Dick Van Dyke rescued by porpoises

The porpoises were not available for comment.

Balloon head dolphin

P. hoekmani (image from the Beeb article)

Archeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a new type of dolphin on the bottom of the North Sea. The dolphin, christened Platalearostrum hoekmani after the Dutch fisherman Albert Hoekman, who trawled up a bone from the beastie's skull in 2008, seems to be most closely related to the modern-day pilot whale and probably lived between 2 and 3 million years ago. It had a bulbous forehead and a short, "spoon-shaped" rostrum (snout) and would have grown up to 6 meters long.

Pilot whale (G. melas)

Whale breaks record

A humpback whale has broken the mammalian record for longest migration. She swam at least 9,800 miles, traveling from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in search of a mate. Cosmos Magazine has more:

The female humpback was first photographed among a group of whales at a breeding ground on Abrolhos Bank, off Brazil's southeastern coast, on 7 August 1999.

By sheer chance, it was photographed more than two years later, on 21 September 2001 by a commercial whale-watching tour at a breeding ground near the Ile Sainte Marie off the eastern coast of Madagascar.

Distinctive tail and spots

The whale was identified thanks to the distinctive shape of its tail and a pattern of spots on it.

"It is the longest documented movement by a mammal, about 400 km longer than the longest seasonal migration that has been reported," according to the research, headed by Peter Stevick of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Internet gleanings/current events

Some cool stuff in recent news:

First, this. Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a red dwarf, Gliese 581, about 20 light-years away. It's in the habitable zone, meaning that water could exist in liquid form on the surface. Life, Unbounded explains:

With a 37 day orbit (putting it about 0.15 AU from the 1/3rd solar mass star) there's a good chance that GL 581 g is tidally locked - with a permanent day and night side, although it's by no means clear that tidal locking is inevitable. This poses significant questions about any climate on the planetary surface - something astronomers and planetary scientists have been worrying about for a while for this kind of scenario. A thick enough atmosphere and thermal transport could help even out the drastic day/night temperature difference and keep things stable.

 And then this: two dolphin species, the Guyana dolphin and the bottlenose dolphin, have been observed to alter the structure of their calls during interspecific interactions. This is cool for several reasons: first, it adds to our evidence that dolphins are skilled mimics. Secondly, it opens the possibility that these two different species could be capable of communicating with each other in some way. From the Beeb:

When bottlenose dolphins swim together, they emit longer, lower frequency calls, that are modulated.

In contrast, Guyana dolphins usually communicate using higher frequency whistles that have their own particular structure.

But often, the two species swim together in one group. These interactions are usually antagonistic, as the larger bottlenose dolphins harass the smaller Guyana dolphins.

When the two dolphins gather, they produce quite different calls, Dr May-Collado has discovered.

Crucially, calls emitted during these multi-species encounters are of an intermediate frequency and duration.

In other words, the dolphins start communicating in a style that is somewhere between those of the two separate species

In sadder news, Shiloh, one of the bottlenose dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, has died after a long illness. She was the mother of Chesapeake, the first calf born in captivity at the Aquarium, and the grandmother of Bayley, who is now about two years old. Shiloh was estimated to be about 31 years old, which isn't bad for a dolphin, but the news still came as a shock. I studied Shiloh's whistles for more than a year. Her contact call was a pretty, modulated upsweep with which I became very familiar. I'm going to miss her. So long, Shiloh, and thanks for all the fish.

And finally, I went to hear Richard Dawkins and Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak at Howard University the other day. The talk was an unscripted chat about the "poetry of science". Tyson spent a little too much time showboating - I would have like to hear more from Dawkins, devoted little fangirl that I am - but overall it was most enjoyable. I have to say, though...  Tyson was voted World's Sexiest Astrophysicist by People Magazine in 2000, but that Richard Dawkins is foxy. That hyperliterate Oxford-honed diction, that silver hair, that sultry voice... sigh.

Oh, and there are lots of new songs in the works: the Gargle Blasters are working on a cover of Pink Floyd's Young Lust... ooh, I need a dirty woman.



Coming attractions:

• The finished version of Homeopathy (in both censored and uncensored form... because this is a family blog)
• The finished version of Uncertainty (now with 100% more awesome due to sax solo by my dad)
•  More Young Lust
• Tabula Rasa (too full of angst for immediate release)
• The Night You Can't Remember (Magnetic Fields cover!)
• The Internet Song (work in progress)

Man, we almost have a setlist! Watch out, open mic night - the Gargle Blasters are coming.

