PETA Sues SeaWorld for Violating Orcas' Constitutional Rights

In the first case of its kind, PETA, three marine-mammal experts, and two former orca trainers are filing a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare that five wild-caught orcas forced to perform at SeaWorld are being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The filing—the first ever seeking to apply the 13th Amendment to nonhuman animals—names the five orcas as plaintiffs and also seeks their release to their natural habitats or seaside sanctuaries.

The suit is based on the plain text of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits the condition of slavery without reference to "person" or any particular class of victim. "Slavery is slavery, and it does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends on gender, race, or religion," says general counsel to PETA, Jeffrey Kerr.

The five wild-captured orca plaintiffs are Tilikum and Katina (both confined at SeaWorld Orlando) and Kasatka, Corky, and Ulises (all three confined at SeaWorld San Diego).

"All five of these orcas were violently seized from the ocean and taken from their families as babies. They are denied freedom and everything else that is natural and important to them while kept in small concrete tanks and reduced to performing stupid tricks," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "The 13th Amendment prohibits slavery, and these orcas are, by definition, slaves."

In the aerial view of SeaWorld, one can see how little room orcas have. Inside the circle is Tilikum, whose nose and tail almost touch the ends of his tank. Image © 2011 Google

Orcas are intelligent animals who, in the wild, work cooperatively, form complex relationships, communicate using distinct dialects, and swim up to 100 miles every day. At SeaWorld, they are forced to swim in circles in small, barren concrete tanks. Deprived of the opportunity to make conscious choices and to practice their cultural vocal, social, and foraging traditions, they are compelled to perform meaningless tricks for a reward of dead fish.

Our understanding of animals grows every day. Animals are no longer regarded as "things" to dominate, but as breathing, feeling beings with families, dialects, intellect, and emotions. Just as we look back with shame at a time when we enslaved other humans and viewed some people as property less deserving of protection and consideration, we will look back on our treatment of these animals with shame. The 13^th Amendment exists to abolish slavery in all its forms—and this lawsuit is the next step.

The orcas are represented in the suit by what the law refers to as their "next friends": PETA, Ric O'Barry (a former orca and dolphin trainer and the star of the Academy Award–winning documentary The Cove), renowned marine biologist and orca expert Dr. Ingrid N. Visser, Orca Network founder Howard Garrett, and former SeaWorld trainers Samantha Berg and Carol Ray.

The groundbreaking suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego.

Please help animals imprisoned by SeaWorld today. Click here to write to The Blackstone Group—the company that owns SeaWorld—and ask that it immediately set in place a firm and rapid plan to release the animals to sanctuaries that can provide them with an appropriate and more natural environment.

peta.org 

Humans' Taste for Dolphins, Manatees On Rise by Jennifer Welsh

Fillet of dolphin? Polar bear steak? As world population increases, people in coastal poverty-stricken areas are turning to the ocean for their meals, consuming marine mammals such as dolphins and seals, new research suggests. 

Since 1990, at least 87 species of marine mammals — including dolphins, porpoises and manatees — have been served up in 114 countries. They are the victims of hunting and even commercial fishing operations, where they are sometimes caught accidentally, the researchers said.

The fishing of larger marine mammals, like humpback whales, is strictly regulated and monitored; but the extent to which these smaller warm-blooded marine species, including dolphins and seals, are caught, killed and eaten has been largely unstudied and unmonitored.

"International regulatory bodies exist to gauge the status of whale populations and regulate the hunting of these giants," study researcher Martin Robards, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. "These species, however, represent only a fraction of the world's diversity of marine mammals, many of which are being accidentally netted, trapped, and — in some instances — directly hunted without any means of tracking as to whether these off-takes are sustainable."

Porpoise and narwhal on the menu To get a clearer picture of the problem, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Okapi Wildlife Associates examined records on small fisheries focused on small whales (like pilot whales), dolphins and porpoises from 1975 and records of global marine mammal catches between 1966 and 1975.

From there, the researchers consulted about 900 other sources, including reports and discussions with numerous researchers and environmental managers; the exhaustive investigation took three years to complete. 

