Blue whale acoustic data analysis underway!

We have been analysing the Marine Autonomous Recording Unit (MARU) data from the Corcovado Gulf. This is a video of what we hear, sped up 8 times so that the sounds are actually audible.

You can also see the post on Facebook at Centro MERI: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=369961319759448

Imagine an ocean louder than today, resonating with whale song...

Simulations of ocean sound based on pre-whaling whale population levels suggest that the ocean may have been even louder than today caused by all the singing whales. Current noise levels are high and rising due to anthropogenic sound, mainly shipping, which is thought to drown out whale sounds.

Read more:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121023123954.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fplants_animals%2Fdolphins_and_whales+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Plants+%26+Animals+News+--+Dolphins+and+Whales%29

A beluga with human voice!

A beluga imitating humans!



Read more:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121022122052.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fplants_animals%2Fdolphins_and_whales+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Plants+%26+Animals+News+--+Dolphins+and+Whales%29

An interesting piece of work on lung-feeding tactics in whales, using data-logging tags

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090641.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fplants_animals%2Fdolphins_and_whales+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Plants+%26+Animals+News+--+Dolphins+and+Whales%29

Beautiful photos by the wonderful Dani Casado of our work in Patagonia

Beautiful photos by the wonderful Dani Casado of our work in Patagonia. Check it out: 
http://danielcasadophoto.blogspot.com/2012/09/ballenas-azules-en-chile.html

Credit: Dani Casado http://danielcasadophoto.blogspot.com/2012/09/ballenas-azules-en-chile.html

'Diving into the wreck' by the late Adrienne Rich

Diving into the wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

                                                       - Adrienne Rich

A study about studying whales: huge knowledge gaps in the world map...

This is a study about studying whales! Although we already intuitively knew it, it is hugely helpful to have this put into facts and numbers. Indeed, whales are poorly studied around the world, arguably with the exception of the eastern tropical Pacific, and areas of the North Atlantic/Arctic oceans. Indeed, there are huge knowledge gaps in the world map and we still have very poor coverage of these magnificent, elusive and mysterious animals.

One such looming gap is our study site in the eastern south Pacific and the south of Chile. So I hope in my research lifetime to see this map a little fuller!

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120917085533.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fplants_animals%2Fdolphins_and_whales+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Plants+%26+Animals+News+--+Dolphins+and+Whales%29