Happy World Oceans Day!

Just a quick post because I'm busy, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned World Oceans Day. This year marks the first time World Oceans Day is an officially-recognized, international holiday.

The short history is that Canada proposed World Ocean Day in 1992 at the Earth Summit, and various folks have been celebrating and observing it for a number of years (including local celebrations coordinated by a group I work with, COARE). Just this year the United Nations declared World Oceans Day (including adding the "s" to "Ocean") as a worldwide holiday to celebrate the ocean.

So take a moment today to ponder the ocean that covers nearly 3/4 of the surface of our planet. This is not a political event or an excuse to support a particular cause. The ocean means something different to everyone, but it's also critically important to everyone in the world. So regardless of whether you agree with my particular issues (such as shark conservation, marine protected areas, ocean-bound waste, marine mammal conservation, coral reef protection), this is a great day to think about what the ocean means to you and your life, and think about what you can do for it.

The Torch of Evolution

I had meant to look this up before I went to the Galapagos earlier this year. I stumbled across it this morning, so I wanted to mention it here.

It's a passage from Nathaniel Philbrick's book "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex," a historical account of the sinking of a whale ship that probably inspired some of the story line for Melville's Moby-Dick. At one point the Essex stops in the Galapagos to gather some tortoises for food. Having taken 180 tortoises from tiny Hood Island (now Isla Española) in four days, they headed to nearby Charles Island (now called Santa Maria, or Floreana, depending on who you listen to), where they picked up a 600-pound tortoise that took six men to carry.

But on their last day on the island this went awry:

On the morning of October 22, Thomas Chappel, a boatsteerer from Plymouth, England, decided to play a prank. Not telling anyone else on the Essex what he was up to, the mischievous Chappel (who was, according to Nickerson, "fond of fun at whatever expense") brought a tinderbox ashore with him. As the others searched the island for tortoises, Chappel secretly set a fire in the underbrush. It was the height of the dry season, and the fire soon burned out of control, surrounding the tortoise hunters and cutting off their route back to the ship. With no other alternative, they were forced to run through a gauntlet of flame. Although they singed their clothes and hair, no serious injuries resulted--at least not to the men of the Essex.

By the time they returned to the ship, almost the entire island was ablaze. The men were indignant that one of their own had committed such a stupid and careless act. But it was Pollard who was the most upset. "[T]he Captain's wrath knew no bounds," Nickerson remembered, "swearing vengeance upon the head of the incendiary should he be discovered." Fearing a certain whipping, Chappel did not reveal his role in the conflagration until much later. Nickerson believed the fire killed thousands upon thousands of tortoises, birds, lizards, and snakes.

The Essex had left a lasting impression on the island. When Nickerson returned to Charles years later, it was still a blackened wasteland. "Wherever the fire had raged neither trees, shrubbery, nor grass have since appeared," he reported. Charles would be one of the first islands in the Galapagos to lose its tortoise population. Although the crew of the Essex had already done its part in diminishing the world's sperm-whale population, it was here on this tiny volcanic island that they contributed to the eradication of a species.

We didn't go to Isla Santa Maria on our trip. There are dive sites there, but it wasn't part of our itinerary. I would have liked to see what the island looks like today. On the map I bought at the Charles Darwin Research Station (ironically, about the closest we came to Isla Santa Maria), the islands are colored to show vegetation and such. Isla Santa Cruz is pretty much entirely a lush green. Isla Santa Maria is almost completely brown, with just a bit of green near the peak.

One of the reasons people visit the Galapagos is to see the islands where Charles Darwin explored and examined the variety of life and the environmental factors that shape it, contributing to his development of his theory of speciation. A mere fourteen years or so before Darwin's visit, a careless, reckless sailor almost single-handedly wiped out at least one subspecies (PDF) of that great variety. I've read estimates that whalers may have taken as many as 15,000 tortoises from this one island for food, not to mention those wiped out by the fire.

As I noted in my other Galapagos posts, the hand of man rests heavily on the islands. Nature has done amazing things there, but mankind seems determined to show that it, too, can shape the course of evolution and extinction.

Slightly Somewhat Positive Whale News (I Think)

Just caught this on Yahoo news. Apparently protesters were able to significantly disrupt Japanese "research" whaling this season:

Japan had aimed to kill 850 minke whales and 50 fin whales on its annual hunt, but the total catch for the year came to 551 minke whales with no fin whales due to a series of offshore protests.

Still a lot of whales killed, but that's about 350 whales that might have died that didn't.

Welcome, Giant Elephant Shrew!

It's always cool when someone discovers a "new" species (although it's obviously been around a long time).

Today, we welcome a new kind of elephant shrew to the party:

Despite its name, the creature, along with the 15 other known species of elephant shrew, is not actually related to shrews.
...
In fact, the creature is more closely related to a group of African mammals, which includes elephants, sea cows, aardvarks and hyraxes, having shared a common ancestor with them about 100 million years ago.