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Experts Perplexed by 60 Dolphins Stranded on Cape Cod by Lauren Keiper Reuters

Animal welfare advocates are perplexed by dozens of dolphins swimming onto land along the scenic Cape Cod shores south of Boston beginning late last week, one of the largest cases of dolphins stranding themselves in years.

About 60 animals have been stranded along 25 miles of Cape Cod coastline since Thursday, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

So far, 19 dolphins have been rescued and released, with some of the 27 dolphins stranded alive unable to survive, said Katie Moore, manager for the group's marine mammal rescue and research. She estimated another 32 washed ashore already dead.

She said the pattern this year is unlike past years, when just one dolphin or a group would be found on a single beach.

"It feels like stranding after stranding after stranding," she said. "It's definitely out of the ordinary."

The dolphins began beaching themselves on Thursday, with a single dolphin stranded near the town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, said Kerry Branon, a spokeswoman for IFAW.

On Saturday, the busiest day for rescuers, at least 37 dolphin were found spanning five towns along Cape Cod, Branon said.

January through April is the typical season for multiple beaching of dolphins, Branon said.

Cape Cod is among the top locations for the phenomenon worldwide, she said. Beaching of dolphins has been happening for centuries, but researchers are still trying to determine what brings the dolphins to Cape Cod Bay this time of year.

The group actions tend to happen, in part, because dolphins operate with a group mentality, where many others may follow one animal toward shallow water, IFAW said.

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Seals Blamed for Lack of Cod Recovery

              There are an estimated 300,000 seals on Sable Island, off Nova Scotia. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

A huge seal population is preventing cod stocks from rebounding off Nova Scotia, two former directors of science at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography say.

The work of Bob O'Boyle and Mike Sinclair backs what fishermen have argued for years.

"We conclude that indeed the seals are responsible for the lack of recovery of the cod," Sinclair told CBC News.

Sinclair retired as director of science at BIO in Dartmouth, N.S. He took over the job when O'Boyle left.

They decided to do their own study looking at the connection between cod and seals because they believe some other studies aren't accurate.

"Basically, we were not convinced that the studies that were out there really accurately reflected what was going on, so we thought we'd have a look at it ourselves," Sinclair said.

Commercial fishing of cod was banned on the Scotian Shelf in 1993, after decades of overfishing led to the collapse of cod stocks.

The Sable Island seal population has spiked since the 1970s, climbing from about 3,000 to 300,000, a doubling of the population every seven years.

Sinclair and O'Boyle agree with other researchers that as the number of grey seals grows, the amount of fish consumed spikes too.

Seals eat one to two tonnes of fish every year, they say.
Read more @ cbc.ca 

Polar Bears Turn Cannibalistic as Climate Change Depletes Arctic Food Supply by Rheana Murray

 

An adult male polar bear with the carcass of a cub, in the Arctic Ocean, near the Svalbard Archipelago. 

Dwindling Arctic Sea ice is cutting off polar bears’ food supply, forcing the starving animals to devour their own kind.

While cannibalism among polar bears isn’t unheard of, experts say the behavior is becoming increasingly common.

“There are increasing numbers of observations of it occurring,” photojournalist Jenny Ross told BBC News. “Particularly on land where polar bears are trapped ashore, completely food-deprived for extended periods of time due to the loss of sea ice as a result of climate change.”

 

Ross explained how the higher temperatures melt ice more quickly, leaving the bears less time to fuel up on ice-dependent seals, the animals’ main source of food.

"Weights of adults are decreasing, litters are smaller, fewer young bears are surviving, and the overall population size is shrinking,” she said.

Ross, whose research was published in the January 2012 edition of Ocean Geographic Magazine, described watching a bear guard its kill, a cub.

“As soon as the adult male became aware that a boat was approaching him, he basically stood to my attention — he straddled the young bear’s body, asserting control over it and conveying ‘this is my food,’” she recalled to BBC News.

“He then picked up the bear in his jaws and, just using the power of his jaws and his neck, transported it from one floe to another.

“And eventually, when he was a considerable distance away, he stopped and fed on the carcass.”

Read more @ NYDailyNews.com 

Thin Ice Jeopardizes Polar Bears in Manitoba: CBC News

Hundreds of polar bears in northeastern Manitoba may face an increased risk of starvation due to delayed ice formation along the western coast of Hudson Bay, conservationists say.

