New Pacific humpback whale discovery

This video says about itself:

World free-diving champion Tanya Streeter spends two weeks diving with humpback whales in the Turks and Caicos Islands as they migrate southward. In this short animal video, she examines the tail flukes that are as destinctive as a human finger print and takes a closer look at the amazing methods a mother humpback whale uses to teach her young calf how to breathe underwater. Brilliant footage from BBC sea life show ‘Diving with Whales’.

From the University of Hawaii at Manoa today:

Researchers discover new wintering grounds for humpback whales using sound

In the thick of whale season, researchers from Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shed new light on the wintering grounds of the humpback whale. The primary breeding ground for the North Pacific was always thought to be the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). However, a new study has shown that these grounds extend all the way throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago and into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), also known as Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM).

Humpback whales, an endangered species, were once on the brink of extinction due to commercial whaling practices of the last century. Today, thanks to international protection, their numbers have dramatically increased, resulting in a greater presence of these singing mammals during the winter months. Song is produced by male humpback whales during the winter breeding season. All males on a wintering ground sing roughly the same song any given year, but the song changes from year to year. No one is exactly sure why the whales sing but some researchers believe it could be a display to other males. Between 8,500 and 10,000 whales migrate to Hawai’i each winter; while the rest of the population can be found in places like Taiwan, the Philippines, the Mariana Islands, Baja California, Mexico, amongst other Pacific locations (Calambokidis et al. 2008).

Over the past three decades, population recovery has resulted in a steady increase in the number of whales and a geographic expansion of their distribution in the MHI. Until recently, however, no empirical evidence existed that this expansion included the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. This changed recently when scientists from HIMB and NOAA published their findings in the current issue of the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, detailing the presence of humpback whale song in the Northwestern Hawaiian Archipelago. These researchers deployed instruments known as Ecological Acoustic Recorders (EARs) in both the NWHI and MHI to record the occurrence of humpback whale song, as an indicator of winter breeding activity. Humpback whale song was found to be prevalent throughout the NWHI and demonstrated trends very similar to those observed in the MHI.

Dr. Marc Lammers, a researcher at HIMB and the lead scientist of the project explains “these findings are exciting because they force us to re-evaluate what we know about humpback whale migration and the importance of the NWHI to the population.” The results are also of particular relevance in light of recent suggestions that an undocumented wintering area for humpback whales exists somewhere in the central North Pacific. Dr. Lammers and his colleagues believe that the NWHI could be that area.

March 2011: Iceland is being urged to abandon its commercial whaling as the US and ten other countries issued a statement condemning the cruel and unnecessary killing of endangered fin whales and minke whales: here.

(University of California – Davis) In the first census of its kind, research led by UC Davis and Stanford University found that there are far fewer white sharks off central California than biologists had thought: here.

Fish and chips… but are yours served with whale slaughter on the side? Here.

Petition to Stop the Japanese Whale Hunt — for Good! | Sign the Petition | Animals Australia Unleashed: here.