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This video has actually been around since 1997, when it was shot and released for National Geographic. I'd seen other video footage of orcas stunning sharks by ramming them on their sides and rendering them immobile, but this one was really remarkable. More here. And here.

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This was kind of a fun clip from Fox & Friends, mostly because the images taken by this daring photographer were so cool. Also, there's the added comedic value of the hopeless buffoons who host the show. You could hear the photographer dearly regretting having come on the air with such a collection of clueless clowns.

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Normally I wouldn't bore our readers with a "what I did on my midwinter vacation" post, but the sounds and pictures I collected last week off the west coast of Maui were so cool I wanted to share them with you all.

If you want to know more about the humpbacks' songs, I can't strongly enough recommend David Rothenberg's superb 2007 book about whale music, Thousand-Mile Song. As you can hear, they're very different from the orca sounds I usually collect.

Thanks also to the captains and crews at Trilogy Excursions, who were artful and thoughtful about approaching the whales and maintaining the proper distances while still giving us a thrilling view (and sound scientific commentary from the naturalists).

(Hi-def YouTube version here.)

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And now for something completely different ...

This is not exactly your usual "what I did on vacation" video. Of course, I wasn't exactly on vacation: I was working on my next book, whose subject is going to be orcinus orca, the killer whale. That the work happened to entail spending two weeks kayaking on the western side of San Juan Island, sometimes with my daughter, was just incidental. Hey, it's tough work, but somebody's gotta do it.

As you can see, the art of catching good sharp images in a kayak is a work in progress; some of the pics are interesting from a behavioral sense but are unfortunately not as sharp as I'd like. Others, well ... see for yourself.

The sound sample is an edited mix. Many of the sounds were collected around noisome boat traffic, which is just about a constant for the orcas this time of year. At times it seemed as though they were shouting at each other over the din, it got so bad. Fortunately, near the end of my stay I was lucky enough to catch some samples in boat-free conditions, and you can hear the difference; those samples comprise the sound from about 3:35 onward.

I've uploaded a hi-def version to YouTube here.

You can get a lot of the same kinds of images live at the Center for Whale Research's OrcaCam site, which includes some archived footage and sound samples (click on the Audio tab) as well.

Or you can listen to it live from the Lime Kiln Lighthouse, where I wound up spending much of my time the past couple of weeks. They too have an audio archive that's just lovely. The live link can be fun if you're lucky enough to get whales going by live; otherwise you may just enjoy the sound of gurgling currents and passing boats.

For more information, always check out our friends at the Orca Network too.

What am I writing about? Well, it's still a work in progress, of course. But generally speaking, the subject I'm keen on tackling is the following proposition: Orcas pose a direct challenge to the human conceit that they are the planet's only intelligent species.

What do you all think? I'm interested in hearing all kinds of perspectives on this.

In the midst of the oil spill, the last thing I'd expect from President Obama is full-throated support to lift the ban on commercial whaling. Yet, if our press is to believed, that's precisely what he is doing. Only, he's not. Not even a little bit.

Had there been an actual reversal, it would have devastated any support he could get from even the most lukewarm environmentalists. Whales are much-beloved in this country and there is absolutely nothing to be gained from supporting the commercial interests of whalers over preservation of endangered species.

A ban isn't a ban if countries ignore it

Despite a 25-year ban on commercial whaling, over 2,000 whales are killed each year by commercial whalers, principally in Iceland, Japan, and Norway. The reason is pretty simple: Iceland, Japan and Norway have ignored the ban since the day it was imposed. As a result, they have killed, continue to kill, and intend to keep on killing whales.

For these countries, the issue centers around claiming and clinging to the right to whale more than the actual act of whaling.

Guardian:

"The Icelandic republic was only founded in 1944 - the country had been under Danish rule - and, in the Icelandic mind, the battle for independence is still going on. Whaling doesn't matter very much, culturally or economically, to anyone in Iceland. But behind this decision is a real fear that if we allow ourselves to be dictated to about whaling, then the world will start telling us what we can and cannot fish. This is what is really important. The real issue is fishing, and safeguarding our fishing grounds."

What does President Obama have to do with it?

The federation of countries that imposed the ban (IWF) all those years ago is controlled by countries with little interest in whaling, but political interests in creating alliances with more powerful countries.

The proposal before the IWC this week, sponsored by the US, is to allow a 10-year period of open commercial whaling, in return for Japan's agreement to reduce its take in the Southern Ocean, with a view to eventual cessation. But Japan remains intransigent, refusing to accept this compromise. They are in a position of strength – not least because they have been trading overseas aid in return for votes from IWC-registered delegates with little or no interest in whaling.

Representatives from the Marshall Islands, Cambodia and even the landlocked Laos and Mongolia – are wandering the corridors, their support bought by Japan. As a result, Japan is close to gaining control of the organisation, and insiders report that the weekend's scientific talks have come close to total collapse. [read more]

To restate that a little more clearly, Japan is shopping aid to countries in exchange for their agreement to block any agreement to limit whaling activities. What the President is trying to do is offer a limited right to whale with a phaseout of whaling altogether in an effort to bring them into the global agreement to end it altogether.

In other words, contrary to what our press is wont to report in breathless 30-point headlines, the President is trying to stop whaling, not green-light unlimited whale mayhem.

As further evidence of this, Greenpeace has provisionally agreed to the compromise as a way to end whaling altogether. This is because the Obama proposal drops the number of whales killed by commercial whalers from 2,000 per year to a cumulative total of less than 1,000.