Sperm whale... off Miami Beach

An injured sperm whale calf has been spotted off the coast of Miami Beach. Efforts are underway to find its mother, but if she is not found, the calf will probably be euthanized.

The opening was fantastic! Forgot to take pictures, as usual, but turnout was impressive and the company was grand. Thanks guys.

Moko is dead

A sad story today: Moko, a dolphin living off the coast of New Zealand, became famous in 2008 when he was observed to guide two pygmy sperm whales to safety after they had become stranded between a sandbar and the beach. He played with swimmers and boaters, sometimes getting so enthusiastic that he prevented the swimmers from returning to shore (playing is serious business). A dolphin carcass washed ashore yesterday and, based on its markings and teeth, it's probably Moko.

The Beeb has more.

Leviathan

A sea monster has been unearthed! The fossilized remains of a giant whale-beast were found in 12 million year old sediment in Peru. It appears to be related to modern sperm whales: about the same size, but armed with 40 cm (16 inch) teeth on both the upper and lower jaws. From the BBC article:

A 3m-long fossilised skull of the creature was discovered by researchers in southern Peru in 2008. Dr de Muizon's student, Olivier Lambert was among them.


"It was the last day of our field trip when one of our colleagues came and told us that he thought he'd found something very interesting. So we joined him and he showed it to us," he said.


"We immediately saw that it was a very large whale and when we looked closer we saw it was a giant sperm whale with huge teeth."


The teeth were more than twice the length and diameter of those found in modern sperm whales and they were on the upper and lower jaws.

The researchers estimate that the creature probably measured more than 17 meters (56 feet!) long, and may have preyed on other whales. In a tribute to Moby Dick (one of my favorite books), they've named the whale Leviathan melvillei. 

Nature Video has a feature on Leviathan:





The paper is in Nature:

The Giant Bite of a New Raptorial Sperm Whale
Nature, Vol. 466, Issue 7302, 1 July 2010

Whaling news + new art

After a week-long circle jerk, the 62nd International Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco has ended. The 24-year old moratorium on commercial whaling remains in place, but no progress has been made. From the WWF:

But it could have been worse. The IWC was considering a worrying new proposal that could allow commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean for the first time in almost 25 years – and would also set commercial whaling quotas for whales listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).


WWF has always fully supported the maintenance of the IWC’s 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling. Unfortunately, whaling at a commercial scale continues by a small number of countries. We want to see all whaling come under stricter IWC control.

An interview with Iceland's "whaling king" reveals the jackassery that environmentalists face in some countries:

Kristjan Loftsson, Iceland's millionaire whaling king, doesn't really see the difference: "whales are just another fish," he said at a crunch meeting of the International Whaling Commission.


...


Loftsson is untouched by a wave of recent research showing that cetaceans -- the order grouping whales, dolphins and porpoises -- are closer to humans that once thought in their ability to communicate, recognizing themselves in a mirror, and create what anthropologists would call culture.


"I don't believe it. If they are so intelligent, why don't they stay outside of Iceland's territorial waters?" he shot back, attributing such ideas to "a bunch of crazies."

Yup. The stupid, it burns.

A few more recent articles on cetaceans:

• Chicago biologist fears Gulf oil threat to dolphins
• Russia's new oil exploration threatens gray whales
  

And a new painting!

Sick

Pediatric urologist Dix Poppas at Weill Medical College of Cornell University has been up to some pretty sick shit. Concerned parents bring their little girls to the good doctor and express their worries. Their worries, namely, that their developing child's clitoris is too large. The WTF factor only snowballs from here. Dix Poppas performs a "nerve-sparing" surgery on the little girls (most are around six years old) in which he removes the offending tissue from the shaft of the clitoris, then reattaches the glans to what little remains. 

Imagine growing up with the knowledge that your parents found the most private, sensitive part of your body so aesthetically disturbing, so very ugly that they arranged to have it chopped up by a creep who would later masturbate you as they watched. Ugh. 

I have few words to describe exactly how wildly unethical this is. Here's a Pharyngula post on the topic, and the original post from Psychology Today. The comment threads are worth reading and rather cathartic. Dan Savage has also caught wind of this, and has a long, passionately written post at the Stranger.

