OCR advisory board member and acoustic ecologist Jim Cummings sent us a New York Times article about life aboard geophysical research vessel (RV) Marcus G. Langseth wherein marine geologist Bernard Coakley writes about the acoustic environment aboard the vessel after…
Category: Ocean Life
Crustaceans need ears too!
A preponderance of marine bioacoustic work has been focused on marine mammals – whales, dolphins, and pinnipeds. This is in large part due to the “charismatic megafauna” paradigm where big, complicated animals with recognizable expressions attract most human interest. While…
Acoustic Communication by Animals
Chorusing is usually defined as “acoustic signaling produced collectively by a group of individuals whose activity is clustered in both space and time. It would be nice to expand the definition to cover the possible purpose of chorusing behavior for animals.
BlueMind conference at Cal Academy
Ocean Champion J. Nichols has coordinated an event on June 1 and 2 at the California Academy of Science that explores neuroscience and the ocean. While the reception on June 1 and the daytime conference on June 2 are both…
Aran Mooney et. al. dig deeper into squid hearing
Aran Mooney was the Principal Investigator on a project to determine the hearing sensitivity of squid. An article this week in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute newsletter describes the research and its importance to commerce and ecology. We know from…
The economies of gratitude….
An November 2009 article in Nature looks at non-kin cooperation models in animal societies. It examines reciprocity, mutualism, and manipulation in economic terms – with future expectations, biological expense, and cheating included in some of the trade values. The overarching…
The Neutrino and the Whale
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…
“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…