Earth Day is like New Year’s for me – a time to take stock and to set goals. I am not a perfect resident of this planet, but my goals for this year are to continue to find ways to reduce my use of plastic from the start, urge others in my family to do more recycling, keep on top of news and share what I learn so that hopefully others can also be better residents of this planet. There remains so much to do in order to be better stewards of our host!

She’s in pretty rough shape right now. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is still contributing to deformation and loss of sea life and health problems for people on the Gulf Coast. Renewable energy initiatives continue to be fought against by fossil fuel champions. There are ongoing concerns of the nuclear impact from the reactor meltdowns in Japan. Overfishing is still a major problem around the globe. Bees continue to die because of a pesticide which the government is being frightfully slow to ban, and this WILL affect our food supply. This is just a very very short list of problems we face.

So, yeah, we’ve got some problems. Marking Earth Day is a great reminder that we have just this one planet to sustain us. And it is up to US to take care of her.

I won’t be going out on a whale watch today (though hopefully soon! The season has started up here in the Northeast US). I will be spending time listening to one of my favorite songwriters, Carrie Newcomer. With her unique sense of place, description, and spirit, Carrie is teaching a creative writing workshop this afternoon and doing a concert tonight. It will be a perfectly lovely and inspiring way to spend this Earth Day!

Wherever you may be, I hope you can find a way to mark the day in the way that makes the best sense to you. Here’s to our Earth – may she have many more years ahead of her!

It seems fitting for this post to follow my review of Big Miracle, the film account of the rescue of three grey whales off Barrow, Alaska, up above the Arctic Circle. The conditions portrayed in the film were harsh, incredibly cold, and unrelenting. Once the ice starts and thickens, it’s there for the long haul. Getting through it or away from it is extremely difficult. And anyone who has ever watched one of those extreme fishing shows, like Deadliest Catch, knows how violent, unpredictable, and quickly changing the conditions can be in open water.

So why, then, is Shell leading the charge to do offshore drilling up in that part of the world? And why are we still clinging so tightly to oil/fossil fuels that we choose to turn our eyes away and just let it happen, rather than rising up en masse and demanding clean/green energy developments that can save our planet now, before it is too late?

Fortunately, not everyone is sitting still for it. Recently, seven activists from Greenpeace New Zealand, including actress Lucy Lawless (Xena, Spartacus), scaled a 53 meter tower on the Noble Discoverer, a drilling ship in port in New Zealand but scheduled to head up to the Arctic to do exploratory off shore drilling, hired by Shell. The GNZ occupiers had enough supplies to last about a week, and determination to stick it out for as long as possible. And, largely thanks to Lucy, they attracted worldwide attention to a ship and a mission that would likely never have made a blip on the radar outside of New Zealand.

It’s not unusual or out of bounds to feel dubious about any action where a celebrity is involved. Cynics who have railed about this as a PR stunt for Lucy Lawless are simply not paying attention. Would the world have noticed if it was “just” seven Greenpeace volunteers? Not nearly as much. But Lucy did not do this for her entertainment profile. She has the courage of her convictions, more than many. Lucy’s own words explain how her involvement came about and why. This was not about a TV show or movie; this was about survival, and leaving a better planet for the next generation than what we’re experiencing now. But she also knows she has a public profile, and that she is using it to raise awareness about something which should matter to every single one of us is admirable, I believe.

I have never understood why oil companies are not on the forefront of clean/green energy development. Oil is a finite resource. It simply is. All fossil fuels are. That we need to find increasingly dangerous and destructive methods of ‘extraction’, like tar sands oil and hydrofracking for natural gas, shows how desperation pushes us into bad moves. We don’t have to wait for evidence of how destructive these methods have become. We’ve already seen toxic coal ash lake spills (Lake Michigan in 2011 – I didn’t even remember hearing about this one! – and Tennessee in 2008), natural gas infiltrating drinking water supplies in Pennsylvania, and plans in Canada to kill wolves for better access to tar sands. (There are many stories on line about all of these issues. A romp through Google will give you much to read.) These are signs of a world gone mad.