Higher-than-normal temperatures have prevented ice from forming in the region, putting it three to four weeks behind schedule, according to the Canadian Ice Service, a division of Environment Canada. As a result, minimum ice cover there is the lowest since 1971, Canadian Ice Service forecaster Luc Desjardins said.

Formation of sea ice is critical for polar bears, which use it as a platform for catching seals and other marine mammals.

While a recent aerial survey of 333 polar bears along the bay's western coast showed the bears to be in good condition, conservationists worry the animals' health will deteriorate quickly if ice does not form in the next few weeks.

"The conditions that are occurring are indicative of the ice coverage that we would see probably in the mid-October time frame, rather than the mid-November," Desjardins told CBC News last month.

Normally by late November, a thin layer of ice up to 15 miles long would have formed, stretching seaward from the bay's western and southern coastlines, he said.

"The ice is almost non-existent this year, compared to our long-term normal," Desjardins said.

Where there is ice, "it's very patchy in terms of formation and it's not a distinct pattern that affects the entire length of the coast of Hudson Bay."

Desjardins stressed that the amount of ice has fluctuated in recent years and 2010 levels are not "significantly different" from those of the last five or six years.

What is different, however, is temperature: the region's air temperature is “consistently warmer" than in recent years, he said.

In Nunavut's Foxe Basin, the temperature is 14 degrees above normal.

Winter is the polar bear's feasting season. From November until early summer, they fatten themselves on ringed seals, bearded seals and other mammals. In the summer, during what's called a "walking hibernation," the average polar bear loses 1.6 kilograms of weight per day.

Ideally, the slow, heavy predators have enough weight by the end of the summer to make it back onto the ice platforms and hunt anew for fatty mammals.

"The longer that ice is in forming, the longer the polar bears have to survive on the fat reserves they put down in the spring and conserved right through the summer," said Peter Ewin, an Arctic specialist for the World Wildlife Fund.

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Sea Shepherd Intercepts the Japanese Whaling Fleet with Drones

Sea Shepherd Intercepts the Japanese Whaling Fleet with Drones

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

Second Mate Peter Brown launches the drone from the Steve Irwin.The Sea Shepherd crew has intercepted the Japanese whaling fleet on Christmas Day, a thousand miles north of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The Sea Shepherd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to successfully locate and photograph the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru on December 24th. Once the pursuit began, three Japanese harpoon/security ships moved in on the Steve Irwin to shield the Nisshin Maru to allow it to escape.

This time however the Japanese tactic of tailing the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker will not work because the drones, one on the Steve Irwin and the other on the Bob Barker, can track and follow the Nisshin Maru and can relay the positions back to the Sea Shepherd ships.

“We can cover hundreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valuable assets for this campaign,” said Captain Paul Watson on board the Steve Irwin.

The drone named Nicole Montecalvo was donated to the Steve Irwin by Bayshore Recycling of New Jersey.

Captain Watson having received reports from fishermen when the Japanese ship passed through the Lombok Strait waited south of the strait at a distance of 500 miles off the southwest coast of Western Australia. Sea Shepherd caught the whalers at 37 degrees South, far above the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

“The chase is on for the next 1000 miles,” said Deckhand Eleanor Lister of Jersey (U.K.).

With the Steve Irwin taking up the resources of three of the Japanese ships the Bob Barker remains clear of a tail and the Brigitte Bardot is clear to scout out the factory ship, having superior speed to the harpoon vessels.

The Sea Shepherd crew have found the Japanese whaling fleet before a single whale has been killed.

“This is going to be a long hard pursuit from here to the coast of Antarctica,” said Captain Watson. “But thanks to these drones, we now have an advantage we have never had before – eyes in the sky.”

Visit Seashepherd.org 

Governments unite to call on Japanese whalers and Sea Sheperd protesters to behaves themselves by Alison Rehn

 

Whaling: A protestor throws a bottle of rotten butter, at Japanese whaling ship Yushin Maru No 1 in the Antarctic Ocean in 2009. Picture: AP. Source: AP

AUSTRALIA, the US, New Zealand and the Netherlands have united to call on whale hunters and protesters to behave themselves on the high seas this summer.

