Moby Carbon

Wanna stop climate change? We need to start a whale nursery and fill our oceans with whales. Not just a few, I'm talking 36 billion whales. I call it the "Moby Carbon" project.

Here's what it's about...

Whale removal from the world's oceans is a little-known CO2 problem, akin to deforestation. The body of a whale contains up to 9 tons of carbon, more than any living thing except for the biggest trees. Our human whale extermination program of the last couple of centuries has reduced carbon removal from the atmosphere.

Time to re-whale the oceans so they can die and sink and store our waste carbon! And I don't mean just get back to pre-human levels of whales, I think we need to fill the oceans with whales. According to my calculations, with 36,000,000,000 whales (36 billion whales) on earth, they could live comfortably 100 meters apart and effectively remove all excess carbon from our atmosphere so we could live combustibely ever after, burning fossil fuels to our wallet's content.

I'm going to look for financing to launch Moby Carbon, I'm sure I can find a friendly country that will let me do a whale nursery for a share of the carbon credits.

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Toxic whales

Wake up everyone, and face what is being called perhaps "the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species" according to an expert.

Toxic chemicals are corroding whales from the inside. "The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," said whale scientist Roger Payne of The Ocean Alliance.

How does this threaten people? Whales get contaminated from seafood which is a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

How bad is the problem? According to Payne: "you could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.

Hmm...worse than the plague? Worse than wars? Maybe not. This sounds bad, but the "doomsday" statement seems a bit overblown. Maybe he was misquoted.

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Seagulls attacking whales

It's like a Hitchcock movie made real--attack of the birds. I wonder if whales are as scared as I was when I saw "The Birds" as a boy.

Seagull attacks are a new threat to endangered right whales off Argentina. In 1974 only 1% of whales were attacked, but the number of victims has increased to 74% today.

Roger Payne from the Ocean Alliance said “You see big open sores, which we thought were pock marks of infection. Some are half a metre across and the edges look like thousands of bites."

The gulls are driving the whales crazy as they try evasive manuvers to avoid getting pecked to death while on the surface to breathe. Especially at risk are mother-calf pairs, the preferred target of the gulls.

hat tip: zooillogix

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Lobster fishermen must do more to protect whales

Says who? Says a federal judge. I can't link to it because it's not yet in the sluggish traditional media.

On Friday afternoon, a federal judge ordered lobstermen to do more to protect whales. This is especially ironic right now, with lobstermen wanting to sell sustainable lobster, to capitalize on the "green" market. Strangely, Maine lobstermen haven't yet figured out that sustainable fishing means not catching whales.

Maybe Maine lobstermen will follow the lead of Massachusetts, start protecting whales, and get serious about sustainability.

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Killing whales to save them?

Japanese scientists are worried that climate change is making whales skinnier. But they killed 4,500 whales to get the data, in defiance of international opinion.

What do you think? Does the end justify the means? And is it good use of resources to butcher those whales and sell the meat?

The Save the Whales movement has been fairly effective, but so-called "scientific" whale hunting by the Japanese has been the most hated loophole. Now we have some actual, useful scientific results, but at a very high cost.

Some scientists have argued that the research results shouldn't have been published, because it was unethical to collect the data through sham research that was thinly disguised commercial whale hunting.

Whales have been the subject of heated debate for centuries, including a raging controversy in the early 1800's over whether or not a whale is a fish. What seems like a biological question blew up over religious implications and lucrative taxes on fish products.

Now will we see whales at the center of another culture clash, the global warming debate? For the sake of whales, I hope not.

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Help save critically endangered right whales

Blue alert: have you seen this young right whale (see photo)? He was one year old when he went missing, after being run over by a ship, and he'd be 3 now if he's still alive.

Now is an important time for right whales, those critically endangered giants of the sea. Efforts are underway to reduce harm to whales, including whales getting run over by big cargo ships and whales getting tangled up in fishing gear.

To learn more and find out how to help save right whales, drop by Ocean Conservancy and/or the New England Aquarium. These venerable institutions are leading efforts to protect right whales, and they can use your help.

And, check out the info on whales and more at the New England Aquarium's great blog, The New Blue.

BTW, let me know if you'd like to see more of these calls to action for ocean conservation.

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Deep bass is better for blue whale love songs

Lookout Barry White, there's a new king singing romantic bass and he's 100 feet long and weighs 300,000 pounds. And he's blue and lives in the ocean.

