Nerd of most types of animals, but my big areas are psittacines, dogs and snakes. This blog is where I write about cetaceans and animal welfare. My other blogs are Pro-Exotics and Paleo-Mammalia.
The three beluga whales got stranded in the mouth of River Uda on the Sea of Okhotsk, known for its big tides when the sea retreats for up to two kilometres.
‘I got a phone call from a resident of Chumikan village at 4.30pm on 14 October. She said there were several beluga whales in the Uda river mouth after a low tide. I was on duty, so I could get there quickly’, said senior state inspector Alexey Paramonov. The stranded whales were some one and half a kilometres away from the sea, with a mother and a baby whale lying on the river bed some distance from each other, and another adult whale stuck on its side some distance away from them.
It was a cold evening with chilling wind and air temperature +2C, cooling down to -2C at night. The baby beluga was freezing in the wind, screaming pitifully as its stressed mother was hitting herself against the rocks, trying to move closer. Alexey carried the baby to the mother so that the female beluga stopped worrying, and covered it with his jacket. He then dug a pit underneath the other adult whale to turn it to the right position, and spent the next seven hours scaring away birds and dogs from the whales, trying to calm them down and keeping their eyes wet.
‘Alexey checked the animals and saw that their skin was already wounded by birds, but it wasn’t too bad. He covered the shivering baby beluga with his jacket, I can’t imagine how cold he was himself, then he replaced the jacket with a bigger throw. He did not pour water over the animals because they would suffer from hypothermia and die’, said rescuer Bakht Mavlanov, one of many local residents who praised Alexey as a hero on his social media page.
High tide arrived at midnight, with all three animals safely leaving the beach. Last year three adult beluga whales were washed ashore in the same area by the village of Chumikan village, two of them were rescued with Alexey’s help.
<3
But how does hypothermia work with these animals?
So, that was the second time in my six years on tumblr I reblogged to the wrong blog. XD
Sorry ‘bout that.
Congratulations to every country, city and province banning or limiting zoos due to the personal feelings of some bureaucrats… you should take a look at this.
Two former captive beluga whales, Little Grey and Little White, have taken their first swim in their new open water sanctuary home in the Westman Islands of Iceland. The whales explored Klettsvík Bay for the first time under the watchful eye of their care team as part of their gradual release into the bay called the ‘Little Steps’ programme.
The two whales, who are sisters, were raised in captivity and thus cannot be fully released into the wild. Before arriving in Iceland in June 2019, the whales were housed in concrete tanks in a Shanghai amusement park. Their journey to Iceland involved a flight, truck, and ferry trips, and will be the subject of a documentary to air on ITV this October.
“We’re delighted that Little Grey and Little White are now exploring the wider bay and adapting well to their new, natural, stimulating environment,” stated Cathy Williamson of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, one of several organisations behind the creation of the sanctuary. “As well as providing an exciting home for Little Grey and Little White, we look forward to welcoming other belugas here and encouraging the development of sanctuaries in other parts of the world. We hope this will mean that many of the more than 3,500 whales and dolphins held in captivity for shows and swim with attractions can be brought to sanctuaries to live more natural lives or be rehabilitated for a return to the wild.”
…they are still in captivity. It’s still a cage, still “unnatural”. Belugas don’t belong there, it’s a foreign habitat controlled by man. Only two females is a highly unnatural social structure for beluga whales.
But what am I saying, it has the divine blessing by animal rights organizations, so thus is must be good?
France’s environment minister has announced a gradual ban on using wild animals in traveling circuses, on keeping dolphins and killer whales in captivity in marine parks and on raising mink on fur farms. Barbara Pompili, France’s minister of ecological transition, said in a news conference Tuesday that bears, tigers, lions, elephants and other wild animals won’t be allowed any more in travelling circuses “in the coming years.”
In addition, starting immediately, France’s three marine parks won’t be able to bring in nor breed dolphins and killer whales any more, she said.
“It is time to open a new era in our relationship with these (wild) animals,” she said, arguing that animal welfare is a priority. Pompili said the measures will also bring an end to mink farming, where animals are raised for their fur, within the next five years. The ban does not apply to wild animals in other permanent shows and in zoos.
Pompili did not set any precise date for the ban in travelling circuses, saying the process should start “as soon as possible.” She promised solutions will be found for each animal “on a case-by-case basis.”
The French government will implement an 8 million-euro ($9.2 million) package to help people working in circuses and marine parks find other jobs.
“That transition will be spread over several years, because it will change the lives of many people,“ she said.
WTF, France…
And this has been exhibit #2769367529 in “I don’t like that thing, so it should be banned”
A female Cuvier’s beaked whale is headed down. Down past the birds. Down past the fish. Down past where light can reach. She’s already in the twilight zone. Soon her lungs will collapse, the negative buoyancy pulling her further down like a sinking bullet. Down down down into the inky black abyss. At 2 kilometres depth she’s in her element. Here she hunts, fighting the squid that over the years have marred her face with scars. She will stay down here as long as it takes. One hour. Two hours. Three, four. It is only the mammalian condition that forces her upwards again. Towards life, towards light. And that crucial breath.