When I see those great big oil spills, like what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with Deepwater Horizon, I think not only about the massive damage to wildlife and the ecosystems, but about all of that lost oil, that valuable black gold, which is now completely lost, and regarded as such with a shrug and ‘business as usual’ approach by oil companies. There are new reports out every week about the ongoing impact that the oil spill has had on marine life in the Gulf. Recent stories have appeared in the New York Times, Voice of America, Nola.com, and Physorg.com. This is an ongoing crisis. The well may no longer be gushing, but we will be discovering and learning about the devastating effects for years. And this was a spill that took place in relatively easily accessible waters, under mostly hospitable weather conditions. A far cry from the harsh Arctic.

Shell has reportedly already spent $4 BILLION on prep for Arctic drilling. Just think about how much green energy R&D could have been accomplished with those same funds. Then, instead of having protestors climbing the towers of rusty drilling ships, Shell could be hailed as an industry leader, trendsetter, and be poised to revolutionize energy while staying profitably in business. It’s like the oil baron of Big Miracle, who decides to get involved to pretty up the PR image. Cynical, certainly, but does that matter if we all win in the end? I’m not against profit. I am against profit at the expense of the rest of us, which is what unbridled exploration for and use of fossil fuels gets us.

Oh, and their grand plan for detection of oil spills in under the (diminishing but still…) vast Arctic ice? Three small dogs, a dachsund and two border collies. You read that right. Shell has trained three small dogs to sniff out oil under an expanse of ice that cannot be properly predicted given the conditions up there. Setting aside the total absurdity of this plan, there are doubts that a small dog could sniff through thick ice. AND they have the audacity to file preemptive lawsuits against environmental organizations like The Sierra Club and Greenpeace, trying to prevent them from standing up against this needless, reckless drilling, doing so at rather great risk. Somehow Shell thinks that stopping protests from organizations from using the legal system to protect our planet will just allow them to continue on unhindered. Which is what makes a small but visible protest like the one in New Zealand all the more important.

There’s also now a very serious potential problem in the North Sea near Scotland (read the story at Mother Jones), where a well is leaking methane gas to the point of creating a critical massive explosion risk. All workers have been evacuated, but a burn off flame was left on which means it might not take much for that explosion to occur. And, the gas that is leaking is “sour gas“, which includes hydrogen sulphide. This is toxic to ALL marine life. It’s quite possible that this could create untold devastation. And it’s another highlight to the danger of off shore drilling, even without the extra risk entailed of doing such in the Arctic.

I’m publishing this post on Lucy Lawless’ birthday (I guess there was a good reason I was taking my time with it!) and her request for this day of her fans is to do something good for the planet. I do a lot of basic things already (no single use water bottles, using reusable shopping bags, driving an efficient car and more). But most importantly, I am using my voice. Below is a video for a song which is becoming my new anthem, Sugarland’s “Stand Up.” I ask everyone: stand up, use your voice. Be aware and involved. It’s only this way that we can save the Arctic, our planet, and ourselves as well as all of the amazing flora and fauna around us. Because it’s not as much about ending oil energy, not right this second. It’s about expanding the energy industry and moving beyond oil/fossil fuels. Because this planet belongs to ALL of us, not solely to greedy profiteers. There is plenty of profit to share even if we treat our planet more gently, and develop/implement far more sustainable, infinitely less destructive ways of fueling our economies and lives.

As Lucy says in a short video about this: “We don’t have to go to the ends of the earth to extract every last drop of oil. We’ve  got to smarten up and move to a clean energy economy now.”

Go ahead, use your voice!

Related links:
For Lucy Lawless fans, her official Save The Arctic Protest page
Carmen Gravatt op-ed in NZ Herald News: We Don’t Need Extreme Oil
Lucy Lawless v. Shell: David v. Goliath – voxy.co.nz
Nathan Argent: Why Greenpeace occupied drilling ship – NZ Herald News
In depth interview with Lucy and Viv Hadlow after the protest ended  

All photos in this post ©Greenpeace New Zealand

I laughed, I cried, I loved it!