The odd family relations of these and other creatures is one of the wonders of science to me. I recall hearing an interview with Richard Dawkins on NPR several years ago, when he was promoting his book, "The Ancestor's Tale." He was asked what the most remarkable thing was he'd learned in writing the book. His reply was that he found it amazing that the hippopotamus, which he'd always supposed was closely related to pigs, was in fact only very distantly so. The closest evolutionary relative of the hippo turns out to be the whale.

Some Good Whale News

Just spotted this:

Giving in to U.S. pressure and worldwide criticism, Japan's government on Friday announced a whaling fleet now in the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt will not kill the threatened species as originally planned.

On the other hand,

The fleet will, however, kill some 935 minke whales, a smaller, more plentiful species, and 50 fin whales.

But they had planned to kill 50 humpbacks for "research," and now it appears they will not, at least this year.

Killing whales is still a bad thing, but this is an improvement. One can hope it signals a willingness to resolve some of the ongoing issues between the whaling nations (primarily Japan and Norway) and the rest of the world.

Whale Begone

Apparently the wayward humpback whales have gotten tired of hanging around in fresh/brackish water, and have returned to the ocean, or at least sneaked away to where people can't watch them incessantly.

So I'll give the last word (and picture) on the subject to cartoonist Don Asmussen, of "Bad Reporter" fame.

Freshwater Whales

I know I have mentioned my fondness for whales and other marine mammals in the past. And I am eagerly anticipating my next visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see their new exhibit on otters.

But the local news is full of the latest visit from wayward whales to the Sacramento River delta. And really, the coverage is pretty good, at least until I got to this sentence:

They likely got into the north delta area by swimming up the deep and wide Sacramento River from San Pablo Bay.

Ya think?

Now, maybe you need to know a little about the environment to get this, but basically, there's only one way to get to Sacramento from the ocean if you're a whale, and that would be it. In the Golden Gate, around a couple of islands, up through San Pablo Bay, and hey, you're in the delta.

From our friends at the National Park Service:

This Pacific Coast contains the only opening to the interior of the state for nearly 1,000 miles of coastline. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers drain nearly 40% of the watersheds in California. And all of this flows out of the Golden Gate.

OK, maybe I'm being a little hard on them. After all, the reporters probably read this book. I can see where one might mistake that for a nature documentary.

Anyway, it's not the first time this has happened. Back in 1985, I was working for the congressman who represented the district the whale was swimming through, so needless to say we were paying attention, even from 3,000 miles away. At least they haven't named these whales. Yet. But I fully expect to see our current Lieutenant Governor capitalizing on rescuing these whales any minute now.

A Tough Time to be a Whale

Things are about to change, and not for the better, on the whaling front. At least, from the perspective of the whales.

The International Whaling Commission is about to meet, and it looks as though the proponents of whaling will perhaps attain a majority for the first time in quite a while (from the AP story):

Pro-whaling nations are expected to take control of the International Whaling Commission this week, giving them a majority of seats on the panel for the first time since it banned commercial hunting 20 years ago.

As it turns out, there are only three countries that do any appreciable whaling anymore. Norway flaunts the international ban on commercial whaling. Japan and Iceland harvest whales under the allowance for "scientific research." It is unclear to me just what scientific value is gained by killing whales. Or at least by killing more than a few. What is clear is that between 2,000 and 3,000 whales were killed last year, that we know of. And what becomes of the whale carcasses after this "research"? They are sold. For food.

You see, some people like to eat whale meat. Or at least, some people are trying to promote the eating of whale meat. Oddly enough, there is a glut of whale meat, at least in Japan. Yet Japan is the country pressing the hardest (and recruiting allies) to allow more whaling.

So Japan has reintroduced whale meat, in the form of whale burgers and other dishes, into the school diet, trying to cultivate a taste for whale meat in the young. Meanwhile, the price of whale has plummeted as surplus meat goes unwanted.

The circularity of the argument is rather bizarre: They claim to need to kill more whales to meet demand, yet the meat from existing "research" exceeds current demand.

I have a particular interest in whales. In addition to a lifelong fondness for marine mammals of all sorts, I had the opportunity last summer to swim with humpback whales in the Kingdom of Tonga. We went to Tonga as part of an expedition with the Imaging Foundation, with the goal of documenting the state of Tonga's humpback whales for a website we created.

Swimming with whales is amazing, to say the least. They are huge, yet gentle, and display grace and curiosity that is truly inspiring. And Tonga has found a way to take advantage of that. The king of Tonga banned all hunting of whales in Tongan waters in 1978. He reasoned that live whales would bring people to Tonga and boost the economy. So far, he seems to be correct, and the whale population is starting to recover.

Unfortunately, although the whales are protected while in Tonga, they are migratory, and can easily be killed while they travel to and from their summer feeding grounds in the Antarctic.

Killing whales might have made sense at one time in history, but currently, there is no significant market for whale products, and the number killed for "research" far exceeds the amount that can reasonably be justified on that basis.

Looks like it might be time to dust off the "Save the Whales" bumper stickers and t-shirts.