A blue whale in Chile was caught on animation through a new study. Researchers tracked a whale moving through a busy gulf surrounded by ship traffic. In the animation, the animal looks hectic as it moves between traffic. While blue whales spend time feeding in the South Pacific Ocean, a new study published in Scientific […]
Endangered blue whales, the largest animal in history, have returned to waters of South Georgia, close to Antarctica after 100 years of near extinction. Scientists have recorded dozens of whales in the area after only a single whale had been viewed between 1998 and 2018. “We’ve had indications in previous years that there might […]
Icelandic whaling company IP-Utgerd announced April 24 that it is stopping whaling completely, while the country’s largest whaling firm, Hvalur hf., says it won’t be hunting any whales for the second year in a row. IP-Utgerd, which mainly targeted minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), cited financial difficulties after no-fishing zones were extended off the Icelandic coast, […]
Scientists have mapped whale stress levels in relation to human activity going back nearly a century and a half — using earwax collected from baleen whales. From 1870 to 2016, the whales’ stress levels seem to be closely associated with activities such as industrial whaling, naval operations during World War II, and rising sea-surface temperatures, […]
Iceland’s lone whaling company’s ongoing defiance of an international ban on commercial whaling is outrageous and offence enough as it continues to target endangered fin and minke whales, but now it’s reached a new low after having illegally slaughtered the first blue whale in decades. After a two year break from whaling, Hvalur hf announced […]
How do bowhead whales in the unbroken darkness of the Arctic’s polar winter keep busy during breeding season? They sing, of course. From late autumn to early spring, off the east coast of Greenland, some 200 bowheads, hunted to the edge of extinction, serenade each other with compositions from a vast repertoire of song, according […]
When it comes to commercial whaling, Japan is in the limelight. The country has been widely accused of using a scientific research program as a guise for hunting hundreds of whales a year and selling their meat. Last year, an international court agreed that the program isn’t scientific and ordered Japan to shut it down—to […]
Late last month, a playful fin whale gave a lucky group of spectators the experience of a lifetime as he breached from the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Fortunately, a research assistant for Conservation, Information and Research on Cetaceans (CIRCE) happened to have her camera […]