From Dan Savage's post:

There's lots to be outraged about here: there's nothing wrong with these girls and their healthy, functional-if-larger-than-average clitorises; there's no need to operate on these girls; and surgically altering a girl's clitoris because it's "too big" has been found to do lasting physical and psychological harm. But what's most outrageous is how Poppas is "proving" that his surgery "spares nerves." Dreger and Feder:


But we are not writing today to again bring attention to the surgeries themselves. Rather, we are writing to express our shock and concern over the follow-up examination techniques described in the 2007 article by Yang, Felsen, and Poppas. Indeed, when a colleague first alerted us to these follow-up exams—which involve Poppas stimulating the girls’ clitorises with vibrators while the girls, aged six and older, are conscious—we were so stunned that we did not believe it until we looked up his publications ourselves.


Here more specifically is, apparently, what is happening: At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, Poppas touches the daughter’s surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a “vibratory device,” and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch.... Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls....

I encourage you to vent your disapproval/outrage here (Weill Cornell Medical College contact form).


Now for something completely different: in the runup to next week's IWC meeting in Morocco,   celebrities are joining the "fight against whaling". If you're a Doctor Who fan, the wonderful Christopher Eccleston has gotten behind the cause. The BBC article also outlines the agenda for the meeting, which will probably result in the 24-year old moratorium on commercial whaling being overturned. Environmental groups are, of course, up in arms against this. More information is here, at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society website. If you'd like to subscribe to their blog, the RSS feed is here.

4:30 in the morning

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because it's been an eventful week or so. Adventures aplenty and little sleeping. But here's some whale poo, for your amusement.

Moratorium harpooned

The Independent has an article today on the upcoming International Whaling Commission meeting, and what's likely to come out of it. At the same time that Australia is challenging Japan in court over its illegal whaling practices - one small step forward - it looks like the 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling is, in a giant leap backwards, about to be scrapped.

From the article:

The moratorium on commercial whaling, one of the world's major environmental achievements, is in danger of being abandoned after 24 years at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) which begins this week in Morocco.


A proposed new deal, which stands a realistic chance of being passed at the conference in Agadir, would allow the three countries which have continued killing the great whales in defiance of the ban – Japan, Norway and Iceland – to recommence whaling legally in return for bringing down their catches.


However, many conservationists do not believe that catches will actually fall under the proposed new agreement, and one of the world's leading whaling scientists recently described it in testimony to the US Congress as "a scam ... likely to fool many people".


...


Should the moratorium be dismantled, it would represent one of the most damaging setbacks ever for wildlife conservation. The ban, which was agreed in 1982 and became operational in 1986, was introduced after a long and intense campaign by environmental pressure groups such as Greenpeace.


They were protesting against the intense cruelty of whaling, where the killing is done by firing explosive harpoons into the large, intelligent animals, and also against the fact that many of the stocks of the great whales had been drastically reduced by over-hunting, with blue whales driven to the brink of extinction.


Although large-scale whaling came to an end with the ban, and populations began to recover, three countries carried on killing: Japan, by labelling its hunting "scientific research", and the Norwegians and Icelanders by lodging formal objections. Since 1986 the three nations have between them killed more than 30,000 whales, the Japanese leading with more than 1,000 whales a year – mainly minke whales, but also Bryde's, fin, sei and sperm whales.


But the global total of kills has nevertheless fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was, and the moratorium has been an unqualified success from a whale conservation point of view.


The deal which may do away with it, which has been on the table for three years, was first thought to be merely a diplomatic compromise to end the perpetual confrontation at IWC meetings between the whaling nations and the anti-whaling countries. But recently it has become clear that it had a different purpose, and was cooked up in the US – by leading figures in the Bush administration, among them being Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who, until his conviction for taking unreported gifts in 2008, was the longest-serving Republican senator in American history.


One of the most powerful figures in US politics, Senator Stevens sought a deal with Japan after the Japanese caused problems for the US by objecting (as a bargaining counter in IWC negotiations) to the whale-hunting quota for Alaskan Inuit peoples, who have a traditional hunt for about 50 bowhead whales.


Senator Stevens is believed to have put pressure on the then-US Whaling Commissioner and IWC chairman, William Hogarth – whose budget, in the US National Marine Fisheries Service, Mr Stevens controlled as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee – to open talks with Japan, which Mr Hogarth duly did at the 2007 IWC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.

...