The real story is how we're not told the real story

Here are some sample headlines from conservative and liberal sources:

Change.org: Will Obama Sell Out Whales on Earth Day?
Michelle Malkin: Obama Breaks a Whale of a Campaign Promise
CommonDreams.org Obama vs. Whales
Huffington Post: Pro-Whaling Proposal Fails, But Whales Aren't Safe Yet

About the only truly balanced article I could find from a mainstream source is from Al-Jazeera.

Pragmatism over idealism, once again

The reason this has hit such a sour note is because it plays the ideal against the practical, making political hay but also ignoring the fact not lifting the ban will kill more whales than it saves. Here's how it goes:

• If the ban were working, no whales would be killed.
• Japan, Iceland and Norway are killing whales; therefore, the ban is not working.
• Japan's proxies nearly control the IWF and have the power to lift the ban entirely worldwide, which would enable Japan in particular to expand whaling activities into other areas.
• Brokering a deal for limited whaling by these countries for a limited amount of time with an eye to a complete phaseout over a ten year period spares more whales than are spared right now.
• Therefore, lifting the ban and imposing stringent limits is actually more whale-friendly than doing nothing

The arguments that Obama is anti-whale, anti-environment are nonsense. They're predicated on a false premise; that is, that the current international ban is working. It's not.

Idealists, meet reality.

In a move that took many people by surprise, three of the world's largest international non-government groups, Greenpeace, WWF and the Pew Environment Group, today said they were prepared to see commercial whaling resumed if six conditions were met.

In a joint statement they demanded: an end to whaling in the Southern Ocean; an end to trade in whale meat and products; the elimination of unilaterally decided whaling quotas; an end to hunts of endangered whale species; putting science at the centre of IWC decisions and prevention of objections or reservations by IWC members if the moratorium is lifted.

So far, they haven't been able to come to an agreement. Japan comes out with a better deal by continuing to ignore the existing ban. For another year, at least, that will be the case.

Here's the question: Was it worth standing for the ideal -- zero tolerance for commercial whaling -- and losing another 2,000 or so to Japanese dinner tables, or would support for a compromise with firm commitments from the countries ignoring the ban now have been a better idea?

We've got a year to figure it out, but the lack of straight talk from conservatives and liberals alike did not save any whales.

(That picture at the top is mine, taken 3 years ago from about 20 feet away in a Zodiac. They're magnificent, beautiful amazing creatures. I want them ALL to live too. But if I'm given a choice between losing 2,000 and losing 200, I'll take the latter.)

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Apropos of nothing in particular. I just thought this was a cool story. More here and here.

Just don't let Sarah "White Huntress" Palin hear about this, OK?

While progressives everywhere are basking in the knowledge that liberal Democrats now control two of the three estates of the federal government, it is worth remembering that despite the voters' mandate, the Right still controls (barely, by a one-vote margin) the third: namely, the Supreme Court. And the right-wing Federalist Society dogmatists now sitting on the court are not only capable, but extremely likely, to wreak havoc with that mandate.

We received an unpleasant reminder of that reality this week:

The nation's need for Navy sailors to practice using sonar to guard against enemy submarines "plainly outweighs" any legal requirement to protect orcas and other marine mammals, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, turning back environmentalists' efforts to restrict sonar use during naval training exercises.

Quoting a 1907 statement by President Theodore Roosevelt -- "the only way in which a navy can ever be made efficient is by practice at sea" -- the high court's five-member conservative majority said lower courts had improperly restricted naval exercises off Southern California.

But the justices in the majority stopped short of endorsing a Bush administration attempt to justify using a controversial White House waiver to justify the exercises.

When the lower court's ruling was announced earlier this year, it appeared to be a significant win for environmentalists, not to mention the cetaceans affected by these tests. It was also a win for the rule of law, considering the Bush administration's egregious lawbreaking in attempting to foist these tests on us.

But the court took care not to address that issue:

Continue reading »

I blogged about the Bush administration trying to exempt the Navy from environmental protection laws to allow them to use sonar off the coast of California, which studies have shown is extremely dangerous to whales and other marine life. But happily, the Ninth Circuit Court (from my hometown of San Francisco) has pushed back against the Bush administration and has told them they actually have to care about living things besides their cronies.

SF Chronicle:

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Navy must protect endangered whales from the potentially lethal effects of underwater sonar during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast, rejecting President Bush's attempt to exempt the exercises from environmental laws.

In a Friday night ruling rushed into print ahead of the next scheduled exercise on Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision that no emergency existed that would justify Bush's intervention.

The Navy is engaged in "long-planned, routine training exercises" and has had ample time to take the steps that the law requires - conduct a thorough review of the environmental consequences and propose effective measures to minimize the harm to whales and other marine mammals, the three-judge panel said.

The court noted that the Navy has been conducting similar exercises for years, has agreed in the past to restrictions like the ones it is now challenging, and was sued by environmental groups in the current case nearly a year ago. The lower-court judge reviewed the evidence and found nothing to support the Navy's claim that the protective measures would interfere with vital training or hamper national security, the court said.

Cliff Schecter:

President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast -- a practice critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.

The White House announced Wednesday that Bush had signed the exemption Tuesday while traveling in the Middle East. (snip)

"The president's action is an attack on the rule of law," said Joel Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court."

This is not some little thing...sonar used so close to their migration paths disorients the whales (and other marine life) and causes them to beach themselves. A study in 2000 found that incidences of bleeding in the ear and around the brain of marine life from mid-frequency sonars as the Navy uses.