g'night, lemme go while i'm cheered up.....(gotta get up at 5 for spinning)

g'night Wolfie - I gotta go make dinner...*hugs*

Hey - I feel left out!

Jump on in....we were handling the crisis when it was happening and you were sound asleep. *Hugs* We mentioned you and I forwarded the conversation to you. Please don't feel left out!

OK - so long as I'm not in trouble for the whales posting.

Last month the were about 14 whales which beached themselves in the Bahamas; 9 of them were freed back into the ocean. The problem, according to some marine biologists, was that the US Navy was conducting sonar detection testing in the area. The Navy says it doesn't think the testing of its equipment had any effect on the whales. The biologists think it may well have disoriented and frightened the whales. Their reasoning is that just as humans depend to much on sight and are in fact highly visual creatures; whales are extraordinarily accoustical creatures. The marine biogists also noted whale beachings in the Canary Islands about 4 years ago, and in Florida slightly before that, while the Navy was carrying out the same sorts of tests in those areas.

wonder if they can use different frequencies (navy)....

Of course they can! So can the whales! Seriously, I sent the posts above to Lance. His father worked on Sonar in its infancy...perhaps he can answer this.

then are the sonar sounds similar in song as the whales'?

Not really, but in the same frequency range...whales make an enormous range of sounds from those too high for us to hear to clicking sounds to metallic and whistling sounds. Maybe it is the lure of the Islands making them sing so much, but they are extraordinarily vocal when playing. You can hear it from the shore under the right conditions.

Geez, I wish you'd have named this topic Oceanic Mammals... Marine just antagonizes me to bits when I think... (sorry....never mind me...)

*hugs*

Thanks...I really need that today...I has been really bad.

ok, where's that long email?

I don't want to burden you again... I will email you, though. Did you check MMM?

guess not, what's mmm?

Babes topic 45

(duh!) will check it out!

And, so you did. Thanks more than I can say for your concern. A dead whale washed up on one of our lovliest beaches on the Kona side last week and attracted sharks and the Fed Wildlife guys. They removed the whale but kept the beach closed for a week waiting for the sharks to move on. They did not have any trouble keeping the people snacks out of the water...

I just went through the humiliating experience of shredding his mail to me. Never print it out...or live with an insecure snoop.

free food. bet their were people who wanted to watch though.

Of course. They had to police the area so people would not swim (and feed the sharks even more) nor take souvenirs of the poor late whale. Weird!

(did shred paper, but not those precious papers...just throwaways from the junk mail *grin*)

Sorry for crepe-draping all over the place. Shall not do that again!

SING OUT LOUD, SING OUT LONG Some male humpback whales lengthened their songs while others ceased to sing altogether when exposed to low-frequency sonar tests off the coast of Hawaii in 1998, suggesting that sonar transmissions by the U.S. Navy could disrupt whale breeding and cause other behavioral changes, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. On average, the whales' songs were 30 percent longer than normal, a strong shift given that the sonar was tested at less than full strength, said Patrick Miller, lead study author and a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Still, he said the researchers didn't notice any "extreme reactions" in the whales such as breaching. Many environmentalists are calling on the Navy to end some of its uses of sonar, saying that it can disorient and killwhales. BBC News, 06.22.00 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_801000/801458.stm

Dolphin 'Nicknames' Help Them Hook Up in Murk By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000825/sc/dolphins_dc_2.html WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dolphins greet one another by ``name,'' using signature whistles to keep track of one another in murky waters and across distances, a researcher says. While he hesitates to say the dolphins are actually using language, the researcher said the study shows dolphins have a clear and consistent vocabulary and are able to identify one another as individuals. ``Each dolphin develops a very specific signature signal,'' biologist Vincent Janik of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who conducted the study, said Thursday in a telephone interview. ``They always use the same call. Some people call it a name.'' But because the dolphins seem to develop their own signature whistles, Janik said the calls are more like Internet screen names or handles. Janik studied wild bottlenose dolphins off the Moray Firth, Scotland's coast. He recorded 1,719 whistles using six hydrophones and a computer-based method for finding individual dolphins as they made the calls. The dolphins were coming into the bay to catch salmon. ``You have lots of dolphins all over the place,'' Janik said. ''Obviously at some point they want to get together again.'' Each dolphin makes its own, distinctive whistle, Janik found. Other dolphins will imitate that whistle, presumably to contact and keep in touch with that particular dolphin. ``It's like keeping in acoustic contact,'' Janik said. ``It's something that we know from birds and humans, too.'' To check his work, Janik used five human ``judges'' to confirm the calls were identical. People are very good at hearing differences in tone, he said. ``I used human judges because a computer is not up to the job yet,'' he said. ``I can say the same word in a high-pitched voice or a low-pitched voice and it's still the same word but the computer could confuse it.'' Janik has also found that, like monkeys and other primates, the dolphins use distinctive calls when they have found food. This one is a low-pitched ``bray,'' he said. ``It really sounds like a donkey bray,'' Janik said. ``It was very clear that this was a feeding call. If one dolphin found food, they would produce this call. The others would rush in.'' So does it qualify as language? ``I always try to avoid the term 'language,''' Janik said. ``But it is certainly a complex communication system.'' Now Janik is working in Shark Bay, in Western Australia to see if mother dolphins and their calves use the distinctive signature calls. ``We know they have to get back together again,'' Janik said.