I finally had a chance to take in Big Miracle. This required a trip to Boston since none of the theaters in my local area opted to show the film. I’ve been following along with reviews and articles about both the film and original events, so had an idea what to expect. All the same, I had a strong emotional response to the movie. And I don’t hesitate to recommend it to others.

The brief summary: three grey whales find themselves trapped by ice miles from open water, unable to hold their breath long enough to get out from under the ice cover. Discovered by chance, their plight grows into a story that held the world’s attention until a solution was found to help them gain their freedom.

Part of my following the media around the film has included following Cindy Lowry – the inspiration for Drew Barrymore’s character – on Twitter. It’s rather cool, I think, to be able to interact with a principal person in a story as that story finds renewed publicity. One of the many articles she tweeted was from Alaska Daily News, ‘Big Miracle: The Real Story.’ An account from someone who was present for much of the story as it unfolded, it provides a contrast between what actually happened and the story rendered on the big screen.

What’s interesting to me  in that article is what’s reported as happening just after the whales were discovered. Initial response was not as portrayed on screen. There was no immediate mad dash to save them. After all, natural mortality happens all the time. Nature is not a gentle place, and there are always casualties. All manner of creatures, marine and land alike, will die for a myriad of reasons. It’s just how things go. Add the extreme conditions in which these whales were located, and it’s not like rescuing a bag of puppies dumped by the side of the road. So the start of this was not ramped up, as seen on the big screen. Had those whales not been spotted purely by chance, their loss would likely have been both inevitable and never registered on any human radar.

And yet they did register, and before long, multiple players overcame long odds and fundamental philosophical differences to work towards the best possible outcome. In a cosmic sense, this was a unifying event in many ways, bringing together environmentalists and oilers, conflicting governments, the Inupiat and non-native people. And while not all of the whales could be saved, it also worked to shine a spotlight into a remote wilderness. Can that be bad? It is true that lots and LOTS of money was spent in the effort, but it seems that the awareness and creation of new bridges was worth it, from my armchair perspective. We cannot save all of the whales who get trapped under ice, but we can learn about ourselves and our priorities when we do try. And we learn more about the whales, which is never a bad thing in my mind.

I’ve picked up the re-issue of the book on which the movie was based, Big Miracle by Tom Rose (formerly titled Freeing the Whales) so am curious to read the more detailed account. If anyone has any other reading to recommend from this event, please let me know!

See the film if you can. Might not be in theaters for long, but the DVD will be worth watching as well once it comes out. I’m planning to add it to my own library.

And our winner is: Jill! Congratulations, and I will be in touch with you by email.

Hoping to get a chance to see the film soon, myself. None of my local theaters are showing it (the perils of living in a rural area) but I’ll find a theater somewhere!

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and thanks again for playing.

We all know how charismatic and popular some whales are – especially humpbacks, orcas and just about all dolphins – but grey whales are sort of the second cousin. People know they are there, especially along the west coast of the US where there is a seasonal whale watch industry that’s just as interested in greys as other cetaceans, but how much do people really know in general? A couple of quick facts… There used to be grey whales in the Atlantic but they were hunted to extinction. One of the most critically endangered populations of whales in the world, the Western Pacific greys, are a group numbering around 130. They summer off the the Russian island of Sakhalin, near the northern end of Japan, where oil and gas exploration is strongly impacting their main feeding ground. One whale from that population has proven to be quite a traveler, having been tracked across the Bering Sea and down towards the coast of Oregon. Then there’s the grey whale that mysteriously turned up in the Mediterranean a couple of years ago.

For myself, doing a grey whale excursion off Baja is high on my bucket list. How many places can you go where it is ok, even encouraged, to give whales a great big kiss (just be careful of the cyamids on their skin. What’s a cyamid, you ask? Read further down…) I know people who have had this experience and every one of them loved it. The irony of this encounter is that it takes place in the same lagoons which used to be the scene of great slaughter of grey whales. I think it’s quite remarkable, both the turn around of our treatment of whales in that area, and their response to us given how many died in those lagoons, possibly within the memory of whales still encountered there.

