1,413 results
1,413 results for: Whales
- Ecosystems
Exxon Valdez killed future for some killer whales
An Alaskan oil spill disrupted family structure in killer-whale groups, with lasting and dramatic repercussions.
- Health & Medicine
Of ‘science’ and fetal whaling
Japan had been sacrificing a large number of pregnant whales in the name of science.
- Earth
How killer whales are like people
Killer whales may be sentinels for toxic chemicals accumulating in even landlubbers.
- Health & Medicine
Cousteau finds “hypocrisy” in scientific whaling
Another challenge surfaces to Japan's "scientific" whaling.
- Earth
Protected whales found in Japan’s supermarkets
Toothless Asian whales find themselves being protected by fairly toothless regulations.
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Manatee and whale woes with boat speed limits
This isn’t a cop convention. These are marine mammal biologists, but they do care about speed limits. At the 18th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Science News reporter Susan Milius blogs about manatee researcher Edmund Gerstein's work on boat speeds and gory collisions with manatees. Gerstein is the guy at this meeting who has been arguing what sounds just backward at first. In circumstances such as murky water, he says, slow boats are more likely to hit manatees than are fast boats: Slow boats don’t make as much noise within the manatee hearing range, he says. So when manatees have to rely on sound to detect boats, the animals don’t pick up the warning until too late. There's also news on how well -- or not well -- speed limits set for boats that frequent the same waters as right whales are being followed.
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More science for science writers
More dispatches from the 47th annual New Horizons in Science meeting, sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and held this year in Austin, Texas.
- Health & Medicine
Genome 10K: A new ark
Featured blog: Researchers are working to catalog the DNA sequences of just about every vertebrate genus.
- Health & Medicine
PCBs hike blood pressure
No one would choose to eat polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs — yet we unwittingly do. And a new study finds that the cost of their pervasive contamination of our food supply can be elevated blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease.
- Animals
Whale hunts: Discussions on lifting the ‘ban’
The International Whaling Commission will formally address its future, next week, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Fla. Once comprised of whaling nations, the IWC now includes member states just as likely to condemn any hunting of cetaceans. That internal tension is guiding the meeting’s agenda. On it’s plate: whether to overturn the organization’s long-standing moratorium on commercial whaling.
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The carbon footprint of industrial whaling
Blog: Over the past century, whale hunting released 128,000 Hummers’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere
- Life
One ocean, four (or more) killer whale species
Killer whales may be at least four species, a new study of mitochondrial DNA shows.