A little painting to celebrate the new mammalian dive record. Previously held by a Cuvier’s beaked whale who dove down to 2992 metres, staying under for 2 hours and 17 minutes. Yesterday news came out that a fellow Cuvier’s broke that record. They stayed down for no less than 3 hours and 42 minutes. Almost four hours without breath. What must it be like to spend life like this, divided between the warm, sun-filled waters, and the absolute blackness of the freezing deep?
Nord, why you still look like a girl? :p
“They’re just like humans” is actually warranted here.
And according to the link above, PeTA “just happened” to know that their permit would be denied for no reason. How convenient.
Can we have environmentalism and conservation without human-hating, please?
We’ve all heard it, most of us have said it. I have said it, but I regret that, and will tell you why.
You can hardly have any talk of conservation of wildlife and nature without having it hand-in-hand with anti-human rhetoric, often downright hateful of our entire species.
We have to stop doing this.
It’s not just my pet peeve, this could really be dangerous. We’ve seen what governments have done to people before when they have been allowed by the populace (over 100 million murdered by governments in the last century alone, and that’s not counting the wars), and now it’s not just one specific group, but all of humanity that is viewed as a “disease”, and it’s frequently parroted in the media.
“Have no more than two children - stop eating meat - stop going on vacation - stop driving” - this and more, has nothing to do with saving the environment, and all to do with control (and for the former, population reduction - which is absolutely fine if it’s voluntary, but it might not stay that way forever).
We say that “we are all responsible for this”, or it’s “all of humanity” when we see environmental destruction, or some species going extinct. But that’s simply not true.
The vaquita for example, probably lost even if there are a few individuals left, was destroyed by the industry for totoaba swim bladders for a Chinese market, and shrimp for a US market. There is consumer responsibility - but I won’t say that every person who bought that shrimp from the Gulf of California has vaquita blood on their hands, as I would have been inclined to say a few years ago.
Do you know exactly what’s going on on that plantation where you got your pineapple from? Just an example. I sure don’t know. And unless some local conservation group tells us, I won’t know. Maybe there’s some rare bird nesting in trees that they are cutting down to grow pineapple. I wasn’t told this when I bought the pineapple. I wasn’t even given the choice between this pineapple, that leads to that hypothetical bird’s displacement, and another pineapple, which doesn’t. (I don’t even eat pineapple, it’s just an example.)
In the same way, the consumers of that shrimp or swim bladder - if they haven’t been informed - can’t be held responsible. Now if they HAVE been informed, say “I don’t care”, and keep consuming, then they have responsibility, naturally. But that is rarely the case. Most of us are kept in the dark about most of the products we buy, and that doesn’t just include food.
Or the Southern residents in Washington - if the people eating the salmon are not informed, they can’t be blamed for the demise of the whales. Again, which is why they should be informed so they can make a responsible decision to stop consuming it.
It is the fault of the INDUSTRIES and GOVERNMENTS. Megacorporations in bed with the governments.
“We live in a democracy”, you say, “so we chose our government, everything they do, we have approved as a people!” Well, not really. There are no pure democracies, and you can’t tell me government officials and politicians are oh-so-honest about what they do and plan to do… lying is their national sport, if they had one.
But people don’t think about this, and instead put collective guilt on the entire human species. “Humans are cancer”, “humans are a virus” - what if I told you that one of the points in the UN criteria for genocide, is “likening a group to animals or disease”?
Except now, again, it’s not a specific group (there is actually a specific group being demonized more than others, but I can’t say that here, or I’ll be called a racist… *cough*it’swhitepeople*cough*), as much as it’s “the ruling class” (megacorporations<3governments again) that has declared war on humanity. And they are normalizing us to it, making us go along with it.
So we have collective guilt as a species. If an industry pours poison in the sea, if another kills dozens of species as bycatch, and another clearcuts Borneo - it’s all our fault.
In the same way, because there are child sex trafficking rings, we are all child rapists? No, of course not. That’s not how it works.
Is she “cancer”?
Is he a “virus”? (Those are near-extinct Spix’s macaws, BTW)
Should these people “ask permission to breed”?
I have no idea who these people are, I just see them being obviously part of the solution, yet they are painted with the same brush of being “human”, as if it’s a curse word.
And you know, if my worst doomsday-fears of the government’s war on humanity ever come to pass (it sure looks very close right now), these people ^ will be right alongside the horrible people, punished for being human.
In a way, this is a continuation of this post I wrote after reading some really disgusting anti-human comments on a Loro Parque post about the Sumatran rhino.
So to close off (while I could keep going all day), maybe, just maybe, stop going…
“Humans are a cancer/virus/parasite” “It’s everyone’s fault” “Humans need to go extinct” (Unless you’re volunteering yourself, if so, at least kudos for living according to your beliefs… or maybe not “living”, but you get it)
The hateful and dehumanizing language and rhetoric used around humans as a species for decades now, is probably meant to set us up and soften us for this:
