One day last July, a newborn humpback whale calf lay motionless on the seafloor, just a kilometre off Australia’s Gold Coast. The encounter was captured through underwater video. For more than an hour, the mother repeatedly returned to the same spot, gently touching the calf with her head and pectoral fin and resting beside it […]
Tag: marine mammals
As Australia expands seismic testing, experts warn of profound effects on sealife
It was spring, 20 years ago now, but he remembers it clearly. On the deck of the Geco Resolution, wind tearing spray from the waves, Robert McCauley stood gazing out onto an ocean blackened by night. The ship had been firing seismic airguns all day, thunderous blasts punching through the water and into the seabed. Over […]
More than 13,000 seal pups die on remote Australian island amid bird flu outbreak
More than 13,000 seal pups have died on an Australian territory, as testing confirmed the spread of deadly H5N1 bird flu among penguins, seals and petrels on subantarctic islands. The mass mortality of southern elephant seal pups on Heard Island, about 4,000km south-west of Perth and 1,700km north of Antarctica, was observed by government scientists […]
Fisheries and climate research would be hit hard in Trump’s proposed budget
Physicist Stephen Volz had been working with colleagues at the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly 10 years to produce a new generation of geostationary satellites — instruments that would provide critical observations about atmospheric conditions, climate patterns and weather. But when Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, this long-term project […]
It’s as big as a Ford transit van, can reach speeds of 50kph and can detect blood from a gobsmacking 3 miles away…
The great white shark is the only extant species in the genus Carcharodon and the largest predatory fish in the world. Why are they called great white sharks? Great white sharks belong to the family Lamnidae, which also includes porbeagle sharks, salmon sharks and mako sharks, which are the fastest shark in the ocean. A type of mackerel […]
A real-life kraken monster? At 19m it was longer than a railway carriage, devilishly smart and able to crush prey with a devastatingly lethal bite…
The largest predators in Earth’s oceans are typically vertebrates, so when palaeontologists recently announced they’d found fossils from a 19m-long octopus that lived during the Late Cretaceous, it’s no surprise a lot of people were left scratching their heads. What is Nanaimoteuthis haggarti? This colossal cephalopod is perhaps the closest palaeontologists have ever got to finding […]
Belugas facing euthanasia at shuttered Canada theme park may find new homes in US
For about three decades, beluga whales and bottlenose dolphins greeted more than a million annual visitors to Marineland of Canada. In the sprawling 162-hectare (400-acre) theme park, located a stone’s throw from the world-famous Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, dozens of cetaceans enthralled visitors — splashing, spyhopping and leaping in their concrete-lined tanks. Marineland’s peppy jingle, […]
Petition: Close SeaWorld and Release All Captive Marine Animals to Sanctuaries
In a massive victory for animal rights, the Miami Seaquarium has closed its doors for good! The “marine theme park,” which operated for 70 years, spent decades profiting off of the misery of captive animals. We must keep the momentum up! It’s time for SeaWorld to close all locations and move every single captive animal […]