A nicely written article in the Dec. 3 2009 issue Nature reveals how a how a neutrino detection experiment conducted in the Mediterranean Sea by nuclear physicists actually uncovered an abundance of sperm whales. The experiment involved placing hydrophones down…
Category: Ocean Life
“The Cove” Slaughtering dolphins in Japan for food, fun, and profit
The environmental thriller “The Cove” follows the stealth reconnaissance work of Ric O’Barry as he uncovers the dolphin drive fishery in Taiji, Japan. Ric was the dolphin trainer who selected and trained the dolphins of the 60’s TV series “Flipper”…
New Freeway planned for San Ignacio Lagoon
New Freeway planned for San Ignacio Lagoon San Ignacio Lagoon is the birthplace of a remarkable chapter in the relationship between whales and humans. The lagoons along the western coast of the American Continent, from San Francisco Bay in the…
New York Times article on human/whale relationships
This week New York Times features and article ostensibly about our relationship with whales, woven around a visit by the author to the “friendly whales” of San Ignacio Lagoon. The article (requiring a free NYT login) is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html It…
Report from the May 2009 Acoustics Society meeting
“Thrilling” is not a word I thought I would ever use in describing an Acoustical Society meeting, but there were moments last week that bordered on just that. Driving this is an intersection of rapidly increasing computer processing power and…
This little blue marble
OCR Advisory Board member and ocean champion J. Nichols and “Her Deepness” Dr. Sylvia Earle have founded an organization predicted on a delightful premise. The organization is called “Bluemarbles.org” from the metaphor of the earth seen from space being likened…
Reflections on “saving” whales
An indecent cited in the UK Independent highlights one of the tragic ironies of well-meaning citizens attempting to push stranded whales back out to sea. My speculative belief is that stranded marine mammals actually know what they are doing, and…
Google Ocean launches
Google Earth has added a very significant embellishment to their wonderful mapping application; “Google Ocean.” (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/science/earth/03oceans.html?_r=2&hp ) This new tool will allow anybody to explore the ocean at will, and free of charge. I believe that the introduction of…
Thank-you Snailfish
Sometimes I get so linked in to doing things that I forget to stop and enjoy the show. This October OceanLab and University of Tokyo sent a camera down to one of the world’s deepest trenches and came up with…
Offshore oil drilling constrained by military toxics dumping grounds.
Outer Continental Shelf hero Richard Charter sent us a rather depressing article. (excerpted below) It seems that proposed oil operations off the New Jersey coast will be constrained by some very reckless chemical weapons dumping done by our military. This…