Photos by Wayne Levin of surfers, swimmers, fish and more. (-v-)
posted by vronsky on Nov 4, 2009 - 9 comments

When whales die: Yesterday, a 20-30 foot whale washed up a shore in New Jersey. Officials are going to deal with it by cutting it up into small parts and burying it. In previous incidents, officials tried to explode it into bits that were meant to fall in the ocean and get eaten by seagulls, but that didn't work out [YT] so well, especially for nearby spectators. Even if you want to let it decompose naturally, you have to be careful for spontaneous explosions due to gassy buildup. Especially when transporting it in busy city streets. Oops. When whales die in the ocean, on the other hand, their bodies eventually fall to the sea floor and can start mini ecosystems, where female pink glowstick-like sea worms that harbor the male pink glowstick sea worms inside their bodies live, eat whale bones, and propagate. (Previously on Metafilter: Taiwan explosion)
posted by Salamandrous on Jul 28, 2009 - 46 comments

Calving mothers are seeking out human contact. (SLNYT) “It’s extraordinary,” she said. “At precisely the time when you’d expect them to be the most defensive, they’re incredibly social." A lengthy article about the state of whale-human relations built around events at Baja.
posted by BigLankyBastard on Jul 10, 2009 - 16 comments

Gulls attack whales.
posted by binturong on Jun 24, 2009 - 63 comments

Some really beautiful, unusual visuals and reading: The Art of the Pochoir Book. The University of Cincinatti Rare Book archive has some cool stuff, like Leviathan: Watercolors of Whales from William Jardine’s The Naturalist’s Library l 4 pages of a newspaper called The Colored Citizen from November 7th 1863 (awesome to read knowing Obama is elected) l Travel and Exploration in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries: A View of the World through the Art of the Explorers. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Dec 23, 2008 - 2 comments

The Faroe (Fær Øer) pilot whales slaughter (warning, crude pictures). The Faroe Islands (prev) were nominated in year 2007 by National Geographic as one of the most appealing tourism location in the world. The inhabitans have traditionally hunted pilot whales and other cetaceans for their own sustainment, but according also to their own national statistics (PDF) , the whale hunting business is no longer a significant factor. Some ongoing online petition is trying to put a final end to this practice.
posted by elpapacito on Nov 19, 2008 - 37 comments

Mammals | Natural History Museum. From fascinating bats to enormous whales, mammals are the most diverse group of animals on our planet. Equipped with wings, fins, horns and spines – they have evolved to fill many niches and roles. Discover more about this complex group, which of course, includes us. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Nov 6, 2008 - 15 comments

Beaked Whales "might be the least understood group of large mammals on Earth". One thing is relatively certain, however: sonar appears to kill them. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Sep 29, 2008 - 30 comments

A new whale anti-collision system "A remarkable feature of Andre's system is its ability to single out and track an individual whale among all its “family” members in the same area – a breakthrough made with the help of a West African musician. In attempting to unravel the chaotic rhythms of the sperm whale clicks, he was struck by the similarity between his underwater recordings and African tribal music. A Senegalese griot (drummer) confirmed the likeness and – amazingly – was able to pick individual whales from André’s recordings through their distinctive rhythmic structures."[via]
posted by dhruva on Sep 12, 2008 - 11 comments

Feel good hit of the year; Discovery Channel's 'I Love the Whole World' ad [more inside]
posted by oxford blue on Apr 19, 2008 - 103 comments

Dolphin rescues beached whales [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Mar 16, 2008 - 32 comments

Eat a whale, save the planet.
posted by 445supermag on Mar 4, 2008 - 64 comments

A photographic catalog of a traditional whale hunt. (Flash, photos include whale hunting in all its bloody detail) In order to develop an experimental interface for storytelling, photographer Jonathan Harris accompanied a family of Inupiat Eskimos on a subsistence whale hunt. During his week long journey, he took 3,214 photographs, including pictures taken every 5 minutes while he was sleeping. The navigation allows for for very quick navigation through the series, using a heartbeat metaphor and a number of filtering constraints so that you can narrow your search to cast members, locations on the journey, and even something as loose as a photo's "concept". via
posted by mkb on Dec 10, 2007 - 21 comments