So, I’m kind of excited to see another great whale species get some big screen treatment. Yes, it’s a dramatization. You know going in that it will have a happy ending even if you don’t know the story behind the film, because that’s the vibe that the commercials give. The website for the film has some cool facts about whales, including an interactive graphic which gives you a sense for the size of an average adult.

I am delighted to also be offering a give-away in honor of this film alongside this post. Remember above when I mentioned cyamids? Leave me a comment with their common name, and you’ll be entered into the drawing. Comments left up until Friday, February 3 at 9 PM Eastern are eligible, and you must live in the US. I’ll pick a winner from those comments. Your prize will be a $25 gift card to Fandango, a whale plush, and a Big Miracle t-shirt (total package value: $55.). Good luck and have fun! I’ll see you at the movies!

Important to note: no actual grey whales were used in the creation of the movie. The whales seen are animatronic, or archival footage from the actual rescue were used. More details and a trailer for the movie below. Giveaways and film details are courtesy Big Honcho Media and Universal Pictures – thanks, folks!

Rating:                                    PG

Cast:                                       Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, Kristen Bell, Dermot Mulroney, Tim Blake Nelson, Ted Danson

And sharks are facing incredible peril in the oceans right now. The link above talks about how a handful of people are killed by sharks in an average year. Conversely, humans and human activity take the lives of over 70 MILLION sharks each year.

The primary cause is the deplorable act of shark finning, where live sharks are pulled aboard a boat, their fins are cut off, and their still living bodies are dumped back in the ocean where they are sentenced to die either by predators or drowning. Without their fins they cannot swim, and because they cannot swim, their gills are unable to extract oxygen from the water. This is about as undignified a death as any animal could suffer. And for what are their fins used? Soup. Time Magazine had an article called Extinction in a Bowl of Shark Fin Soup which talks about the high price to the consumer (at least $100 per bowl) and ultimately to all of us as sharks are killed and ocean ecosystems worldwide are critically altered as a result.

Sharks have been on my radar a little more than usual lately because of a story with a now infamous photo of Rosie O’Donnell and her kids with a very large, very dead hammerhead shark, with the humans all looking excitedly pleased as punch about their great kill. The crap hit the fan and the twitterverse became very active with criticism and attempts to raise awareness with Rosie about this. The story has even hit the Huffington Post. I had a few exchanges with her, myself, on Twitter. She defends it by saying her family fishes (which is not the problem) and that you can’t control what you catch. To a degree, that’s true, but not always entirely accurate. Just Google ‘shark fishing’ to find all sorts of companies and charters and tours that tout the landing of “monster” sharks (there’s that image problem again). Those would not be successful businesses if they did not how to specifically target sharks in their fishing. And given that one of Rosie’s good friends and fishing buddies is called Mark the Shark (visitor beware: many glorified and gory photos of large, dead sharks), who makes a business of catching sharks, it’s not all as random as she’d have us all think. She’s also been arguing that the species was not, on that day, listed as endangered. Since those listings don’t happen in real time but only after serious population decline and sometimes much political squabbling has occurred, a matter of days is no marker at all of the health of the species before and after listing. Those sharks were already deeply in trouble by the time they were listed. Endangered populations are not always a given to be listed as such. Just look at the plight of the bluefin tuna. Already virtually commercially extinct, because it is so strongly desired in Japan (where a recent bluefin sold for $736,000 – for just ONE fish!), financial interests are overriding environmental interest. It’s a good thing that sharks are being added to the list, and we just have to hope it is not too late.

She has also defended it by talking about how much of a positive impact the ocean has on her son, Blake. He has auditory processing disorder, and the ocean helps him to come alive, according to his justifiably proud mom. I think it’s fabulous that they have been able to find something which works like that for him. But does it need to come at the expense of sharks?

