NRKWs, Transient Biggs, Humpbacks All Over and Playful Dolphins

A federal government review of southern resident killer whale habitats has West Coast fishers up in arms over potential fishery closures.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada has identified Swiftsure and La Perouse Banks as important feeding areas for endangered orca whales, which could lead to those areas being closed to salmon fisheries to protect the whales’ food source.

"It would shut down the fishery. You would have no access. If it was implemented to the fullest, the need to protect the chinook stock for orcas, for instance, it would shut down the chinook fisheries, commercial and recreational. There would be no access to that fish," Electoral Area C Director Tony Bennett told the Westerly News.

DFO recently wrapped up a 30-day review process where locals had the opportunity to submit input into the potential critical habitat designation’s impacts, but local leaders are frustrated by the timing of the DFO’s review, which expired on July 11….
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Plan marks waters from Langara to Rose Spit as critical habitat for northern resident killer whales
It’s a rich fishing ground for salmon trollers, sport fishers and threatened northern resident killer whales.

Based on recent whale-sighting surveys and underwater call recordings, scientists say the waters between Langara Island and a point about 13 km north of Rose Spit are critical habitat for the Chinook-loving orcas, especially in winter and spring.

"There is no other known area within the range of the population that is frequented as often, and as regularly, by northern resident killer whale groups as western Dixon Entrance," says a DFO science advisory report published in late 2017….
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Six Goose-Beaked whales (Ziphius Cavirostris), a.k.a. Cuvier’s beaked whale, were spotted this week about 90 miles west of the Haifa shore. "This is a rare observation because the Ziphius lives in the deep sea where it hunts and therefore is not frequently seen in visual surveys," said Dr. Aviad Scheinin, Director of Superfunders at the Morris Kahn Station for Marine Research at the University of Haifa, who is also Director of the Dolphin and Sea Center of IMMRAC (Israel Marine Mammal Research & Assistance Center).

Goose-Beaked whales feed on several species of squid; they also prey on deep-sea fish. In 2014, scientists reported that they had used satellite-linked tags to track Goose-Beaked whales off the coast of California, and found the animals dived up to 8,980 feet below the ocean surface and spent up to two hours and 17 minutes underwater before resurfacing, which represent both the deepest and the longest dives ever documented for any mammal.

The observation … is part of a Mediterranean survey (including aerial surveys and marine surveys) conducted by ACCOBAMS (Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea). Its aim is to produce a snapshot of marine mammals throughout the Mediterranean.

ACCOBAMS attempts to reduce threats to cetaceans in Mediterranean and Black Sea waters and improve our knowledge of these animals. It is the first agreement binding the countries in the two subregions, enabling them to work together on a matter of general interest….
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An enigma of the ocean has been photographed by passengers travelling on a ferry from Portsmouth to Spain.

Confirmed sightings of True’s beaked whales have only been made three times previously in the North Atlantic.

Science’s understanding of beaked whales has mostly been made from the stranding of dead animals.

But this group of the whales – estimated at being 16 foot (five metres) long – were spotted breaching the waters off the coast off Santander earlier this month….
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Charles Darwin wrote in the first edition of The Origin of Species that North American black bears had been seen:
“swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”

Critics laughed at this, and Darwin removed it from later editions of his book, though he continued privately to believe it. Yet it would take a lot more than an enlarged mouth to turn a bear into a whale….
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