In one of the most remarkable journeys by any creature on the planet Humpback whales travelling between breeding grounds off the west coast of Central America and feeding grounds off Antarctica clocked up more than 5,000 miles on one leg of their journey as recorded by the wonderful people of Cascadia Research Collective.
posted by adamvasco on Apr 4, 2007 - 9 comments

Life-size blue whale. A Flash project from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. And in other news: Secret Language of Whales Revealed! [Via MammalFilter.]
posted by homunculus on Mar 14, 2007 - 24 comments

Yarrrr/Banzai! All you "Talk like a pirate day" keyboard swashbucklers take heed: The Sea Shepherd Society's flagship Farley Mowat is now officialy a pirate vessel after Canada, Britain, and Belize revoked their registration. As the Japanese winter Antarctic whale hunting season begins (previously), the M/V Farley Mowat is setting sail to meet them, armed with a hydraulic "can opener" battering ram, a pie cannon, and moral conviction. With the Japanese whaling fleet now majority owned by the Japanese government, a subject of international diplomatic intrigue, and after last year's confrontations, this could get ugly!
posted by anthill on Jan 14, 2007 - 54 comments

Echolocation : bats use it. So do whales and dolphins. And humans? The 14-year-old profiled here and here is using it. Learn more about how blind people are employing perception and processing of the auditory environment: where words like flash and tags have an altogether different meaning.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Aug 21, 2006 - 28 comments

Whales are ridiculous, thanks to their evolutionary origins as coyote-like mammals moved into the water about 45 million years ago and became more and more adapted to the marine life.
posted by chorltonmeateater on Aug 16, 2006 - 32 comments

Now you too can feed your pet endangered meats! Meat from whales caught under Japan's "research" programme is so abundant that it is being sold as pet food. </one link newsFilter>
posted by Tryptophan-5ht on Feb 10, 2006 - 38 comments

"Ashes and Snow" is the name, but it's mostly very pretty pictures of brown people with acquatic mammals such as elephants. (Alas, the portfolio requires Shockwave.) The book is itself a work of art.
"The permanent home of Ashes and Snow, the Nomadic Museum, debuted in New York in 2004 and is charted to travel the globe with no final destination." In New York it filled Pier 54 for three months (not usually such a neat art venue).
posted by Aknaton on Dec 26, 2005 - 19 comments

Got access to a daily satellite feed? Win $10 000. Not quite Sink the Bismarck, but the Sea Shepherds have offered a $10 000 reward for anyone who can tell them where the Japanese whaling fleet is this summer, as it prepares to scientifically study 950 minke and fin whales.
posted by wilful on Dec 7, 2005 - 19 comments

"Old Tom is the most famous of the Eden killer whales". The story of a pod of killer whales who enlisted the help of fishermen in NSW, Australia to hunt baleen whales. The pod would corral the whales, while Old Tom would tow the fishing boats out to sea by pulling the anchor ropes in his teeth. The reward? The fishermen left the whale overnight and the orcas got to eat the tongue. Alas, it seems Old Tom may have met his end when the covenant was broken and a fisherman named Logan tried to take the whale to shore before the feast. Tom tried to hold the boat back with the rope, but it broke a tooth which infected and led to his death. Tom's skeleton is now on display at the Eden Killer Whale Museum. His story inspired a young girl to become a biologist and investigate the story for herself.
posted by qwip on Nov 16, 2005 - 8 comments

Doplhins and whales have no standing to sue. This is a sad day for the cetacean community. The time for revolution is now.
posted by homunculus on Oct 21, 2004 - 12 comments

Whale explodes in Taiwan city "A 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours." More Pictures linked here. More exploding whales - 1, 2, 3.
posted by y6y6y6 on Jan 29, 2004 - 29 comments