This was not something I had planned to blog about ever, really, since I am primarily about whales. And then Rosie asked on Twitter – enough with the sharks, can we move on?

Sorry, no, not in the larger scheme of things. Directly, I think I’ve said what I can to her, always trying to be respectful even when blunt, but her mind is apparently made up, and belaboring the issue if she is not willing to listen will not get anyone anywhere. But for every shark that is killed and pulled from the ocean, including the Great Hammerhead with which she has been pictured, it’s a big loss to the ocean. Rosie talks often about how much she loves the ocean; she and her family live on the coast and are on the water as much as they can be. She is a self-professed conservationist. To me, a conservationist cannot also take such delight in killing one of the most important animals in the oceans she loves. She has astutely asked about fishing companies which take massive numbers of sharks from ocean, compared to her small number. And she is right, we need to do more to stop large scale slaughter of sharks, around the globe. And efforts are under way to do just that. Meanwhile, she is a public figure with a high profile, and she could do a lot for increasing understanding and awareness of sharks. At the same time, her argument is a bit of a red herring (forgive the pun). Yes, millions are taken commercially. But rather than that fact’s overshadowing single catch and sport fishing, it makes each shark that is NOT killed all the more valuable. Every single shark counts. In 2006, a world record was set with the capture of a Great Hammerhead shark off of Florida, in a shark fishing competition. She weighed 1,280 pounds, AND she set another record. She was just about to give birth to 55 pups, the largest number ever found in a hammerhead shark. That’s 56 sharks that were removed from the ocean in one swoop. Sharks mature slowly and reproduce slowly. A loss like this has devastating impact on the populations. We can only guess at how many sharks are lost on a commercial fishing scale.

Instead, Rosie opts to brush it all off.

I have a lot of respect for Rosie as she has been a powerful figure in many ways, including on LGBT awareness which is another key issue for me. That she seems to think this is no big deal is disappointing. Hopefully, she will continue to learn, and her kids will grow to understand that killing sharks is wrong. With her son and family’s love for the ocean and hopefully growing awareness, I hope they become part of the next generation which understands this issue even better than we do now and works to change the fate of sharks before it is too late. We can love them and appreciate them without glorying in killing them, whether in single or massive numbers. If she visibly promoted catch and release only, that would be fantastic. It would be a really easy way for her to really show that she does, in fact, get it.

All images used in this post are free images found at freestockphotos.biz.

In mid-November, I had the good fortune of taking a short cruise with one of my favorite bands, Eddie From Ohio. We were, the lot of us, a little pocket of people on Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas and we had the best of both worlds. We got private concerts from a terrific folk rock band, and also got to utilize all that the ship had to offer. This included excursions for our one day at port, in Cozumel. I had spent some time looking at the excursion possibilities before going on the trip. While there were many intriguing choices, the one that kept simmering in the back of my mind was the Sea Turtle Snorkel. Still, I didn’t want to make any decisions until on board the cruise ship, to see what other Edheads might be doing. In the end, the opportunity to do something I would not be able to do here at home won out and I booked the excursion very early during the cruise.

The whole excursion was something of an adventure: we were off the cruise ship by 8 AM, onto a ferry from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen on the mainland. This led to about 30-40 minutes of a very rough ride (luckily, I don’t get sea sick). From there, our tour guide/naturalist, Jorge of Wild Tours, led us to a bus for another 30 minute ride to our destination, Akumal (Mayan for Place of the Turtles). Along the way, he pointed out a large eagle’s nest atop a roadside electrical tower. Alas, the birds did not appear to be in residence at that moment.

At the end of our drive, our van turned down a narrow, tree lined road. Its condition was so rough that, while paved, we moved at about 3 miles per hour and very carefully over potholes, hugging the tree line. After a brief stop at a guard post, we drove into the parking lot of a facility that appeared both well maintained and completely deserted. Where *were* we? The grounds were gorgeous, full of lush green trees and plants, and the building we entered was in very nice shape though not another soul could be seen. We stopped in a room full of tables and chairs, but no lockers. Jorge assured us that all of our stuff was safe and we could leave it there (he was right). He handed out our snorkels, masks, and flippers, told us how to adjust the straps to put everything on, and then showed us the hand signals he would use in the water to indicate when a turtle had been spotted. I was the only one in our small group of 5 (including a couple from Ft. Lauderdale and a couple from Wales) who had never really been snorkeling before.