I knew I should have linked this topic with Geo 36... but I can no longer telnet to do so, have forgotten the command... *sigh*

August 28, 2000 1:52 pm EST MANFREDONIA, Italy (Reuters) - A dolphin saved a 14-year-old boy from drowning in the Adriatic sea on Monday, pushing him to the surface and helping him to a nearby boat. The boy, who could not swim, told Italian news agency ANSA he fell from the boat as he was sailing with his father in the gulf of Manfredonia, off the southern Italian coast. As he was slipping under the water, something pushed him up. "When I realized it was Filippo, I hung on to him," the boy said, referring to the dolphin. The mammal carried the boy to the boat and swam away. The dolphin has lived in the gulf's waters for years, locals say, and has been dubbed Filippo.

There are stories of dolphins saving drowning people going back to atleast classical times. A bit of note on dolphin names. Some current research suggests that dolphins may have their own individual names which they call each other in their own "language".

that's right! it would be wonderful if we could learn the names and call them by it even if we can't figure the rest of it out.

Hey try this virtual whale watching tour.... http://www.princeofwhales.com/virtual/intro.htm

this is neat! thanks maggie......

Looking forward to doing the real thing in a few weeks time .....

Dolphins to desert dying British seas Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor Sunday Times 17th Sept http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/ DOLPHINS and porpoises could soon disappear from the seas around Britain, driven away by overfishing and pollution, says a report out this week. It predicts that large parts of the English Channel could become a dead sea, and re-veals that fish in the Irish and North Seas have been devastated, with birds, shellfish and many plankton species also threatened. The report, for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), studied 10 key species, including dolphins, porpoises, cod, salmon and oysters. It also looked at coastal habitats, including mudflats, rocky reefs and salt marshes. It concludes that two-thirds of the species fished for food are overexploited, and that without tougher controls on fishermen and industry some will disappear. The WWF said: "Cod has been fished unsustainably for years. It is threatened with commercial extinction." However, figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food reveal that fishermen are stripping more life from the sea than ever, taking 772,000 tons of fish and shellfish last year, up from 600,000 in 1990. The ministry says the en-dangered species include cod, monkfish and nephrops, otherwise known as scampi. The decline of dolphins and porpoises is perhaps the most obvious sign of damage. Populations of bottlenose dolphins around Britain were stable until they recently suddenly started falling. Destruction of their food supplies through overfishing is a big factor, but many also drown after being caught in nets. The effect of pollution is also severe. Scientists said a baby bottlenose dolphin washed ashore in Cardigan Bay was one of the most polluted animals ever found. Inland, wild salmon are disappearing from many British rivers largely because of fish farming, the report warns. The WWF wants changes in legislation to halt the damage and give threatened species a way of recovering. These include turning some of the waters around Britain into protected areas where fishing and other commercial activities are banned, and an oceans act to protect the coast, seas and sea bed.

this from MSN Pets & Animals Baby right whale sighted Productive year anticipated The sighting of a baby right whale -- just days old -- off the coast of Georgia has given researchers hope that the rarest of the world's large whale species is fighting off extinction by having a productive year. A newborn found this early in the season suggests a strong year for the right whale which was hunted to near extinction in the late 1940's. Last year only one newborn was seen during the entire birthing season, which lasts from December to March -- typically, seven or eight are sighted. These massive black whales can reach almost 60 feet in length and weigh up to 70 tons. Scientists estimate there are about 300 right whales left in the world's oceans.

Yup, some were afraid they had a breeding population so small that they were essentially extinct. This is good news, indeed!!!