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Scientists discover ‘most important’ blue whale colony
"What we are seeing is one of the biggest feeding and breeding sources, at least in the southern hemisphere"- Ernesto Escobar
"The population of blue whales in Corcovado shows us that a large number do not migrate to Antarctica,"- Ernesto Escobar
"The population of blue whales in Corcovado shows us that a large number do not migrate to Antarctica,"
Chile - Scientists say they have discovered one of the world's most important blue whale colonies off the coast of Chile, where the endangered animals appear to be staying for the summer instead of migrating south to the Antarctic to feed according to their traditional migratory patterns.
On the trip, 65 blue whales and 51 humpback whales were sighted "which confirms the existence of one of the most important whale habitats in Chile and the planet", Ballena Azul said in a statement.
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Comments
May 07 Dont tell the japanese where it is or they will want to 'study' them.- kwijibot
May 07 Yep mate, you beat me to the punch.
"These are not the whales you are looking for..."
- bloke
May 07 Yet more proof of global warming- more whales. Lets kill them.
- John Howard
May 07 People haven't killed large whales for more than 50 years, and nobody's proposing to off them now. So get off your soap boxes.
- smilespray
May 07 People haven't killed large whales for 50 years? The Japanese killed 780 in 2004/05 for "research".
- Steve
May 07 Do a little reading on the matter before resorting to knee-jerk reactions. Nobody's killing LARGE whales anymore. The species of whales being caught today have populations in the millions.
- smilespray
May 07 Shut up stupid. Any news of whales made public puts them in harm's way. Large, medium, or small, they're all welcome to someone's sushi bar.
- whale_eaters_society
May 07 Me rikiy brue wale !!
- jappa san
May 07 The U.S. needs to torpedo those japanese whaling "research" vessels, now.
- Eric
May 07 Regardless of how one feels about, large whales ARE being killed routinely, by representatives of most nations, in a number of ways and for a number of reasons, ranging from scientific to inadvertant to industrial.
Whatmore, the ocean is now the world's dumping ground for all things. Not to mention the peculiarly detrimental effect of our various military's sub-sonic frequencies, sonar, and assorted radar-variences.
Whales are still okay, though. I have only been able to spend significant time with dolphins in the sea, primarily bottle-nose, but everybody seems relatively happy. Most seem to be of a glass-is-half-full sort-of emotional make-up. From what I have heard and learned myself, I believe whales are like this, too.
- Mongo
May 07 "Genius" from London,
The reason why there hasn't been any large scale whaling by most nations
is because they got killed off to the extent that the few that were left couldn't be found to support the industry.
However if a concentration such as this was known, you can be assured that it would have been wiped out back then -same as now.
Japanese "research" is analogous to Bush's position on global warming.
The industrial fleet of japanese ships and people got shut down "officially" via an international moratorium.
They then switched over under the banner of "research" and kept running same as before the next season.
Right now the price of whale meat has fallen so low that's being sold for pet food!
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/publications/index.cfm?uNewsID=13793
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4122800.stm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1567589.htm
- flip
May 07 Why is the life of a whale worth more than the life of cow in Kansas or monkey in China or a Haggis (hehehe) in Scotland? Stop the insanity of torturing and killing to satisfy your hypothalamus glands...eat beans.
- Courtland
May 07 why aren't the lives of beans important?
Stop the slaughter of beans!
- Cibbuano
May 07 Quit moaning about people killing animals. As long as they aren't endangered species, we shouldn't care. Animals are FOOD AND CLOTHING, that's what they are. And besides, whale tastes good. (note that the whale being hunted by the Norwegians (and, I guess, the Japanese) are not endangered in any way)
- Santa
May 07 go home mate people are killing the bloody things all the friggen time and now they have more god dam bloody humans
- judicator
May 07 There is very limited whaling still allowed. Mostly research or indigenous.
Japan wants to reopen commercial whaling. Japans claims of whale populations FAR exceeds those of everyone else.
The way to stop Japanese fake research is to pass an international law/restriction on whales used for research. That it may not be sold, transfered to a non-science project or institute, nor may it be eaten.
And the reasons to give up whaling, other than massive threats to extinction, especially since they are a slow reproducing animal with poorly understood breeding dynamics, is that they may be sentient. That's a big part of all the curiosity in their language and brain size. If they are sentient, and you wonder why we have trouble understanding them, they come from a more alien environment than (for a fictional example) a star trek vulcan does. The greater differences in environment, the greater possible communication difficulties may arrise. Not to even mention a completely different worldview and philosophies, etc.
Ok, thats enough ranting.
- somebody
May 07 This article is a wake up call of how little we really know about our planet and life.
- Ryan
May 08 whales are animals, why not eat them, what the difference between eating a whale and eating a burger. As long as the specific species is not endangered there shouldnt be a problem
- I_WANNA_EAT_WHALE
May 08 Exactly my thoughts on the matter.
So how about some <I_WANNA_EAT_A_WHALE from Alaska> HUMAN BURGER for dinner!
"I feel like human tonight, like human tonight..."
Homer says it best, though, "Mmmm...Human!"
- Mongo
May 04 if i was a a whale and just heard about the swine flu and remembers the chicken flu probally will be swimming for joy when the asian flu starts
- benj
Sep 12 smilespray from london - with three countries acting against the ban on whaling, just give them time. Blue whales were nearly extinct because of whaling and the Japanese are planning to include threatened and endangered whales this year. Not blue whales, but do you really trust them? It's a transparent lie that they are slaughtering whales for 'research,' so you would trust them to leave LARGE whales alone? That's terribly naive perspective and I hope you don't hurt yourself too much whilst wandering around in such ignorance. XXXOOO, Trixie
- Trixie
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