Blue whale love songs are low in pitch, too low for humans to hear. Now researchers think they're getting lower because with more blue whales around, the competition is to see how low can they go.

I think that's Barry White chasing the blue whale in the picture, looking for tips.

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Where can I buy sustainable lobster?

Look to Massachusetts for the most sustainable lobster around. And look for the green claw band, or ask your fishmonger to get the green band Massachusetts lobster.

Why? Because Massachusetts lobstermen are taking the trouble to reduce harm to whales. Massachusetts lobermen are ahead of lobstermen in some other, perhaps more well-known lobster locations.

What's the problem? Whales getting tangled up in ropes used to catch lobster.

The wheels of government have been slow to respond to whales getting tangled up in the ropes tied to lobster traps. Typical ropes float up in the water and make a spider web that can and does entangle and kill whales. This is a serious problem, especially for the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, numbering around 350 individual whales left alive. Death of even a single whale is a risk to the survival of the species.

To help with this problem, the federal government proposed a regulation that all ropes used to connect lobster traps must be made of sinking rope. That way there's no spider web. But, thanks to pressure from Maine senators, this regulation is being delayed after being watered down earlier to exempt large areas in Maine.

The rationale from Maine lobstermen is that things are different in Maine, and sinking ropes won't work. But Maine has been dragging their feet on alternatives to sinking rope too. Well, let's see whether customers prefer whale-safer lobster. No doubt Maine would find a solution quickly if the vaunted Maine lobster brand was being eclipsed by Mass lobster.

It's ironic (perhaps tragic) that this whole effort is playing out while the Maine lobster fishery is trying to get certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. They don't seem to realize that sustainability means not pushing right whales closer to extinction. A Maine lobster website talks about sustainability without so much as mentioning whales. Let's see whether we can help them see that their slogan "here today, here tomorrow" needs to apply to right whales too.

This Mass lobster project is a cooperative effort by the Ocean Conservancy, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Massachusetts Lobstermen.

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Whales, love them and abuse them

Are whales stealing food from people, or does it go the other way?

According to marine biologist Daniel Pauly, it's "cynical and irresponsible" to argue that whales eat fish which could feed the world's hungry people. But this is exactly the claim made by Iceland, Norway, and Japan, in their quest to increase whale hunting. Now let's see...are these three whale-hunting countries perhaps biased on this issue?

Meanwhile, it will probably be harder for whales to get full bellies in the next few decades because of climate change. Whale feeding areas in the Antarctic are predicted to shrink and move further south, forcing whales to travel farther and concentrate in smaller feeding zones.

The news for whales is just not so good. We have an international deadlock on whale hunting and evidence of cheating (killing too many whales) in the Japanese phony "scientific" whale hunt.

All this for creatures that we love and admire? No wonder it's hard to get people to conserve cold-blooded, wet, and slimy fish.

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Whales vs. Lobster

That's the title of a great post by Jives over at The New Blue, a new blog on ocean issues from the New England Aquarium. Great stuff on whales and lobsters, and a heads-up on the newest Olympic sport, ray racing (photo at right).

Are comments allowed, Jives? I can't find a comment link so I can bet on the ray to win.

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A side of whale with your lobster?

Would you still buy Maine lobster if it came with a side of whale meat? Well guess what, when you buy lobster you’re paying someone to lay a spider web of ropes in front of whales, and some of the whales get caught. Is that what you want to buy?

These days, we think of other people when we think about killing whales. Japanese whale hunts disguised as science, or Iceland and Norway resisting international management. But lobster fishing kills whales right here at home, despite more than a decade of work to protect whales. If you buy lobster, you own a piece of this problem.

Lobsters are caught with traps, and ropes are used to hold and retreive the traps (see diagram at left). Where lobster fishing is good, there are a lot of traps on the bottom and a spider web of ropes that float up in the water creating a potential trap for whales.

How bad is the risk to whales from catching lobsters? Entanglement scars have been found on 75% of critically endangered right whales, most probably caused by lobster fishing. Some of those whales die from drowning, while some escape with injuries caused by thrashing around in the ropes.

Lobstering isn’t the only thing that kills whales. Other fishing gear like gillnets can also catch and kill whales, and large ships can kill by running over whales. So why focus on Maine lobster?

