CHATHAM, Mass. — Rescuers worked to free five whales stranded on a Cape Cod beach Saturday. The pilot whales were beached on a sandbar in the southern part of Chatham Harbor, across from the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, according to Brian Sharp, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Marine Mammal Rescue and Research […]
Tag: whales
New rules could further slow ship speeds to protect right whales
Federal authorities spent the past few years analyzing rules for the shipping industry and are now close to releasing fresh guidelines to help protect a vanishing species of whale. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been reviewing the speed regulations it uses to protect North Atlantic right whales, and according to spokesperson Allison Ferreira, […]
Mammal-eating Orcas visit the Oregon coast
There’s been a lot of buzz about a group of Orca whales spotted off the Oregon coast this week. An expert on the predators says they are regular visitors, though sometimes hard to spot. Bob Pitman is a marine ecologist with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. […]
California Drift Gillnets Entangled About 12 Humpback Whales in 2021
SAN FRANCISCO— After new federal reports estimated that the California drift gillnet fishery caught about 12 Pacific humpbacks in 2021, the Center for Biological Diversity warned the National Marine Fisheries Service today to expect to be sued for failing to protect these endangered whales from entanglements in drift nets. Today’s legal notice points out that […]
3 Oil Companies Pull Out of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Three oil companies have canceled their leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in the refuge has long been a controversial issue, as the 19.5-million-acre wilderness area is home to 45 species of mammals including polar bears, bowhead whales and caribou and considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in people, according to the Gwich’in Steering […]
Engine noise, sonar, and seismic shocks abound in today’s maritime waters hurting marine life
We were out photographing whales with a flotilla of a dozen other tourist boats from ports all across the Salish Sea. In August 2001, it was one of my first visits to the area. The fuzz and beep of ship radios knitted a net over the ocean, a hazy mimic of the whales’ own aural […]
Without a hunting ban, there is high chance that narwhals will become extinct in Greenland by 2025
Since he was a child, Hammeken Danielsen has been hunting narwhals. He and his father would cruise through the fjords of Greenland in a tiny speedboat, equipped with rifles and harpoons and clothed in polar-bear fur trousers and sealskin boots to keep warm in the cold. Danielsen, aged 33, is a licensed hunter in Ittoqqortoormiit, […]
Rare Deep-Sea Whale Washes Up on California Beach
A mysterious deep-sea whale washed up on a California beach on Sunday. The 16-foot beaked whale was discovered by a passerby at Mendocino County’s Jug Handle State Natural Reserve near Fort Bragg, which is 3.5 hours north of San Francisco, SFGate reported. Because beaked whales live deep beneath the waves and can dive down as […]