The Great White (Killer) Whale???
tybird
Posts: 17,388
Saw this little tid-bit today:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/07/white.killer.whale.ap/index.html
NCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.
art.white.orca.ap.jpg
A rare white killer whale was spotted by federal scientists in late February off Alaska.
The nearly mythic creature was real after all.
"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."
The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship, were conducting an acoustic survey of pollock near Steller sea lion haulout sites.
It had been spotted once in the Aleutians years ago but had eluded researchers since, even though they had seen many of the more classic black and white whales over the years.
Fearnbach said the white whale stood out.
"When you first looked at it, it was very white," she said Thursday.
Further observation showed that while the whale's saddle area was white, other parts of its body had a subtle yellowish or brownish color.
It likely is not a true albino given the coloration, said John Durban, a research biologist at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That's probably a good thing -- true albinos usually don't live long and can have health problems.
Durban said white killer whales have been spotted elsewhere in the area twice before: in 1993 in the northern Bering Sea around St. Lawrence Island and in 2001 near Adak in the central Aleutians. There have also been sightings along the Russian coast.
While Alaska researchers have documented thousands of black and white killer whales in the Bering Sea and the Aleutians during summer surveys, this was something new and exciting, Durban said.
"This is the first time we came across a white killer whale," he said.
The scientists observed several pods over a two-week period. The white whale was in a family group of 12 on a day when the seas were fairly rough. It was spotted about 2 miles off Kanaga Volcano on February 23.
The ship stayed with the whale for about 30 minutes.
"Everybody actually came out and was taking pictures," Fearnbach said. "It was a neat sighting for everybody."
The whale appeared to be a healthy, adult male about 25 to 30 feet long and weighing upward of 10,000 pounds.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/07/white.killer.whale.ap/index.html
NCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.
art.white.orca.ap.jpg
A rare white killer whale was spotted by federal scientists in late February off Alaska.
The nearly mythic creature was real after all.
"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."
The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship, were conducting an acoustic survey of pollock near Steller sea lion haulout sites.
It had been spotted once in the Aleutians years ago but had eluded researchers since, even though they had seen many of the more classic black and white whales over the years.
Fearnbach said the white whale stood out.
"When you first looked at it, it was very white," she said Thursday.
Further observation showed that while the whale's saddle area was white, other parts of its body had a subtle yellowish or brownish color.
It likely is not a true albino given the coloration, said John Durban, a research biologist at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That's probably a good thing -- true albinos usually don't live long and can have health problems.
Durban said white killer whales have been spotted elsewhere in the area twice before: in 1993 in the northern Bering Sea around St. Lawrence Island and in 2001 near Adak in the central Aleutians. There have also been sightings along the Russian coast.
While Alaska researchers have documented thousands of black and white killer whales in the Bering Sea and the Aleutians during summer surveys, this was something new and exciting, Durban said.
"This is the first time we came across a white killer whale," he said.
The scientists observed several pods over a two-week period. The white whale was in a family group of 12 on a day when the seas were fairly rough. It was spotted about 2 miles off Kanaga Volcano on February 23.
The ship stayed with the whale for about 30 minutes.
"Everybody actually came out and was taking pictures," Fearnbach said. "It was a neat sighting for everybody."
The whale appeared to be a healthy, adult male about 25 to 30 feet long and weighing upward of 10,000 pounds.
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.
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"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel
It's great to see just how amazing nature can be some times.
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
Yes, Nature is truly a wonder.
Yes! Maybe he has some special white killer whale sunblock we don't know about?
That it is.
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23526140/
Elusive bird spotted near Papua New Guinea
Species thought extinct rediscovered; Beck’s petrel not seen for 80 years
updated 5:01 p.m. CT, Fri., March. 7, 2008
LONDON - A bird species not seen for 80 years has been rediscovered near Papua New Guinea, experts said Friday. The Beck's petrel, long thought to be extinct, was photographed last summer by an Israeli ornithologist in the Bismarck Archipelago, a group of islands northeast of New Guinea.
Hadoram Shirihai, who was leading an expedition to find the bird, photographed more than 30 Beck's petrels. Shirihai's photographs and his report were published in "The Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club" on Friday.
Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and BirdLife International — a Cambridge conservation group — both said on Friday that their committees of experts had reviewed Shirihai's evidence and agreed he had found a Beck's petrel.
"I don't think there's much doubt about it," said BirdLife International spokesman Nick Askew.
The pictures are the first hard evidence of the Beck's petrel's existence since unconfirmed sightings of the bird were reported in Australia two years ago.
