Feel good hit of the year; Discovery Channel's 'I Love the Whole World' ad
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - View this thread

Dolphin rescues beached whales
posted on Mar 16, 2008 - View this thread

Eat a whale, save the planet.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Dec 10, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Apr 4, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Mar 14, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jan 14, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 16, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Feb 10, 2006 - View this thread

"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 on Dec 26, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Dec 7, 2005 - View this thread

"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 on Nov 16, 2005 - View this thread

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

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 on Jan 29, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Aug 28, 2003 - View this thread

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 on May 2, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Sep 3, 2002 - View this thread

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 on May 25, 2002 - View this thread

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 on May 13, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Apr 18, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Mar 4, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Sep 19, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Jul 10, 2001 - View this thread