Justin Cooke, who is the representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature on the IWC Scientific Committee, took the deal apart in the US Congress, in evidence to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Dr Cooke said: "The proposal is disingenuous and I suspect that it will fool many people." It was a scam, he said, in which the calculation of how many whales could be killed was being left to politicians rather than scientists.

I have always considered Ted Stevens a slimy bastard, but this latest revelation upgrades him to a walking, talking, waste of oxygen.

Click here to download Dr. Cooke's testimony in Congress. Short, sweet, and worth reading.

If your attention span is longer and your tolerance for bullshit higher than mine, you can download the full 43-page proposal here.

Good news, very bad news

First, the good news: Australia is set to pursue legal action against Japan for its illegal whaling program. From the Beeb:

The Australian government says it will lodge formal proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague next week.


The move comes ahead of a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Morocco next month, where agreement is being sought on a new approach to whaling, which would allow commercial hunting but with strict quotas.


Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett and Attorney General Robert McClelland said in a joint statement that the move underlines their "commitment to bring to an end Japan's program of so-called scientific whaling".

And now the bad news. The first picture I've seen of a dolphin killed by the BP oil spill has hit the internet. A warning: this picture is graphic and may at the very least ruin your day. Click here.

Finally, Ann Weaver in Tampa wrote an article a few days ago about the effects of the spill on local dolphin populations. She reviews what little we know about the devastating damage the spill has done to the food chain, and speculates that dolphins will not be able (or willing) to leave the area.

From the article:

Couldn’t our adult dolphins just move, just head north or south where there was less oil or more food? Possibly. But even if the waters were unequally disturbed by the oil, and there were healthy waters to go to, dolphin psychology could keep the dolphins from fleeing the meltdown.


One, dolphins are pretty free-form but they do have habits. Changes during construction on the John's Pass Bridge further suggest that their habits die hard. They may stick to their habits despite diminishing food and water quality.


Two, dolphins live in home ranges, which are where they’re found most often. They may stick to their home ranges despite diminishing food and water quality. About sixty of the dolphins we’ve seen are residents who would stick around John’s Pass.


Finally, there’s the glaring psychological difference between humans and other animals: Humans move. Animals don’t. Granted, some animals migrate to another troop at maturity. But animals become endangered or extinct because, when humans destroy their habitat, the animals either have no place to go or don’t know to go.


Randy Wells of Mote Marine described our coastline as a mosaic of overlapping dolphin home ranges.


Let’s say, for the sake of argument, our local dolphins found John’s Pass untenable and decided to move. They would encounter dolphins already living in every area they went. There are no free waters where “our” dolphins could go.


Another major concern of mine is the expansion and potential connection of dead zones. A dead zone is an area of water that is so depleted of oxygen that no sea creatures can live in it.


The Gulf of Mexico already has a dead zone the size of the state of Massachusetts, created by the fertilizers that get into the mighty Mississippi from America’s breadbasket and end up in the Gulf. Lesser dead zones (if there is such a thing) pock the Western Florida shoreline. God forbid these all get together.

A bleak forecast.

Bethune on trial

Pete Bethune, a member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (brilliantly parodied by South Park) goes on trial in Japan today.

Accused of boarding a Japanese whaling vessel, he pleaded guilty to four charges, including trespass and obstructing commercial activities, but denied a fifth charge of assault.

If convicted he could receive a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

From the Beeb:

The New Zealander was the captain of the Ady Gil, a futuristic kevlar boat which was sliced in two in a collision with a harpoon ship in January and sank.


The following month he boarded the ship, the Shonan Maru 2, from a jetski.


Sea Shepherd said his intention was to perform a citizen's arrest on her captain for the attempted murder of his crew, and present a bill for the lost boat.


But instead he was detained himself and the Shonan Maru 2 set sail for Tokyo where Mr Bethune was arrested by Japan's Coast Guard.


Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide since 1986.


Japan justifies its hunt as scientific research, while not hiding the fact that whale meat ends up in restaurants and shops.

If my ship had been sliced in half (dramatic video of the ramming here) by a whaler on an illegal commercial mission, I'd be pretty pissed off too. An arrest and a bill sound pretty reasonable. I have no idea why this incident couldn't have been brought to court under international law, or why the Kiwis aren't significantly angrier. 

Also, since when is throwing stink bombs considered assault?

Cetacean news

Here's a site that compiles news about dolphins and whales. Updated (almost) daily. Enjoy.

 Also, some of my favorite dolphin desktop wallpapers.