Time to hit the water! We left our empty building, and wow! We emerged onto a long, beautiful white sand beach, complete with lounge chairs, a small snorkel shop/hut, and people all over the place. Given how deserted the building seemed to be, I was not expecting this at all. It was like we had stepped right into the pages of one of those vacation brochures that shows the impeccable beaches, impossibly blue skies and warm, turquoise waters.

Jorge had explained to us that this is one of the few places in the world where sea turtles can be found all year. Protected by a barrier reef, turtles come into Akumal just about every day to eat sea grasses and jelly fish in the shallow bay. After donning our gear, we backed up into the water and away we went. It took me a few minutes to get past over-focusing on breathing through my mouth, and then having to swap masks with Jorge since I could not see anything (thanks again, Jorge!) and hey! Turtles! I was amazed at how quickly we started to find them, and how relatively close to the beach we always were. We spent about 45 minutes in the water, and all told saw probably 8-10 turtles, mostly adult females and also one younger turtle (smaller than the rest). Several turtles had remora fish on or under their shells also. One turtle wasn’t so keen on all of us water tourists so swam away, but the rest were pretty comfortable just ignoring us and going about their business. My most exciting moment came when one of the turtles came up for air and literally came within inches of touching me as she passed by. It doesn’t really work to try to back pedal with swimming fins, but I tried my best to stay out of her way, not thinking just to be still and give her enough credit for knowing full well how to avoid me. I was definitely caught up in the moment. Several times, Jorge went deeper into the water and waggled his fingers in front of some turtles and one southern stingray that we saw because that will sometimes prompt them to move around a little. They pretty much ignored him completely (and he was very careful never to make contact with them or harass them. If they didn’t react, he let them be.)

Jorge then led us over to a small reef area, and tried to find a barracuda for us. No luck there, but I loved feeling like I was swimming through a National Geographic program, watching various fish in a wide array of colors swimming around. The water in the bay is relatively shallow, and the one anxious moment here was passing rather closely over a taller section of reef. I stopped kicking and just did a breaststroke to move past that point. The largest fish we saw was a puffer fish (un-puffed).

Too quickly, our time in the water was through. The couple from Ft. Lauderdale had their own gear so went back in the water for a while which made me a little envious. I should have checked the gear shack right on the beach, but I was feeling like I had been spendy enough for the day so wandered around instead. I was glad I had decided not only to splurge on the excursion but also to pay onboard ship premium prices for disposable waterproof cameras (it wasn’t enough that I was a gawky American tourist in Mexico, but I also had to be a gawky American tourist in the water, with two of those things dangling from my wrists). Wish I had listened to my friend, Susan, with whom I had dinner the night before the cruise in Ft. Lauderdale, when she offered to take me to Walgreen’s to get a couple of cameras. While the photos I got with them were far below Brian Skerry or Flip Nicklin caliber (get their new books, Ocean Soul and Among Giants, respectively. Seriously – AMAZING), I am glad I had something with me. Naturally, I am eager now to recreate the experience but with a better camera. Where’s that winning lottery ticket??

After a couple of hours relaxing on the beach, and lunch at a burger shack nearby, we climbed back into the van to head back to Playa del Carmen. Coming from New England where late fall was deeply in place and our world was increasingly brown and dreary, it was nice to see all of the lush vegetation, and also sobering to see the wide range of quality of living quarters we passed on the road. Poverty was easily evident, and I was reminded of just how very fortunate I was to have this experience at all. We also were able to catch a glimpse of activity in the eagle’s nest on the return trip. After getting drenched in rain in the short walk from the covered dock to the ferry, it was nice to sit and reflect on the day. Being a big music fan, having the right tunes with which to think helps a lot. I listened to Carrie Newcomer‘s “Everything is Everywhere” on that ferry ride, and it was the perfect soundtrack for my thoughts. We were dropped off “downtown” (as opposed to the ship’s pier from where we started). I made the valiant effort to walk back to the ship and got maybe 75% of the way back before my feet gave out and I finally hailed a cab (I had been walking for over an hour at that point). Along the way, I saw a crab on a waterside bench, probably washed there by waves crashing up against the sea wall. Tried to figure out a way to flick it back into the water, but it was having none of that, skittering away on the bench any time I got close. It was a little comical, really.