OrcaLive is a series of webcams and underwater microphones placed off of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. They are part of OrcaLab started by Dr. Spong in 1970 to study wild orca. It appears the cameras are manned and observations of behavior and movement are made here in the left-hand column. Combined, it makes for some good viewing--today alone I saw and heard different pods greeting each other, saw spyhops, stomach rubbing along the shore, and tailslaps. Ken Balcomb at the Center for Whale Research has been studying the orca around the San Juan Islands, Washington since 1976. They also have a webcam and still shots. You may remember the story of Springer being reunited with her pod. (discussed here) There is also a young male named Luna L98 who has been separated from his pod for two years. His situation has reached a crisis while Canadian officials have taken a wait-and-see approach. In the last few days, Luna was wounded by a boat propeller and has a 6-8inch long 1.5inch deep gash above one eye. Maybe Canada will act now. With only 79 individuals in the Southern Resident population, down from 92 in 1991, every individual is important.
posted by lobakgo on Aug 28, 2003 - 9 comments

It was known as "dragon's spittle perfume" by the ancient Chinese and encountered by Sinbad in "The Thousand and One Nights". It was recorded by Marco Polo and mentioned in the literature of Shakespeare. Called "floating gold", "Neptune's niece", and a process of "divine chemistry", Ambergris, or "Grey Amber", was once harvested as a rare and costly perfume additive and coveted as an aphrodisiac. But...
posted by taz on May 2, 2003 - 9 comments

Kill Willy? The headline of this CNN story is a bit of hyperbole, since it's just one guy advocating euthenasia. But it's depressing enough that Keiko, the orca from the "Free Willy" films who was later released into the wild, has recently appeared on the Norwegian coast, apparently looking for human contact after getting dissed by his killer-whale brethren. God ...
posted by risenc on Sep 3, 2002 - 13 comments

Japan leads move to cut whaling by Artic natives [nytimes, reg. req.]. After being defeated in recent I.W.C. votes Japan wins one.
posted by rdr on May 25, 2002 - 11 comments

Very high level of PCBs in whale raises alarms. "The orca found dead on the Olympic Peninsula earlier this year carried a level of contaminants that was among the highest -- if not the highest -- ever measured in killer whales, laboratory tests show". If that is the case with free ranging whales then I shudder to think what similar measurements on city dwelling humans will reveal. Does anyone know of similar contaminant research on humans? (via Baloney.com)
posted by talos on May 13, 2002 - 10 comments

Japan To Host IWC Meeting in Whaling Port . . .the sheer volume of food they [whales] need has actually become a threat to the ocean environment.

Apparently they feel that when the rest of the world gets to taste whale bacon, or whale soup, they will suddenly realize who stupid we've been in banning commercial whaling. Am I hypocritical in eating tuna or salmon, but being horrified with the potential resumption of commercial whaling?
posted by Danf on Apr 18, 2002 - 16 comments

Shades of Gray. "Environmental groups sent out a worldwide call to save the gray whale from a Mexican salt plant. They got millions of dollars and thousands of new members. But scientists found no threat to the whales." From part six of a series that explores the ecology of the gray whale, as well as the many different ways it touches various cultures, and some of the moral dilemnas that have emerged as a result.
posted by bingo on Mar 4, 2002 - 9 comments

Interesting News Out of Pakistan: Whales Lived on Land Whales evolved from strange wolf-sized creatures that lived on land in modern-day India and Pakistan more than 50 million years ago, and their closest relatives today are cows, camels and giraffes, experts say.
posted by cell divide on Sep 19, 2001 - 21 comments

Are all the journalists on summer vacation? The "big stories" on the CNN homepage: Second attempt launched to save injured whale, Backstreet Boys postpone summer concerts, and, the big news in the year's political sex scandal, D.C. police want to search congressman's apartment. Please wake me up when the real reporters return to CNN.
posted by tranquileye on Jul 10, 2001 - 12 comments