Cetacean picspam after the jump!

Gray whale in the Med

A gray whale has been spotted... in the Mediterranean Sea.

 Here he is, off the coast of Israel

From the article:

A gray whale has appeared off the coast of Israel, shocking conservationists.


Gray whales are thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea is a major surprise.


The whale may have inadvertently travelled a huge distance from its natural habitat thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean.


However, it raises the possibility that gray whales have returned to former haunts in the western hemisphere.


"This discovery is truly amazing. Today, gray whales only inhabit the Pacific Ocean, so to find one in the North Atlantic, let alone the Mediterranean Sea, is bizarre in the extreme," says Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), which has its headquarters in Wiltshire, UK.

Your average human next to your average gray whale (image from Wiki)

The Beeb does whales

Two articles in the BBC this week:

• How to rescue a stranded whale (with video)

Each year anywhere between five and 50 whales, dolphins and porpoises are washed up on Britain's beaches. British Divers Marine Life Rescue, a volunteer charity, was set up in 1998 to rescue them.

To find out how it's done Nick Higham, and volunteers including a chef, a plumber, a man who runs boat trips and a woman who works in IT, encountered a two-tonne inflatable whale for a training course on a Kent beach.

• Whaling plan draws anger 

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has published draft proposals for regulating whaling for the next decade.

Japan's Antarctic whale hunt would fall in stages to less than a quarter of its current size. But hunting would continue on the endangered fin whale.


Key countries, including the US and Japan, have limited comments to saying they will consider the draft proposal carefully.


But some conservation and animal welfare groups have already indicated opposition.


"The fact that this proposal is even being discussed shows just how far out of touch the IWC is with modern values," said Claire Bass, manager of the Marine Mammal Programme at the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).


"It is entirely missing the point that blasting conscious animals with exploding harpoons is grossly inhumane."


However, others argue that the aim of completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and that a major down-scaling, combined with bringing it under international oversight, is a worthwhile compromise.


But the inclusion of fin whales and the continuation of hunting in the Southern Ocean - which has been declared a whale sanctuary - are points of concern.

With regards to "completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and ... a major down-scaling...is a worthwhile compromise", I am reminded of this article from the Onion:

VATICAN CITY—Calling the behavior shameful, sinful, and much more frequent than the Vatican was comfortable with, Pope Benedict XVI vowed this week to bring the widespread pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church down to a more manageable level.


Addressing thousands gathered at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the pontiff offered his "most humble apologies" to abuse victims, and pledged to reduce the total number of molestations by 60 percent over the next five years.


"This is absolutely unacceptable," Pope Benedict said. "It seems a weakening of faith in God has prevented our priests from exercising moderation when sexually abusing helpless minors."


"And let me remind our clergy of the holy vows they all took when they entered the priesthood," he continued. "They should know that they're only allowed one small child every other month."

Meat

Meat from Japan's "scientific research" whaling program is turning up in US and Korean stores. The Beeb reports:

Scientists say they have found clear proof that meat from whales captured under Japan's whaling programme is being sold in US and Korean eateries.


The researchers say they used genetic fingerprinting to identify meat taken from a Los Angeles restaurant as coming from a sei whale sold in Japan.


They say the discovery proves that an illegal trade in protected species still exists.


Whale meat was also allegedly found at an unnamed Seoul sushi restaurant.


Commercial whaling has been frozen by an international moratorium since 1986.


But a controversial exemption allows Japan to kill several hundred whales each year for what is termed scientific research.


The meat from these whales is then sold to the public in shops and restaurants in that country.

From the article, it seems the meat was advertised straight up as whale meat. While it boggles the mind that eateries selling endangered species escaped notice for so long, I suppose it's better than the alternative: dolphin and whale meat with toxic levels of mercury deliberately mislabeled and sold to unwitting customers as more expensive stuff.

Wonder how toxic this stuff was?

Mammals in the House

Congress has scheduled a hearing on marine mammal captivity, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife will meet on April 27th to hear testimony. Animal welfare advocates hope the meeting will lead to tighter regulations on the industry, which has had some of its not-so-shiny areas brought to light by the recent death of a SeaWorld trainer by a killer whale in Orlando and the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," about dolphin captures in Japan.

From the article:

The Sun Sentinel explored the world behind marine parks in a 2004 investigative series. It found that over the previous three decades, about 1,500 sea lions, seals, dolphins and whales in marine parks had died at a young age, some from human hazards such as capture shock and ingestion of coins and foreign objects.