The proud Maine lobster industry wants to fetch a higher price for their catch by promoting Maine lobster as sustainable. I have a problem with calling Maine lobster sustainable if catching lobster means also catching whales.

I believe lobstermen when they say they don’t want to kill whales, but they could do more to save whales. Lobstermen are fighting a new federal regulation designed to protect whales. It’s the latest in a series of usually-successful efforts to get powerful politicians like Senator Olympia Snowe to protect the lobster industry.

There is more the lobster industry could do, and the painfully slow progress on protecting whales is not what I would expect from a fishery that wants to be called sustainable. Sustainability includes protecting ocean ecosystems.

Here's the lobstermen’s side of the story, and a link to Maine Lobsermen's Association legal defense fund where you can contribute money to fight whale protection rules that lobstermen don't like. For more info, you can reach the Maine Lobstermen’s Association at info@mainelobstermen.org

Here's one example of a thought from the Jan. 2003 Massachusett's Lobsterman's Association newsletter, another place you can find the lobster industry's views:

"...I promised myself I would refrain from further criticism of developments in the whale theater of the absurd hoping, I guess, that some type of reason would prevail when dealing with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s efforts to save whales. I guess I was willing to believe that in the end they would see that fishermen are more important than the whales..."

Image: entangled humpback whale

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Prehistoric whale hunting

Whale hunting is not new. Arctic people were hunting whales at least 3,000 years ago in what is now Alaska and Russia, according to a new study.

According to scientists: "The importance of whaling in arctic prehistory is clear. Prehistoric settlements were situated and defended so that people could hunt whales"

No reports on whether anti-whaling activists interfered and tried to block the hunts.

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Saving whales with sound

Whales talk. Hmmm...can we tune in to whale talk and save whales from getting run over by big ships?

Yes, thanks to the Massachusetts Bay buoy network. It's a system of listening buoys that hear highly endangered right whales and tell big ships when to slow down. It's a real-time "whale zone" sign, designed to work like school crossing signs that get people to slow down when kids are bursting out of schools.

Wanna know where whales are right now? Check out listenforwhales.org and see for yourself what buoys can do.

Hugh Powell has the story over at surf.bird.scribble, thanks Hugh.

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Mythical sea creature surfaces

"Have you seen the white whale?" Now you have, check out these pictures of Moby Orca, the white killer whale. Once the stuff of legends, now we know the white whale is real.

Answering the plea of Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick, Scientists studying fish spotted the white orca off Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

There's much to this sighting, beyond positive ID and photos of a nearly-white Orcinus orca, or killer whale. Now, combing the ocean, scientists are putting the truth or lie to many myths and mysteries of the sea, for better or worse. Would we prefer the mysteries to remain? Or is it better to know?

The white whale is a large male, apparently healthy, and it's not an albino because it has small amounts of light yellow or light brown color in some patches.

A magnificent sight, a myth revealed, and the ocean is a tiny bit less mysterious today. But not to worry, I'm sure there are many, many more secrets still hiding. Goodbye for now, Moby orca, go back down to the earth's last uncharted realm.

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Harpooned--Japanese research whaling game

Ever want to harpoon a whale? I didn't think so, but now there's a game that lets you see what it feels like.

Harpooned is designed to send a conservation message by letting people shoot up moving whales from a boat, while trying to avoid hitting protesters. It's supposed to mimic Japanese research whaling around Antarctica, complete with icebergs. When struck, whales leave a big cloud of red blood in the water. You can watch a YouTube video of the game, or download the game at Harpooned.org.

The outcome: at the end of the game you get a count of the number of cans of pet food and whale hamburgers that came out of your "research" whale hunting.

Hmmm...more and more edgy new media with a conservation message. I don't think I'll be playing this one, and I wonder if the conservation message comes through the carnage.

hat tip: cephalopodcast.com

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Science vs. religion clash: is a whale a fish?

What seems like a basic biological question blew up into a vitriolic public smackdown. Sound familiar?

In 1818, a whale oil dealer refused to pay a fish-product fine on whale oil, because a whale isn't a fish. The inspector insisted on the tax, and a spirited court and public battle played out.

This struggle sounds silly today, but it ignited a culture clash much like the current struggle over evolution and creation in public schools.

Ultimately a jury ruled that a "whale is a fish," until the New York legislature settled the matter by voting that whales are not fish. I knew we could count on NY.