According to Jorge, we saw mostly loggerhead turtles, but possibly also one green turtle. I tried to see if I could glean the distinctions from my photos but I am just not accustomed to photo IDs of turtles at this point, especially from fair quality photos taken with disposable cameras. We also saw a southern sting ray and a skate I can’t quite identify. I am grateful to Jorge for being a funny, well informed and terrific guide/naturalist, my fellow snorkelers for good company, and the turtles themselves, for being so naturally awesome.

You can learn more about efforts to protect the bay and its marine visitors by visiting the website for Centro Ecológical Akumal (site is in English).

And feel free to check out the photos I did get, keeping in mind the ‘equipment’ I was using. Might not have been high end, but it was better than nothing!

Over the course of the whole cruise weekend, I saw pelicans, fish, crabs, a reef and turtles. This has lead to a strong desire to watch “Finding Nemo” again.

Duuuuuuuuuude. Turtles rock.

My season kicked off, as it often does, in Provincetown over Memorial Day Weekend. I did three trips over as many days with the Dolphin Fleet. While whale activity had been pretty good in the month leading up, a big nor’easter off the coast a bit before the weekend seemed to have moved much of the activity quite a ways off shore. We also had a fair bit of fog that weekend which made things a little challenging. Notable sighting of the weekend was Bayou, the 2006 calf of Trident. Bayou now sports a damaged right fluke from a propellor injury, making it an easy fluke to ID. I saw Bayou as a calf but didn’t know until this trip about the injury.

Next trip, July 1, on Yankee Fleet out of Gloucester. We went north to Jeffreys Ledge where there had been reports of a fair amount of activity. We didn’t find any of that on this day, and spent time with some fin whales instead. While they tend to be notoriously hard to watch because they move quickly and don’t ‘do’ as much at the surface, we did get some good looks.

Things finally got exciting on July 16. I did two trips out of Gloucester that day, the first on Cape Ann Whale Watch (with naturalists from Ocean Alliance) thanks to a Groupon and the second on Capt Bill and Sons (naturalists from the Whale Center of New England). The big action is down off Provincetown right now, so that’s where both trips went. True to form for whale watching, each trip was quite different while also being quite good.

In the morning on Cape Ann WW, we spent most of our trip with a couple of  juvenile humpbacks who pretty much mugged the boat. We were unable to move for about 45 minutes because they were hanging out right under the back end of the boat. Not that we minded – we were getting great looks! Got my first close up photo of a whale’s eye (too bad the eye was closed) and Greenbean, one of the juvies, made a point of splashing the boat with its flukes from only about 20-30 feet away, if that.

Later that same day on Captain Bill’s, we returned to the SE corner of Stellwagen. Didn’t see any of the same whales from the morning, but we did have some active adults, including Echo and Tectonic traveling togeher. They seem to be one of Stellwagen’s great enduring ‘friendships’, coming together often over the years like Salt and Cardhu are known to do. Leah, the naturalist, reported that National Geographic had worked with the Whale Center to attach a critter cam to Echo and the resulting footage showed her and Tectonic (a male) working very well together under water in their hunt for food. Echo treated us to a breach too, which I managed to catch (even if distantly).  Other whales we found on this trip included Pele, Alphorn, Jabiru and Sloop.

Photos coming soon, I promise, as well as another post about a trip on 3 August.