The industry took root in Florida when the first marine park, Marineland of Florida, opened in 1938, and fostered an international trade with killer whales now worth up to $5 million each.

Until the 1980s, many of the marine stars came from the wild, with Florida waters supplying bottlenose dolphins that ended up at parks in Europe, Israel and Canada. U.S. attractions stopped capturing marine mammals more than 15 years ago and now rely on breeding.

Today, of the 1,243 marine mammals in the nation's parks, zoos and aquariums, only 15 percent were caught in the wild, a Sun Sentinel analysis of federal data shows. Another 14 percent were found stranded on beaches, and the rest were born in captivity.

Sarah over at WaterNotes, a conservation blog, has some further thoughts on the hearing:

This is a huge development for many reasons and – I feel – a golden opportunity for zoos and aquariums to give a voice to their husbandry practices, reveal their missions, and inform the public about the size and scale of their education and conservation programs.  It’s a chance to separate the institutions who get it right (and most likely carry AZA credentials) and those that have a long way to go.  It is also a chance to discuss what the role of zoos and aquariums can be and what more they can do, towards fulfilling the obligations of the MMPA [Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, info here and here] to use contact with and observation of marine mammals to inspire our next generation of ocean advocates and stewards.

Yet more whales

Slate has another thoughtful, well-written meditation today on whales, humans, and our conflicted relationship over the course of history. Whales have played many roles. First they were sea monsters: Leviathans, lurking in the places on the map you didn't go. Then to some they became sustenance. Then they became the illumination, the perfume, and the corsets of the 19th century. They have been myth, food, money and light, but we still know very little about them. As the piece notes, we knew what the Earth looked like from space before we knew what a sperm whale looked like underwater.

Whales are something different now. They've always been objects of curiosity, but now they are the subjects of intense research and the darlings of an adoring public (Save The Whales!). The piece ends:

The truth is now, as it's ever been: We need whales more than they need us. Once we hunted them for their industrial resources. Now we demand to be entertained by them. What they want, most probably, is to be left alone.

In other news, one dolphin and possibly two swam up Newtown Creek in Brooklyn today. The creek is one of the most polluted industrial dead zones you can imagine, swamped with factory waste and raw sewage. No word on what's going to happen, but it doesn't look good.

More on whales

Slate has an article today on whaling... did we save the whales or what?

It's a summary of current whaling policy, new developments on same, and what they've actually done since the Save the Whales movement got going. From the article:

"...the sperm whale is considered vulnerable (the level below endangered), while five others—including that 1970s singing sensation, the humpback whale—are of least concern, meaning they're not going extinct anytime soon, even though they might not have returned to their pre-whaling levels. Most hunters nowadays pursue the common minke whale, which is also doing pretty well, all things considered. For a few other large whale species, there aren't enough data to make calls in either direction.

Things get more complicated, though, when you drill down and look at subpopulations. For example, humpback whales may doing fine as a general rule, but the ones that live in the Arabian Sea are considered endangered, as are those around Australia and the South Pacific. And then there are the humpbacks around South Georgia, which were mostly wiped out between 1904 and 1915 and have yet to come back.

What if, somehow, we could return the world's whales to some kind of pristine, pre-human state? If it could be proven that the hunts wouldn't push any populations into the danger zone, would environmentalists in countries besides Japan, Norway, and Iceland ever support sustainable, commercial whaling? The Lantern has her doubts. In America, at least, our belief in the essential dignity of these big, beautiful mammals seems just too ingrained to allow for their use as a food source. In the end, that may be the greatest legacy of the "Save the whales" movement."

The Cove has an interesting segment on what has happened to whaling since the movement began. Needless (almost) to say, it draws a slightly more pessimistic conclusion. In the film, key figures of the movement lament the passing of the enthusiasm that fired the cause, and call for a revival of the activism that brought it into public view. Things have stalled. In the 80s, there used to be marchers on the Mall, singing and holding signs, demanding an end to the slaughter. In the cloudy early reaches of my memory, I remember Save the Whales! t-shirts, posters, and shopping bags being everywhere. They were nearly as ubiquitous as those D.A.R.E t-shirts were before they were retro and ironic.
 Sure, the situation has gotten better, but it's still not great. We've left the task unfinished. Given the current pace of things, it's going to remain unfinished for a long time.