Beck's petrels are seabirds related to albatrosses and shearwaters. They are dark brown with pale bellies and tube-like noses. Upon first glance they look similar to the Tahitian petrel, one of 66 different petrel species, but Beck's are smaller and have more narrow wings than the Tahitians.
The last known specimen of the Beck's petrel before its rediscovery was collected in 1929 and the species is currently categorized as critically endangered by BirdLife International.
Shirihai compared a dead petrel he brought back with the data collected by Rollo Beck in the late 1920s to verify his was a genuine Beck's petrel.
The ornithologist has previously helped discover several new species in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said. He is one of the very few people to have visited almost every sub-Antarctic island and the breeding grounds of all forms of albatrosses, the society said.
Similar discoveries have touched off controversy in the past.
In 2004, ornithologists in the United States took grainy videos of an ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird thought extinct for decades. After the 2005 announcement, other experts said the sighting in an Arkansas swamp seemed to be a more common woodpecker. Three years later the debate still goes on.
I hope that we manage to find evidence that the Thylacine is still out there. Now that would be VERY COOL!
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
To think the amount of species we're killing off too..... :(
Cool thread ty
nothing on earth hunts orcas. they have no predators. they are top of the food chain.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Yeah, now he's all grown up maybe, but I bet he had to do a lot of hiding early on.
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
orcas are very family orientated. they are born into their pod and they die within it. they remain with their mothers their entire lives. hail hail matriarchy!!!
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
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More interesting bird news:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17490571/
Large-billed reed-warbler had not been seen since its discovery in 1867
By Michael Casey
updated 7:43 p.m. CT, Tues., March. 6, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand - A wetland bird that eluded scientists for nearly 130 years has been rediscovered at a wastewater treatment plant in Thailand, Birdlife International announced Wednesday.
Little is known about the large-billed reed-warbler because it had not been seen since its discovery in 1867 in the Sutlej Valley of India. Because it was so rare, scientists had long debated whether it represented a true species or was an aberrant individual of a more common species.
That debate appears to be settled after Philip Round, an ornithologist at Bangkok's Mahidol University, captured one of the birds on March 27, 2006, at a wastewater treatment center outside Bangkok, the conservation organization in Cambridge, England said.
"Although reed-warblers are generally drab and look very similar, one of the birds I caught that morning struck me as very odd, something about it didn't quite add up," Round said in a statement. He said he noticed the bird's unusually long beak and short wings.
"Then, it dawned on me. I was probably holding a large-billed reed-warbler," he said. "I was dumbstruck."
To confirm his findings, Round sent photographs and DNA samples of the bird to Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University, who had previously examined the Indian specimen. Bensch confirmed it represented a valid species.
More evidence that the large-billed reed-warbler was a unique species came to light six months after Round's discovery — tucked away in a museum drawer.
A second specimen of the large-billed reed-warbler was found in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring, England, in a drawer of Blyth's reed-warblers collected in India in the 19th century. This one was caught in 1869 in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bensch has since confirmed its identification using DNA.
Thanks for sharing.
Didn't Moby beat him anyway?
How amazing that they've found this and can actually check it using DNA now? I love when that stuff happens. I think that's what they're hoping to do with the thylacine too.
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
there are always male orcas in the pod. they serve as scouts and protectors. also when it is time to breed they come in handy when several pods congregate in what is known as a superpod in order to mate with females of another pod.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
orcas aren't whales. they're dolphins.
take a good look
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I would rather call them orca whales than killer whales. I just don't view them as killers, and orca dolphins doesn't sound as good.
if you're an oceanic dolphin, wouldn't that still make you a dolphin?
anyhoo, orcas are a member of the globicephalinae subfamily of dolphins.
and how about you just do what i do, and call them orcas. plain and simple.
take a good look
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Family Delphinidae (dolphins, killer whales, pilot whales, and relatives)
The order is considered by some to part of a Superorder with the even-toed ungulates (camels, deer, wild/domestic pigs, llamas, goats, bovines, antelope & others)
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/Cetacea.html#Cetacea
true, while orcas are members of the family delphinidae, this family is further divided into the sub-families, delphininae and globicephalinae. it is the latter which the orca belongs to, whereas the dolphin we are all so familiar with, the bottle nosed dolphin or tursiops belongs to the delphininae sub-family.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
- the great Sir Leo Harrison
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
is that so?
i dont need to google when it comes to orcas. they've been an avid interest of mine for nigh on quarter of a century.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
so...a needle pulling thread...
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say