In a joint statement, the governments of Australia and the three anti-whaling nations condemned any actions that risked lives in the Southern Ocean.

Japanese whalers and protesters from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have had several near misses on the high seas in years past.

"We are deeply concerned that confrontations in the Southern Ocean will eventually lead to injury or loss of life among protestors, many of whom may be nationals of our countries, and whaling crews," the joint government statement said.

"We call on the masters of all vessels involved in these actions in the Southern Ocean to take responsibility for ensuring that safety of human life at sea is their highest priority."

Australia won't protect Japan whale hunt

Japan whaling fleet off to Antarctica

Special section: Stop the whale hunt

Australia, the US, New Zealand and the Netherlands said they remained "resolute" in their opposition to commercial whaling - including so-called "scientific" whaling - and that lethal techniques were not required in modern whale conservation and management.

They said they were "disappointed" at the recent departure of the Japanese whaling fleet for the Southern Ocean.

"Our governments respect the right of individuals and groups to protest peacefully, including on the high seas," the statement said.

"At the same time, we condemn dangerous or violent activities from all participants on either side.

"We are prepared to deal with any unlawful activity in accordance with relevant international and domestic laws."

Nations Unite Against Japan's Annual Whale Hunt

 

The United States, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have said they were "disappointed" over the start of Japan's annual whale hunt off Antarctica and warned against violent clashes. 

Japanese ships operating in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean have in recent years faced interference from the US-based militant environmentalist group Sea Shepherd, with repeated confrontations on the open seas.

The United States and its partners said while they supported the right to peaceful protest, any violence between whalers and demonstrators was unacceptable.

"The Governments of Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States jointly condemn any actions that imperil human life in the Southern Ocean," they said in a joint statement released by the US State Department.

"We are deeply concerned that confrontations in the Southern Ocean will eventually lead to injury or loss of life among protesters, many of whom are nationals of our countries, and whaling crews," they said.

"We remain resolute in our opposition to commercial whaling, including so-called 'scientific' whaling, in particular in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary... and are disappointed about the recent departure of the Japanese whaling fleet for the Southern Ocean."
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Elephant Seal Travels 18,000 Miles

The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles – the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again.

WCS tracked the male seal from December, 2010, to November, 2011. The animal – nicknamed Jackson – was tagged on the beach in Admiralty Sound in Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile. WCS conservationists fitted Jackson with a small satellite transmitter that recorded his exact location when he surfaced to breathe.

Jackson swam 1,000 miles north, 400 miles west, and 100 miles south from the original tagging location, meandering through fjords and venturing past the continental shelf as he foraged for fish and squid.

During this tracking, the WCS team analyzed the data to better understand elephant seal migratory routes.

Elephant seals are potential indicators of the health of marine ecosystems and may show how climate change influences the distribution of prey species that serve as the basis of Patagonia's rich marine ecosystem. To protect this vast region, conservationists need to know how wildlife uses it throughout the year.

"Jackson's travels provide a roadmap of how elephant seals use the Patagonian Coast and its associated seas," said Caleb McClennen, WCS Director for Global Marine Programs. "This information is vital to improving ocean management in the region, helping establish protected areas in the right places, and ensuring fisheries are managed sustainably without harming vulnerable marine species like the southern elephant seal."

The information WCS gathers will serve as a foundation for a new model of private-public, terrestrial-marine conservation of the Admiralty Sound, Karukinka Natural Park (a WCS private protected area), and Alberto de Agostini National Park. It will help build a broader vision for bolstering conservation efforts across the Patagonian Sea and coast.

"The Wildlife Conservation Society has a long history of working in the spectacular Patagonia region to establish protected areas and advance conservation of its rich wildlife," said Julie Kunen, WCS Director of Latin America and Caribbean. "Individual stories like Jackson's are awe-inspiring, and also inform the science that will ultimately help protect this region."

WCS reports that Jackson has returned to Admiralty Sound, the site of the original tagging. Each year, elephant seals haul ashore in colonies to molt and find mates. The satellite transmitter is expected to work until early next year, when it will eventually fall off.

