Cetaceans

A harrowing story of orcas trapped in an icy prison off the coast of Japan has come to a happy ending. The dozen or so whales were spotted earlier this week near the island of Hokkaido, appearing to be enclosed by ice with no available way to help them. On Wednesday, however, officials reported that the orcas managed to successfully escape their predicament on their own.Forget Collars—There's a Kinder Way to Track Polar Bears in the ArcticThe tale began Tuesday morning, when a fisherman from the town of Raisu first…

Have you heard the story about crabs in a bucket? When one tries to escape, others claw it down, giving rise to the term “crab mentality”. I find the tale, often proffered with trite self-help nuggets, grating. Not only do we ascribe imagined motivations to crabs, we place them in a situation they would have never encountered without human intervention and then make generalizations about their “mentality”. Narratives that unfold parallelly even as they inform each other. (Little, Brown and Company) Beyond…

Russia is ramping up its efforts in the Ukraine war by doubling the number of its pens holding trained dolphins near the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, the UK defense intelligence agency said on Friday. The British bureau’s satellites captured images of expanding enclosures it saidcontain bottle-nosed dolphins. Rare Polar Bear Attack in Canada | Extreme Earth“The implication is that dolphin patrols have increased in frequency and/or cover more area,” according to Naval News. “The marine mammals have an inherent advantage…

The towering success of 1975's Jaws inspired a fleet of rip-offs, and one of the less terrible ones—1977's Orca—is suddenly feeling very contemporary, what with all the headlines about killer whales gathering en masse and menacing yachts. While Orca emphasizes aquatic drama over science, the mood it captures still feels eerily prescient.Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard Nerd Out About Jurassic Park's Returning HeroesBack in 1977, however, you can absolutely see why audiences felt inundated with déjà vu. Orca takes place…

It’s been a big week (f)in orca news. The black and white cetaceans, often referred to as killer whales seem to be making some unexpected moves—popping up in numbers and places where they usually do not.Reddit Knowingly Downvoting Self | Future TechOn Sunday, a group of researchers—surveying the seas from a plane—spotted four whales just south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, in an area where orca sightings are exceedingly rare, according to a New York Times report. Elsewhere in New England, a fishing crew noted…

Orcas are attacking and capsizing boats off the coast of Spain in what researchers are saying may be learned behavior. The local maritime rescue service said on Thursday that several killer whales had damaged a sailing boat, adding to dozens of reported orca attacks off the coasts of Spain and Portugal this year.Twitter Is Shifting Right | Future TechA sailing boat was making headway to Gibraltar in the early hours of Thursday when a group of orcas pierced the boat’s hull and broke the rudder. A rapid-response vessel was…

Renewable energy scored a big win this week in Massachusetts. A federal judge in the state’s district court rejected a lawsuit brought by an alleged group of Nantucket residents, which sought to stop the first major U.S. offshore wind project from moving forward.Rare Polar Bear Attack in Canada | Extreme EarthVineyard Wind, a $2.8 billion endeavor expected to generate enough energy to power 400,000 homes, was approved by Joe Biden in May 2021. But the proposal has faced multiple legal challenges since—from climate…

PRYMORSKE, UKRAINE—This stretch of Black Sea coastline is almost deserted, save for a small hut, running entirely on solar power. About 50 kilometers across the blue water is Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, which two Russian warships attacked at the beginning of the invasion last year. It was during this attack that the now-ubiquitous phrase “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” was first-uttered by border guard Roman Hrybov. Ukraine reclaimed the island in June.Rare Polar Bear Attack in Canada | Extreme EarthThe clean, cold air…

One of the world’s most famous orcas is going back to the ocean after more than 50 years in captivity, following years of activism pushing for her release.Is AI Moving Too Fast? | Future TechOn Thursday, the Miami Seaquarium, home of the orca named Lolita, also known as Tokitae, announced that it is planning to release her back into her natural habitat in the Pacific Northwest within the next two years. The effort is part of a first-of-its-kind legal agreement between the Seaquarium and Friends of Toki, a nonprofit…

There may be a totally non-violent reason that an orca near Iceland was spotted caring for a pilot whale calf. But given what we know of orcas—a species infamous for breaking the spines of dolphins and eating the livers of unlucky great white sharks—you’ll forgive us for being a little suspicious.Researchers studying orcas off the western coast of Iceland spotted one apparently raising a pilot whale calf as its own offspring. That’s a little weird. Pilot whales are ordinarily prey for the larger cetaceans, which are…