SEATTLE The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has issued an emergency rule ordering commercial whale watch tours to stay farther away from an unwell baby orca to help her survive.
John Durban (NOAA) and Holly Fearnbach (SR3), NMFS research permit #17355
Surveillance of right whales in the North Atlantic show that individuals born today will grow to be 1 metre shorter, on average, than whales born in the early 1980s.
Joshua Stewart at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in San Diego, California, and his colleagues have used surveillance data collected from aircraft and drones to investigate how North Atlantic right whales (
Eubalaena glacialis) have changed over time.
The whales have been monitored consistently for decades, and researchers can identify individuals and know when each was born. Stewart’s team collected 202 length measurements of 129 of the whales born between 1981 and 2019: 133 measurements were taken from aircraft between 2000 and 2002, and 69 measurements were obtained using remotely operated drones between 2016 and 2019.
Here is the latest Idaho news from The Associated Press at 9:40 p.m. MDT
SEATTLE (AP) There is some cause for cautious optimism for the southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound. Oregon State University professor John Durban told The Seattle Times that in general over the last several years J pod is in better condition than in much of the last decade. Durban is also a research associate with an orca health monitoring project led by Holly Fearnbach of SR3, a science and research and marine mammal rescue nonprofit. Using a drone flown high above the whales, they take photographs to document the orcas’ body condition. And lately, what they are seeing in J pod generally is improvement. Durban says there’s hope in the images, but it’s fragile.
She was a mother who happened to be an orca, whose plight resonated around the world as she clung to her dead calf, refusing to let it go.
Mother orca Tahlequah, J35, brought front and center the extinction crisis threatening the southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound. There are only 75 left.
She swam through the Salish Sea for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles in the summer of 2018, in what many interpreted as a journey of grief. It’s possible she never let the calf go; when it was last photographed by scientists at the Center for Whale Research, the calf was falling apart.
Southern resident orca pod in best condition in decade
By Lynda V. Mapes article
Photos of J Pod calfs taken under Federal Permits: NMFS PERMIT: 21238/ DFO SARA 388 (Mark Malleson/Center for Whale Research)
SEATTLE - She was a mother who happened to be an orca, whose plight resonated around the world as she clung to her dead calf, refusing to let it go.
Mother orca Tahlequah, J35, brought front and center the extinction crisis threatening the southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound. There are only 75 left.
She swam through the Salish Sea for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles in the summer of 2018, in what many interpreted as a journey of grief. It’s possible she never let the calf go; when it was last photographed by scientists at the Center for Whale Research, the calf was falling apart.