WCS has tracked more than 60 southern elephant seals via satellite on the Atlantic side of the Southern Cone since the early 1990s. Jackson represented the first southern elephant seal tagged from the Pacific side of the Southern Cone.

Elephant seals are among the largest pinnipeds in the world, reaching weights of up to 7,500 pounds and lengths of 20 feet.

Since 2004, WCS has owned and managed Karukinka Natural Park, the largest protected area on the main island of Tierra del Fuego. The 728,960-acre park protects the world's southernmost stands of old growth forests as well as grasslands, rivers, and wetlands. WCS, in partnership with the global investment bank Goldman, Sachs & Co., which donated the lands, has transformed Karukinka into a flagship for wildlife conservation in Patagonia. It is now supported by an advisory council made up of local scientific and business sector representatives who provide recommendations on the park's development and serves as a model demonstrating how the private sector help advance conservation activities worldwide.
From The World Conservation Society 

The Physics Behind Great White Shark Attacks On Seals

A new study examining the complex and dynamic interactions between white sharks and Cape fur seals in False Bay, South Africa, offers new insights on the physical conditions and biological factors underlying predator-prey interactions in the marine environment.

University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science assistant professor Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, and a colleague from the University of British Columbia, describe how sharks are camouflaged as they stalk their prey from below. Low-light conditions, from the optical scattering of light through water, along with a shark's dark grey back and the dimly light rocky reef habitat allow sharks to remain undetected by seals swimming at the water's surface.

"Animal hunting in the ocean is rarely observed by humans," said Hammerschalg, director of the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program at UM. "The high frequency of attacks by white sharks on seals at our study site in South Africa provides a very unique opportunity to uncover new insights about predator-prey relationships."

Sharks typically search, stalk and strike their prey from below. The vast majority of predatory strikes by sharks and Cape fur seals occur against small groups of young-of-the-year seals. Predatory activity by sharks is most intense within two hours of sunrise and quickly decreases as light penetration in the water column increases.

"Stealth and ambush are key elements in the white shark's predatory strategy," said Hammerschlag.

Read more: @ ScienceDaily.com 

The Mystery of Chile’s Massive Whale Graveyard

Scientists work to discover how more than 75 whale fossils were buried in the Atacama desert.

In Chile’s northern desert of Atacama scientists uncovering the remains of a massive whale graveyard are struggling with one question: how did more than 75 of the ocean giants end up just yards apart on a hill half a mile from the ocean?

Chilean scientists, leading the investigation alongside peers from the Smithsonian Institute, were funded by  the National Geographic Institute to use cutting-edge technology to discover the answer to this question and preserve the historic finds.

“We have a unique opportunity to develop a great scientific project and make a great contribution to science,” Mario Suarez, co-director of the investigation, told the Associated Press.

The research team said that the whales most  likely died between 2 million and 7 million years ago, at which time the Atacama was a “lagoon-like environment.”

Still, there are numerous theories to explain the mass burial.

“I think they died more or less at the same time,” Nicholas Pyenson, co-director of the project and curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, told Associated Press.

Pysen said that the there were numerous explanations for the mass burial. In one scenario, the whales driven into a lagoon by a storm. In another they were trapped in a bay after a landslide or earthquake blocked of access to the ocean.

So far, more than 75 whale fossils have been discovered. But Suarez believes there could be enough fossils still hidden beneath the sand to keep him working on the site for the rest of his career.

To date the discoveries have included more than 20 perfectly intact skeletons as well as the remains of a species of tusked dolphin that previously had only been discovered in Peru.

Suarez, director of the Paleontological Museum in the nearby town of Caldera, has known about the site for years, but said he was unaware of how unique it was since no excavation work had been undertaken.

The digging began last year when workers began widening the Pan American highway into the whale graveyard. Suarez was asked by the company to monitor the site and began lobbying for the protection of the fossils.

Chile’s government has since declared the site a protected area  and the research team hopes to house the fossils in a museum close to the area.
By Joe Hinchliffe The Santiago Times

Website Enlists Crowds to Analyze Whale Songs By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

                                                 Graph of  Humpback whale song.

The folks at Zooniverse have a new citizen science project for you to play with — matching up whalesong to try and analyze the watery leviathans’ language.

