canada is enacting restrictions to help protect the southern resident killer whale population.

Whale and iceberg season has come early, but the local tourism industry has been forced to press pause.

A California woman pleaded guilty to illegally feeding killer whales in the wild this Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, Calif.

The dead ones washing up on beaches are "just the tip of the iceberg."

The blue whale, is the largest animal ever known to have lived on the planet. Here’s what you need to know about the majestic marine mammal.

Turns out whales have been contributing to rejuvenating the ocean ecosystem this whole time!

Just what the Great Lakes needs, more aquatic invasives. We're worrying about Asian carp and now we have whales? Whales in the Great Lakes, on Lake Superior? Well, "whale burps" have been found

Economists with the IMF crunched the numbers to quantify the economic value of a whale's life; what they found is astonishing.

Already suffering a perilous decline, the deaths of 4 North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence this month doesn't bode well for the species.

Nine of these giant endangered animals have died recently; all at roughly the same time and place. What’s going on?

Experts from Oregon State University found that feeding on the ocean's surface plays an important role in the hunt for food among New Zealand blue whales.

The newly discovered species of whale was found as a 'near intact' skeleton in the Wadi Al Hitan World Heritage Site in the Western Desert of Egypt in 2007.

Wednesday will mark the beginning of Norway's whaling season. Ships will target minke whales living along the country's fjord-lined coastline. Demand for whale meat in the country has declined.

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2019]

Online Resource

Scientists aboard the NOAA research vessel Fulmar study the marine heath of the waters off San Francisco by sampling water and krill–humpback and blue whales' favorite meal.

According to a new study, whales didn't grow big just because they could. They did it because of climate change.

This week, we chat about a surprising reason why killer whales undergo menopause, flipping a kill switch in mice with lasers, and Fukushima residents who measured their own radiation exposure[link tk], with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Stephen Elledge about the relationship between chromosomal abnormalities in tumors and immunotherapy for cancer.   Listen to previous podcasts.   [Image: Copyright Kenneth Balcomb Center for Whale Research; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

This week we have stories on strange dimming at a not-so-distant star, sending sperm to the International Space Station, and what the fossil record tells us about how baleen whales got so ginormous with Online News Editor David Grimm. Julia Rosen talks to Scott Bolton about surprises in the first data from the Juno mission, including what Jupiter’s poles look like and a peak under its outer cloud layers. Listen to previous podcasts.  [Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Science has often treated Indigenous people as resources for research—especially when it comes to genomics. Now, Indigenous people are exploring how this type of study can be conducted in a way that respects their people and traditions. Meagan Cantwell talks with contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about a summer workshop for Indigenous scientists that aims to start a new chapter in genomics. We’ve known for decades that PCBs—polychlorinated biphenyls—are toxic and carcinogenic. In the 1970s and 1980s, these compounds were phased out of use in industrial and electronic applications, worldwide. But they are still in the environment—in soil and air—and in animal tissues, particularly those of killer whales. These toxic compounds start out at minute levels in tiny organisms, but as the small are eaten by the slightly larger, the PCB concentration increases—from plankton, to fish, to seals—until you are at killer whales with PCB-packed blubber. Ailsa Hall, director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St. Andrews University in the United Kingdom, talks with host Sarah Crespi about her group’s work measuring PCB levels in different killer whale populations and calculating the effect of PCBs on those populations 100 years from now. In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Damon Centola about his book How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions. You can listen to more books segment and read more reviews on our books blog, Books et al.  This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook] 

Hayden Library - SH383.5.J5 A73 2018

Carwardine, Mark, author

Since the International Whaling Commission placed an international moratorium on whaling in 1986, few countries have engaged in the practice. Iceland was one of them, however, and it has hunted whales sporadically since then and has been roundly criticized by many neighboring countries for doing so. There are indications now that a generational shift in consuming whale meat for food is taking place in the country---with younger citizens avoiding whale meat altogether and thus reducing the economic demand for the product.

St Andrews, 2019.