What’s so different about this whale’s song? Different species of whales make sounds or calls within their own range of frequencies. Fin whales’ calls are at about 20 hz. Blue whales, the largest mammals ever, call out in the 10 – 20 hertz range. Most of us have heard the haunting sounds of humpback whales, initially made famous by recordings made by Roger Payne. Those fall in the 30 hertz to 8 kilohertz range.

This unknown whale calls out at 52 hertz. Think lowest note on a tuba. Sounds pretty low, right? But if you listen to the clip here at NOAA. It’s quite different from other recorded whale sounds (you can hear samples of several whale calls on Wikipedia.) It’s comparatively a fairly high sound.

There is much speculation about its origins and being lonely, unable to be heard and therefore find mates (or even ‘colleagues’?). Its migrations and travels are unlike other known whales. None of the stories mention if the calls have ever been heard in the vicinity of other active whale calls so it’s impossible to know if this whale has ever met another whale (aside from its mother), given how vast the oceans are. Perhaps somewhat ironically, that this whale has been heard at all is thanks to the US Navy’s hydrophone arrays, installed to track enemy submarines. Declassified recordings allowed the discovery of this solitary whale, as well as information about known species like blue and fin whales.

As a human with a hearing loss, which results in my interactions with the world being somewhat different from most, I kinda wish I could just go give this whale a hug. And since whales are primarily acoustic animals and not visual, not being able to interact in this primary fashion is not a good thing. Whether or not this singular whale hears any others would be a fascinating question to answer, but I’d guess that if it could hear others, it might seek them out. I’m not finding any reports that this has happened, at least not when .

What bothers me about most, if not all, of the stories I have seen about this whale is the constant comment that it sings at the ‘wrong’ frequency. Without knowing anything about this whale aside from the sounds it makes, wrong seems to be overstating things a bit dramatically. Better, I think, to call it a unique frequency, one never heard before by our ears (and apparently the ears of other whales currently swimming about in the Pacific Ocean).

This is just another example of the many mysteries still held by our oceans. Let’s hope we have time to understand them before we kill the oceans altogether.

(This post was greatly aided by stories posted by Gizmodo, Kur5hin, and Good.)

So, good news? Sort of! Let’s start with the news that Japan has ended its Antarctic whaling season early this year! They are, of course, blaming Sea Shepherd for keeping their quota of 1000 whales down to less than 200. And yes, there have been clashes (no injuries reported). But there’s also been mounting international pressure which has to be making an impact. Not to mention the fact that there is something like 5000 tons of whale meat sitting in freezers already because the population just is not eating it.

What almost made me laugh for its ludicrously blatant chess puffing is an editorial from Japan about the end of the Antarctic season. The most telling line in it is this, at the end: “And we tend to react with anger when foreign countries tell us we shouldn’t eat it.” The editorial acknowledges foreign pressure. It also acknowledges the lack of stomach for the meat: “Demand for whale meat is not growing at all in Japan, and the nation’s ocean-going whaling industry is effectively dead. Given this reality, there is little justification for Japan’s stated need to resume commercial whaling in the Antarctic.”

And yet, the crux of it all comes down to the defensiveness of the “don’t tell us what to eat” position. They refer to whales as “utilizable resources” (using the quotation marks themselves) as opposed to the intelligent marine mammals that most of the rest of the world sees them as, seeking their protection. If Japan had no other resources for food, zero other means for feeding their population, that position might hold more credibility. It does not. I get not wanting to be told what to eat. But this is larger than that. This is their refusal to actually learn anything from their so-called scientific research aside from, theoretically, how many whales they can kill without devastating the populations, much less learning from the massive and growing bodies of research from around the world which bolster the many reasons why whales should be protected and not eaten.

Why is this all only sort of good news? There has been no permanent cessation of commercial whaling by Japan (not to mention Iceland and Norway). There is still the vicious dolphin hunting that occurs every year in Taiji, Japan. Whaling for this year might be over (including an early end to the dolphin slaughter), but the matter is still unresolved. I wish we could find a way to help Japan end these programs while also allowing it to save face culturally as it appears to desperately want. That would be a win on all sides.