Sounds  have been collected from both pilot whales and killer whales (both of which are actually species of dolphin). Each family of killer whales appears to have a distinct “  dialect” that it uses to communicate, and closely related families appear to share calls. Biologists have begun to categorize those noises, but the species’ communication is still poorly understood.

Pilot whales, too, appear to have similar dialects and calls, but researchers haven’t yet begun to seriously categorize these in the same way. Some of the calls have a general context that’s known — reproduction, contact calls for finding each other, etc. — but many others remain a mystery. Furthering the process of analyzing both species’ calls is where you come in.

If you head over to Whale.fm, you’ll be presented with a large whale call, placed on a Google map, and 36 smaller possible matches. Your task is to pick the one that’s closest to the original call, with the help of visualizations of what the audio sounds like.

With the public’s assistance in matching items in the datasets and creating links, the team behind the experiment, from St. Andrews University in Scotland, hope to better classify the datasets and also answer a few additional questions — how large the pilot whales’ call repertoire is, whether long-finned and short-finned pilot whales have different dialects, and whether the whale song changes during sonar transmissions (from human activity).

The sounds are collected from animals tagged with “D-Tags,” non-invasive sensors attached with suction cups, which eventually fall off. They record not only the sounds that the animals make, but also what they hear from other animals. They record location-based data, too, making them very useful for remotely studying the creatures. They’re attached by scientists using long poles.

What we particularly like about Whale.fm is how soothing the whole process is. If you’re having a tough day at work, put your headphones on and take five minutes to match a few whale noises. We guarantee you’ll feel better.

http://www.wired.co.uk/ 

Mass Whale Slaughter in Faroe Islands Turns Sea Blood Red

 

The sea of Faroe Islands in north of Europe turned red with the blood of hundreds of whales killed by the inhabitants, as a part of their annual whale hunting culture.

Every year the islanders catch and slaughter pilot whales (Globicephala melaena) during the traditional whale hunt known as 'Grindadrap'.

Being an autonomous province of Denmark, where whaling is banned, the Faroe Islands’ laws allow the mass slaughter of pilot whales, beaked whales and dolphins to observe the annual tradition.

“It is unacceptable for the Faroe Islands to preserve separate laws that allow inhabitants to continue the whale slaughter,” PETA mentions in its action alert “Stop the Bloody Whale Slaughter” urging government to stop the massacre.

The Faroese are descendents of Vikings, and pilot whales have been a central part of their diet for more than 1,000 years. The mass hunting is non-commercial; the whale meat cannot be sold but is divided evenly between members of the local community.

Despite criticism from animal rights groups and International Whaling Commission, the whale hunting custom continues to kill thousands of whales year after year.

The hunters crowd the whales into a bay and then cut their spines leaving the animals bleed to death slowly. According to PETA, some whales swim around in their family members' blood for hours.

“Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent creatures and feel pain and fear every bit as much as we do. They are forced to watch their families die while swimming around in the bloody water, waiting to be slaughtered themselves.”

A few pictures below shows how the gruesome slaughtering near the capital Torshavn in Faroe Islands made the sea turn red with blood:

Protecting Humpback Whales in Hawaii Waters

Humpback whales are protected in Hawaii under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, both of which were implemented in the 1970s. Federal regulations restrict approaching within 100 yards of whales when on the water, and 1,000 feet when operating an aircraft. These and other rules apply to all ocean users, including vessel operators, kayakers, paddleboarders, windsurfers, swimmers and divers in Hawaii.

"It's important for everyone to be extra-vigilant during whale season, for their own safety and the protection of these magnificent animals," said Paul Wong, operations coordinator of Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, in a release.

Humpback whale season in Hawaii generally runs from November through May, although whales may be spotted during other months, according to HIHWNMS. As many as 12,000 humpback whales winter in Hawaiian waters each year.

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Seals Use Incredible Navigation Skills to Return to Site Where They Were Born By Richard Gray

The Antarctic fur seals' remarkable homing instinct, which is thought to be the most accurate of any sea mammal, allows the creatures to return to within a single body length of the spot where they were born to give birth to their own pups.

Nearly four million of the sea mammals breed in huge colonies on the virtually featureless beaches of South Georgia every year. After being born, the seals spend five years out at sea feeding before returning to the island to breed.

