Category Archives: Whales

The whale sentinel: two decades of watching humpback numbers boom

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After more than 20 years watching from the cliffs of Botany Bay, Wayne Reynolds’ passion is having tangible results

He may have seen it tens of thousands of times before but when Wayne Reynolds spots a whale emerging from the water, he reacts with the excitement of a child pointing out a rollercoaster at an amusement park.

“Oh wow, there’s a minke and her calf,” he yells out with boyish enthusiasm from the rocky cliff at Potter Point in Kurnell, in Sydney’s south. “I just go into auto-mode, I can’t help it.”

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‘My God, I’m in a whale’s mouth’: lobster diver on brush with hungry humpback

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Michael Packard, 56, was spat out after half a minute but expert says experience would have been ‘totally freaky’ for the whale

A New England lobsterman has described the moment he realised he was trapped in the mouth of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod.

“Oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth and he’s trying to swallow me. I thought to myself, ‘hey, this is it. I’m finally going to die. There’s no getting out of here,’’’ Michael Packard told a local news station in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

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Melting ice in Arctic linked to bowhead whales holding off annual migration

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Researchers in Canada find that population did not make the 6,000km roundtrip in 2018-2019

As the ice melts at pace in the Arctic, the mining and shipping industry has carved itself an opportunity out of the crisis. Meanwhile, the marine ecosystem is left to coping with the heat, noise, pollution and the cascade of other changes that come with the upheaval of the environment.

Now researchers have found a whale species that typically migrates away from solid sea ice each autumn and returns every summer to feast on tiny crustaceans did not make the 6,000km (3,700-mile) roundtrip in 2018-2019.

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Marine scientists ‘alarmed’ after four gray whales found dead in San Francisco Bay

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Deaths discovered over a course of nine days are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ for the species, says expert

Four dead gray whales have washed ashore on San Francisco Bay Area beaches in the last nine days, with experts saying on Friday one had been struck by a ship. They were trying to determine how the other three had died.

“It’s alarming to respond to four dead gray whales in just over a week because it really puts into perspective the current challenges faced by this species,” says Dr Padraig Duignan, the director of pathology at the Marine Mammal Center.

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Endangered North Atlantic right whales produce most calves since 2015

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  • Scientists caution high death rate is outpacing births
  • Population of whales estimated at around 360

North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.

Related: The new humpback? Calf sighting sparks hope for imperilled right whale

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The beluga whale who became famous: Aleksander Nordahl’s best photograph

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‘He was called Hvaldimir and he would play in front of crowds at Hammerfest harbour in Norway. One woman dropped her phone and he fetched it for her’

In April 2019, a beluga whale appeared alongside fishing boats off the coast of Norway. He was wearing a harness. A fisherman called Joar Hesten freed him, and saw the harness had stamped on it “equipment of St Petersburg”. The media went crazy, with talk of a “spy whale”, and the creature was named Hvaldimir, a combination of hval, the Norwegian word for whale, and Vladimir, a nod to Russia’s President Putin.

The whale became famous. There were Instagram videos of him playing in Hammerfest harbour in front of crowds. One woman dropped her phone in the water and the whale fetched it for her. He would bring up bones from the depths to show people, almost like little gifts. It became this huge moment on social media: everyone in the country fell in love with the whale. Even the hardcore fishing villages melted for Hvaldimir.

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Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information

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Whalers’ logbooks show rapid drop in strike rate in north Pacific due to changes in cetacean behaviour

A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes wreaked by humans in the 21st century.

The paper, published by the Royal Society on Wednesday, is authored by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, pre-eminent scientists working with cetaceans, and Tim D Smith, a data scientist, and their research addresses an age-old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t.

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Blue whales threatened by ship collisions in busy Patagonia waters

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Endangered giants face potentially fatal encounters with the 1,000 daily fishing vessels moving through main feeding area off Chile, scientists warn

The largest mammal ever to live on the Earth, the blue whale, is under threat from boat collisions as one of its main feeding grounds in Chilean Patagonia is overrun with vessels, a new study has revealed.

The endangered whales must contend with up to 1,000 boats moving daily through an important feeding area in the eastern South Pacific, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.

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Humpback whales may be struggling to breed as climate crisis depletes food

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Scientists say decline in calves born in past 15 years due to diminishing herring stocks in warming north Atlantic

Humpback whales could be struggling to breed due to rapid environmental change in the ocean caused by the climate crisis, a study suggests.