This fascinating tale comes from D. Graham Burnett in Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature.

The Princeton University website says this about the book:

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael declares, "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." Few readers today know just how much argument Ishmael is waiving aside. In fact, Melville's antihero here takes sides in one of the great controversies of the early nineteenth century--one that ultimately had to be resolved in the courts of New York City. In Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett recovers the strange story of Maurice v. Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the then-popular--and biblically sanctioned--view that the whale was a fish. The immediate dispute was mundane: whether whale oil was fish oil and therefore subject to state inspection. But the trial fueled a sensational public debate in which nothing less than the order of nature--and how we know it--was at stake. Burnett vividly re-creates the trial, during which a parade of experts--pea-coated whalemen, pompous philosophers, Jacobin lawyers--took the witness stand, brandishing books, drawings, and anatomical reports, and telling tall tales from whaling voyages. Falling in the middle of the century between Linnaeus and Darwin, the trial dramatized a revolutionary period that saw radical transformations in the understanding of the natural world. Out went comfortable biblical categories, and in came new sorting methods based on the minutiae of interior anatomy--and louche details about the sexual behaviors of God's creatures.

When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.

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Humpback whales sing for love and warnings

Scientists finally understand some whale sounds, and they're not too surprising. Males trying to attract mates, mothers warning their calves, etc.

The sounds have intriguing names: wops, thwops, grumbles, squeaks, etc. So far no insight into the romantic new age notion of whales as great philosophers.

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Toxic chemicals in killer whales

Sad news from the Arctic off Europe, killer whales set a new record for toxic chemicals in their bodies.

Toxic chemicals found at high levels included PCBs and chlorinated pesticides, in other words some nasty stuff. Levels were 6-20 times higher than in other high arctic marine mammals such as beluga whales.

We're killing them softly with our song of modern life.

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The great gray whale famine

Scary news, the Pacific ocean can no longer provide enough food for today's small remnant population of gray whales. But wait, gray whales are supposed to be a success story of recovery after the end of commercial whaling.

Gray whales still have a long ways to go to recover, according to a new study of gray whale genetic diversity. There were once around 100,000 gray whales, compared to today's population of around 20,000. And today's small population can't seem to find enough to eat, so they're getting skinny and even starving.

What this means is that today's ocean can't support as many whales as the 1800 ocean. Leading candidate for this whale famine? Climate change that is limiting the whale's food supply in the Bering Sea.

Gray whales, since the root around in the bottom to feed, have a big effect on ocean ecosystems, so loss of whales affects more than whales.

This is a real shifting baseline problem, as explained by Jennifer at Shifting Baselines.

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Whale killed in US whale hunt

It's difficult question time as a grey whale was killed during a whale hunt in nearby coastal waters. Blogfish finds many friends asking questions about this hunt.

First, news is sketchy, so more time is needed to sort out what really happened. Sunday morning, before coffee, a banner headline screamed "Grey whale killed in rogue tribal hunt." BTW, this is Seattle all right. How many other places carried the news so prominently?

The early story was rogue hunters did a bad thing. But wait. It now seems that the lead hunter was a grey-haired man who led the legal Makah hunt of 1999 that also killed a whale. One comment was that he was tired of the 8 years of process and wrangling over their treaty rights, and "it was time" to hunt again. For detailed reports, visit Olympic Peninsula Environmental News.

Blogfish sees many shades of grey here. Makah whale hunting is important and culturally valuable. Lots of people claim this and it's rarely true. It's true for Makah whale hunting. Process hurdles do look ridiculous at some point, and I can understand wanting to act rather than spin more papers. But it's breaking the law and one has to be prepared to pay for breaking the law. This "rogue" whale hunt is at least partially some people standing up for what they view as their rights, but that will have consequences. The hunters are not hiding, they're prepared to take responsibility for their actions.

Finally, there is no scientific reason that I know of to worry about the biological impact on the whales. It may be significant if this was a local resident whale, but it's not primarily a conservation issue. This is a moral and social issue, and raises concerns about resumption of whale hunting elsewhere.

It's a tough call, and the rule of law is important. But I wish we were better at drawing lines between resource uses that are ok and those that are not ok. The Makah tribal hunt doesn't worry me as a conservation problem, and I wish the Makah well in maintaining their identity. They have some of my sympathies, I just wish they had waited until they had a permit.

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