Using radio tags placed on 335 seals shortly after they were born, researchers at the British Antarctic Survey have discovered that each seal returns to exactly the same location on the beach once they start breeding year after year.

But while typical human Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which use satellites orbiting the earth, can pinpoint a location to an accuracy of around 15 feet, the seals were found to be accurate down to as little as six feet.

Exactly how the seals achieve this feat has left the scientists baffled, but they believe the creatures use a kind of internal compass that helps them find their way across the Southern Ocean to the correct location on the right beach. 

Dr Jaume Forcada, a research scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, said: "We don't know exactly why but it is common among sea birds and other marine mammals to breed in large colonies. 

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This picture was taken by Lori Mazzuca in Hawaii. She said that the dolphin and humpback whale were playing gently together. The game seemed to be about how long the dolphin could stay atop the whale's head while the whale swam. When the dolphin finally slipped off it joined another dolphin and they began to leap with joy.

Dolphins are cute. Whales are appealing. Together, the two are irresistible.

This picture showed up on the Facebook page for The Whale and Dolphin People Project, an unconventional group that aims to be "a game-changer campaign to stop the killing of whales & dolphins by changing their status from animal to people."

Cutting Salmon Catch Could Save Endangered Orcas

VICTORIA ( British Columbia ) — A large share of chinook salmon heading to the B.C.'s Fraser River each summer may have to be earmarked for endangered resident killer whales if the whale population is to recover, a new paper says.

"If the aim on both sides of the border is to not only stop the decline of killer whale populations, but also help increase their numbers, then we have to ensure the salmon they require are there when they need them," said lead author Rob Williams of the University of Washington and University of B.C.

That could mean adjusting fishing plans to include an allocation of chinook for the whales and underlines the need to increase chinook salmon runs, according to the paper, published this week in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

"Temporary reductions in fishing quotas may buy some time while salmon spawning habitat is improved to increase salmon returns," Williams wrote.

"An intriguing policy solution would be to give killer whales a salmon catch allocation under the (Pacific Salmon) Treaty. This would be consistent with the spirit of Canada's wild salmon policy, which places conservation needs ahead of fishery allocations."

The study estimates that 87 whales in the three resident pods consume between 12 and 23 per cent of the average 300,000 chinook that head for the Fraser River each summer. Each whale needs about 670 fish a day and 42 per cent more if it is a nursing female.

Read more: 

Read the Study @ PLoS ONE 

The Taiji Massacre

There are a few countries which still take part in inhumane dolphin hunts. These countries include Brazil, Peru the Solomon Islands and Denmark in specific the Faroe Islands.

However the largest massacre of dolphins takes place in the waters surrounding Japan, where more than 20,000 of these marine mammals are killed annually. Usually these sensitive animals are harpooned with barbed spears, however a large number of dolphins are captured and murdered in a process called “drive fishing” or “oikomi” as it is known in Japanese.

Drive fishing occurs in mainly coastal towns such as Futo and Taiji. The small fishing town of Taiji lies on the tip of a peninsular that runs in to the Pacific Ocean and is home to the largest dolphin massacre on the face of the planet. During the “driving” season which runs from October to March, in this small picturesque town alone up to 2,500 dolphins are viciously hacked to death every year.

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Sea Otters

Native to the northern Pacific Ocean from Russia to southern California, this charismatic critter was seriously overhunted for its fur – almost to extinction. It has been protected by international law since 1911 and its population is starting to rebound, but it is still considered endangered. Now 90% of sea otters live off the coast of Alaska. Sea otters can sometimes be found in large groups of either males or females, known as rafts.

The sea otter can spend its entire life in the ocean, including sleeping anchored to kelp beds to keep from drifting away. Because it spends so much time in cold water and has no insulating fat, it relies on its fur, which is the densest of any mammal, to stay warm. It blows bubbles of air into this coat, with 

100,000 hairs per square centimeter, to keep water from penetrating to its skin.

The pictures you’ve seen are probably of sea otters floating at the surface, but they are highly adapted to life in the water. Sea otters have a large tail to steer and large hind feet that act as flippers. Sea otters can swim as fast as 9 kilometers per hour and stay underwater for almost six minutes while diving.

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