Scientists have confirmed a significant decline in the number of calves born to female humpbacks over the past 15 years in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Canada, an important summer feeding ground for migrating whales. They said the climate crisis has led to rapid sea temperature and sea level rise in this area of the north Atlantic, with knock-on effects for the ecosystem that include decreasing numbers of herring, a vital food source for humpback whales.

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Left stranded: US military sonar linked to whale beachings in Pacific, say scientists

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Islands surrounded by US military study area, including Guam and Saipan, call for activity that harms the whales to stop

In the midst of the western Pacific, flanked by the world’s deepest ocean trench, the waters off the Mariana Islands are home and habitat to whales, dolphins, and countless other marine mammals as they breed and feed.

It’s also where they encounter the might of the US military.

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Calls from the deep: do we need to Save the Whales all over again?

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Fifty years ago, a hit album proved whales “sing” – and led to one of the great environmental success stories. But soon it could all be for nothing

In June 1975, a small group of activists set off from the coast of California in an 85ft boat. They were headed for the Dalniy Vostok factory ship, which was at sea conducting business as usual: harpooning sperm whales.

The activists were members of Greenpeace, an organisation that had only recently been founded, in Vancouver in 1971, and they were setting out to meet the Russian whaling ship under the banner of what would become one of the most famous slogans of the environmental movement, Save the Whales.

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Even slow-moving boats likely to kill endangered right whales in a collision, study finds

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Canadian government’s speed restrictions are not enough to prevent deaths of endangered animals, researchers say

For North Atlantic right whales, collisions with large cargo vessels are one of the deadliest threats to an endangered population. But new research from Canada has found even under the government’s current maritime speed restrictions, strikes are likely to be fatal.

In a new paper published in Marine Mammal Science, biologists found that collisions between large vessels and whales at a speed of just 10 knots had an 80% chance of producing a fatality.

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Blue whale sightings off South Georgia raise hopes of recovery

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After single sighting in 20 years of surveys, new expedition and analysis bring 58

When the Antarctic blue whale – the largest and loudest animal on the planet – was all but wiped out by whaling 50 years ago, the waters around South Georgia fell silent.

Twenty years of dedicated whale surveys from ships off the sub-Antarctic island between 1998 and 2018 resulted in only a single blue whale sighting. But a whale expedition this year and analysis by an international research team resulted in 58 blue whale sightings and numerous acoustic detections, raising hopes that the critically endangered mammal is finally recovering five decades after whaling was banned.

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Whale, that was close!: humpback appears to overturn kayakers in California

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Two whale-watchers at Avila beach had a close encounter that dumped them into the ocean

Two kayakers in California had an unsettlingly close whale watching experience Monday, after a humpback appeared to overturn their boat and almost swallow them, according to a report.

Liz Cottriel and Julie McSorley told the Fresno-area Fox affiliate that they were watching whales from a distance of about 30 feet (9.14 meters) during what appeared to be a peaceful morning near Avila beach.

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Sri Lanka rescues 120 whales after biggest mass stranding

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Gruelling rescue involved navy and volunteers pulling the pilot whales back into deeper waters

Sri Lanka’s navy and volunteers have rescued 120 pilot whales stranded in the country’s worst mass beaching, but at least two injured animals were found dead, officials said.

Sailors from the navy and the coastguard along with local volunteers had pulled back at least 120 whales by dawn on Tuesday after a gruelling overnight rescue operation, navy spokesman Indika de Silva said.

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Stop blowing up bombs on sea floor, say whale campaigners

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Wartime relics need to be cleared for wind farms but explosions can kill cetaceans

The detonation of wartime bombs left on the seafloor around the UK must end to stop the deaths of whales and dolphins, campaigners say.

The offshore wind industry is expanding rapidly and this may lead to a sharp rise in such explosions as the seafloor is cleared before construction. A quieter “burning” technique is already available, say the campaigners.

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Race to save 100 whales in Sri Lanka’s biggest mass beaching

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Navy joins forces with rescuers and volunteers in effort to push pilot whales back into ocean

Rescuers and volunteers were racing to save about 100 pilot whales stranded on Sri Lanka’s western coast in the country’s biggest mass beaching.

The short-finned pilot whales began beaching at Panadura, 15 miles (25km) south of Colombo, shortly before dusk. Within an hour their numbers swelled to about 100, a local police chief, Sanjaya Irasinghe, said.

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