I have to admit that I don’t get the animal/beach meme so popular on other blogs.
(Source: AP)
The community members of Ostional are allowed by the government to harvest up to 1 million sea turtle eggs to sell throughout Costa Rica.
Ostional is one of a handful of beaches around the world where the Olive Ridley sea turtle arrives in mass to lay their eggs, with more than 100 million eggs laid over the week long nesting season.
Biologists and villagers in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest were searching for a 12-tonne whale yesterday that had reportedly lost its way and become stranded 1,000 miles from the ocean.
The five-metre long (18ft) creature, which biologists said was probably a minke whale, became stranded on a beach on the Tapajos river, 39 miles from the city of Santarem. Environmental experts said the whale had probably become separated from its group in the Atlantic Ocean, off northern Brazil, after falling ill or being hit by a boat.
Link
Link to earlier post on NSL
Australians fear that the world’s only known white humpback whale could be slaughtered as Japan’s whaling fleet prepares to embark on its annual hunt in the Southern Ocean.
The unique male whale, named Migaloo - an Aboriginal word for “white fella” - has become a celebrity in Australia since being spotted for the first time in 1991.
Each year Migaloo - along with thousands of other humpbacks - migrates from the icy seas of Antarctica to the warm shallows of the South Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef.
A few months later the whales, the females leading their newly-born calves, return to Antarctica.
The arrival of 45ft-long Migaloo - believed to be the only completely white humpback in the world - is keenly anticipated by whale watchers along Australia’s east coast.
He has been hailed as modern day Moby Dick, even though the creature in Herman Melville’s 1851 classic was a sperm whale.
Conservationists fear that Migaloo is so accustomed to whale watching and fishing boats, that he will be easy pickings for Japanese hunters.
With the southern hemisphere summer approaching, the Japanese whaling fleet is preparing to leave port within days. It refuses to say exactly when.
It has declared that for the first time it will kill 50 humpbacks, as well as 50 fin whales and hundreds of minke whales.
Full story Link
2007-11-19 UPDATE: Japan whale expedition condemned (BBC)
Surfer Todd Endris needed a miracle. The shark — a monster great white that came out of nowhere — had hit him three times, peeling the skin off his back and mauling his right leg to the bone.
That’s when a pod of bottlenose dolphins intervened, forming a protective ring around Endris, allowing him to get to shore, where quick first aid provided by a friend saved his life.
“Truly a miracle,” Endris said.
Video: LiveLeak
Source: Today
via Spluch
Shepherd’s beaked whale, Tasmacetus shepherdi.
Cryptomundo is a site that mostly features Yeti and Loch Ness Monster news (but strangely, no mermaids). In the past week, however, they have broken some great stories about previously unknown marine mammals. It’s amazing how little we know about the sea and its creatures even at this late date.
First Live Sightings of Shepherd’s Ziphiid
Pitman also shared with me a paper that has been generally overlooked from last year. In his 2006 paper, he details the first confirmed live sightings of Shepherd’s beaked whale (Tasmacetus shepherdi), a cryptic ziphiid species finally fully documented. I appreciate being able to pass along this entire paper to you today. You may download the complete paper here: Shepherd’s Beaked Whale
Dwarf Killer Whale Discovered in Antarctica
New findings confirm the presence of at least one markedly smaller ecotype, a probable new species, of killer whale occurring in the Southern Ocean. Download the complete paper here: Dwarf Killer Whale
New Species of Tropical Pacific Beaked Whale?
In the latest edition of Marine Mammal Science there is an article about a likely new species of Mesoplodon (a beaked whale). As Robert Pitman says in an email tonight, “the last two years two new species of dolphins were also described in the pages of MMS - snubfin dolphin (Orcaella heinsohni) and costero (Sotalia guianensis). Genetics has revolutionized cetacean systematics - talk about cryptic species!”
via Boing Boing
Cool story… but I want to know more about that mermaid in the second pic!
OSAKA, Japan, Nov. 1 (UPI) — “Heroes” star Hayden Panettiere, who is also a conservationist and skilled surfer, has physically tried to prevent fishermen from killing dolphins in Tiji, Japan.
Despite worldwide disapproval, fishermen kill more than 22,000 of the mammals in Japan each year.
Panettiere, 18, recently paddled out on a surfboard in an effort to prevent a group of dolphins from being steered into a nearby cove and massacred, Sky News reported Wednesday.
She and a handful of other surfers from Australia and the United States were blocked by a fishing boat before they could reach the dolphins.
Faced with the ship’s propellers and boathooks, the surfers returned to the beach.
It is believed the dolphins were later slaughtered.
“It was really frightening,” Panettiere told Sky News. “It was so incredibly sad. We were so close to them and they were sky hopping, jumping out of the water to see us. … One little baby dolphin stuck his head out and kind of looked at me and the thought that it’s no longer with us is really hard to take.”
Truly enormous images for whaterver you like.
Continue reading ‘Gallery of underwater life’
Promachoteuthis sulcus is known from a single, small (25 mm ML, sex unknown) but distinctive individual from great depths in the south Atlantic Ocean.
Brief diagnosis: A promachoteuthid…
- with nuchal fusion between head and mantle.
- with arm suckers much larger than club suckers.
- with tentacle base wider than arm base.
- with recessed club base and aboral tentacle groove.
Link to The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL)
Warning: ‘Australian’ science as reported in Pravda
“Recent studies of Australian scientists indicate that Atlanteans, the people who lived on a legendary island first mentioned by Plato, may have been the ancestors of dolphins.
No matter how weird it may appear, dolphins used to have two legs and a couple of arms in place of fins. They lived side by side with the people of the Stone Age,” said Dr. Leslie Huskerway, a biologist.
Link via Fark (what else?)
Recent Comments