Flying whale

Here's proof that a whale can be more of a Ferarri than a John Deere. From Australia, a photo of a humpback whale entirely airborne.

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Death and life for Monterey Bay and beyond

Our ocean future is foretold in a new book about the coast of California, that crazy, annoying place that sets trends. It's death and renewal for ocean ecosystems and ocean economies.

First sea otters, then whales, and finally sardines fueled boom and bust economies that overturned people and ocean ecosystems. What elevates this story is the green economy that comes after the bust.

Monterey and the Cascadia coast to the north are lucky to preview this ocean future. It's a resilient bioregion with low population pressure that came late to development. And, fortunately for this story, it's a place where people thrive on change. So when faced with a decaying waterfront caused by a lack of sardines, it was only natural to invent the modern aquarium and ocean research institution. And, not coincidentally, to invent sustainable fisheries management once the sardines finally came back. California is showing the world how to ride ocean decline downwards and learn from the problem.

The positive changes described in this book make it a bit more optimistic than the grim predictions of Jeremy Jackson, the Bela Lugosi of ocean science, who focuses on what's disappearing from our oceans, and presumably gone forever.

The Death and Life of Monterey Bay is another new book that I'm reviewing without the benefit of having read it. But that's OK because I know the story well from living there, studying the ocean, and hearing author Steve Palumbi his version of the story in person.

On a personal level, few things make me homesick to leave the spectacular Swiss Alps, but the subject of this book stirs me greatly. A few years ago I lived and worked as a marine biologist in Monterey and the Sonoma coast just to the north, and I was married on Portugese Beach near Bodega Bay (photo at right). The Cascadia coast is calling...

BTW, don't forget to read Cascadia Times, the award-winning newspaper of the region starting at Monterey Bay and north to Alaska.

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Sperm whales use names?

Messages broadcast by sperm whales seem to come with a speaker's signature. At least that's how it looks based on a new scientific paper about sperm whale sounds. Could it be true that whales use names?

It makes sense, if you're a sperm whale listening to whale chit-chat, you want to know who's talking when you hear a juicy bit of gossip. Hey, guess who was out fooling around last night...?? Oh yeah, says who??

Here's an example of a sperm whale sound, and here's a place where you can click and listen to an entire collection of sounds from sperm whales.

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Whale poop fertilizes oceans

Ocean life depends heavily on fertilizer (nutrients) brought up from cold, rich deep water into brightly lit surface zones. Now there's a new mechanism on the books for nutrient "upwelling."

Whales feed under the surface, and poop near the surface, each time bringing a whale-load of nutrients to the surface. Hooray for whale poo. So it turns out that the main function of whales is to move nutrients from one place to another. But hey, that's the whole point of life anyway, from the perspective of biogeochemistry.

Do you know where you've been transporting nutrients from...and to? That would make an interesting story of a life.

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Very ba-a-a-d whale

This is one bad whale, with foot-long teeth, it's a real sea monster that once killed and at the much smaller whales we're used to seeing. Dubbed "Leviathan," it's an extinct whale that lived 12 million years ago off Peru. Recently understood by scientists, this is one ocean fossil that gives life to sea monster stories. Yikes.

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Whale with an ocean plastic problem

Tell me what you think of this Surfider video. Does it go too far, or is it a good way to get attention for a serious problem?



I like it.

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Whales on the beach?

Why do whales end up on the beach, and why do we kill them?

Like the 55 false killer whales stranded on a South African beach last week, whales and dolphins on the beach usually end up dead. When nudged back out in the water, they often just swim back onto the beach.

Is it illness or injury and a hope for rest & recovery? Are they following one lost soul and trying to help? The answer is that there are many reasons why whales and dolphins end up on a beach, including illness, injury and unknown causes.

Whales have been beaching themselves since the time of Aristotle, so we can't blame it purely on industrial disease.

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Big women are sexy

At least among humpback whales. A new study says larger females attract bigger crowds of eager males with lovin on their minds.

Why? Apart from any media-fueled bias, the big mommas have bigger babies with a better chance to survive. So a male has a better chance of passing on the family genes if he mates with a big female.

Female humpback whales can attract anywhere from 2 to 20 males into their harem, and the males will fight off intruders that hope to break into the group. This means that the biggest females travel with a fairly nasty retinue.

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