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Amazing footage shows a beluga whale playing 'fetch' with marine researchers

So great.

via The Guardian / YouTube

Beluga whales are affectionately known as sea canaries for their song-like vocalizations, and their name is the Russian word for "white."

They are sociable animals that live, hunt, and migrate together in pods, ranging from a few individuals to hundreds of whales. However, they are naturally reticent to interact with humans, although some solitary belugas are known to approach boats.

Once such beluga that's believed to live in Norwegian waters is so comfortable among humans that it played fetch with a rugby ball.

It's believed that the researchers in the video are on a South African vessel known as the Dinah Explorer. The video first appeared on Facebook where the poster was certain the researchers are South Africans celebrating their team's 2019 Rugby World Cup victory.

"Beluga Whale celebrating the Springboks victory somewhere close to the South Pole," Kowen wrote in the caption to the Facebook post. "Spot the Cape Town build Gemini Craft and the South African accents."

Some believe the whale could be the same one that caught the public's attention earlier this year for harassing Norwegian fisherman. The whale was wearing a harness that read "Equipment St. Petersburg" so many thought it was, at some point, trained by the Russian military. The harness has since been removed.

The whale went viral for fetching a phone that was dropped in the water by an eager fan.

"We laid down on the dock to look at it and hopefully get the chance to pat it," Ina Mansika told The Dodo. "I had forgotten to close my jacket pocket and my phone fell in the ocean. We assumed it would be gone forever, until the whale dove back down and came back a few moments later with my phone in its mouth!"

The whale returned the phone, but sadly it was no longer functional after falling into the frigid water.

This article originally appeared on 11.8.19

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Science

Intense video shows a humpback whale breaching on top of a fishing boat

"It was insane!"

via Wikimedia Commons

Humpback whales can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds.

It’s fairly common for people to share videos of a large whale swimming by a boat or coming close to a kayak, but it’s extremely rare for a whale to make direct contact with the vessel.

A new video that is both terrifying and exhilarating shows a humpback whale breaching atop a 19-foot fishing boat. The good news, according to NBC10 Boston, is that no one was hurt and the boat wasn’t seriously damaged. A full-grown humpback whale can grow up to 52 feet long and weigh up to 80,000 pounds so it could do some serious damage.

The incident happened on Sunday, July 24, off the coast of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

“The boat was in the right place at the wrong time. This could have been much worse for all involved," Plymouth Harbormaster Chad Hunter told NBC10 Boston. "Children like to lean over the side of the boat to watch the fish so it is very lucky that nobody got hurt here. An incident like this is pretty rare but very dangerous to boaters.”

The whale and the boat were in the same place at the same time, most likely for identical reasons. The harbormaster said there were a lot of boats in the area over the weekend because there was an abundance of bait fish in the water. The fish probably attracted the whale as well.

Whales are relatively common in the waters off Massachusetts in the months of April through October and then they migrate to warmer waters as winter approaches.

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Planet

'Whale nerd' zoologist says 'mind completely blown' filming 1,000 fin whales in one spot

Conor Ryan/Twitter

Zoologist and photographer Conor Ryan spotted 1,000 fin whales in one spot.

Conor Ryan has seen his fair share of whales, and his Twitter handle—@whale_nerd—isn't just a cutesy nickname. Ryan was just 14 years old when he published his first peer-reviewed scientific paper on killer whales with his best friend, Peter Wilson, in 2001. As a wildlife photographer, a zoologist specializing in marine biology and an expert in baleen whales and small cetaceans, he knows when he's looking at something special in the sea.

In other words, when Conor Ryan says his mind is "completely blown" by a whale sighting, you know it's a big deal. Seeing 1,000 fin whales at once? That's a very big deal.

Fin whales are the second-largest animal in the world, second only to the blue whale. In the 20th century, fin whales were hunted to near extinction before commercial whaling was outlawed. Nearly 725,000 were killed in the Southern Hemisphere alone in the mid- 1900s, and though whaling is no longer a threat, fin whales are still on the endangered species list.

Fin whales get their name from an easy-to-spot fin on their backs. Imagine seeing 1,000 of any endangered species in one location, much less 1,000 of these 85-foot, 80-ton whales all feeding in a single location.

Ryan captured the scene on film and shared it on Twitter, writing, "We found about 1000 fin whales over a 5x5 mile area off South Orkney. Blue and humpback also mixed in. Mind completely blown." The video shows a cluster of whales spouting as far as the eye can see.

According to The Guardian, Ryan spotted the whales from the National Geographic Endurance polar cruiser, in an area between the South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic peninsula. Their ship was in an area with four large krill fishing vessels, which explains the feeding frenzy.

Ryan said it might be "one of the largest aggregations of fin whales ever documented” and that his estimate of 1,000 whales was a conservative one.

“Words fail me,” Ryan told The Guardian. “I have seen maybe 100 fins here before in previous years. Thousands of chinstrap penguins, petrels, and albatrosses, too … It was unusually calm weather and unusually good visibility.”

Though commercial whaling laws have greatly reduced the decimation of whale populations we saw in the 1900s, whales still face threats from human activity. According to NOAA, the main threat to fin whales today is vessel strikes. Cargo and cruise boat ships have increased in number in the past few decades, which increases the risk of running into whales, but they aren't the only ships that pose a threat. Last year, two dead fin whales had to be dislodged from the hull of an Australian Navy ship after it pulled into the naval pier in San Diego. The fact that they are still considered endangered means we have to stay vigilant about their protection.

But as author Philip Hoare wrote in The Guardian, "In a world constrained by woe and threats to democracy…1,000 fin whales can’t help but lift our hearts." Such a number is decidedly good news, which is always worth celebrating and which provides a beacon of hope that we can make impactful changes that help our planet when we choose to.

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Lobster diver survives after being nearly swallowed—then spit out—by humpback whale

CBS This Morning/YouTube, Photo by Brad Lewis on Unsplash

"Oh my God, I'm in the mouth of a whale."

Those aren't the words commercial lobster diver Michael Packard expected to go through his head on Friday—or any day—but that's what he thought when he found himself swallowed whole by a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod.

Packard dives to the bottom of the ocean every day to collect lobsters, but he's never had an encounter like this one before. When he was about 45 feet down, he suddenly found himself enveloped in darkness. He told NBC 10 Boston it hit him like a truck, and for 30 seconds he was trapped inside a humpback whale's mouth. His scuba regulator fell out of his mouth, which caused extra concern momentarily, but he was able to retrieve it. However, during the ordeal, he was sure he was going to die.

"I just was struggling, but I knew this was this massive creature. There was no way I was going to bust myself out of there," Packard said. He thought of his two sons, ages 12 and 16, his wife, and his mother, believing he was going to die inside a whale and leave them all behind.

However, the whale thankfully decided that it did not actually want to have a human dessert, swam to the surface, and spit Packard out. "All of a sudden he went up to the surface and just erupted, and just started shaking his head, and I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water, and I was free."

It's the kind of story that seems too far-fetched to be believed. But Packard's crewmate, Josiah Mayo, was driving the boat and witnessed Packard's release from the whale's mouth.

"It was just a huge splash and kind of thrashing around," Mayo to NBC 10 Boston. "I saw Michael kind of pop up within the mess and the whale disappeared."

Lobster diver survives after nearly being eaten by humpback whalewww.youtube.com

Dr. Iain Kerr is a marine biologist at The Ocean Alliance and has been studying whales for more than 30 years. He told CBC This Morning that this is the second time he's heard of something like this happening.

In fact, in 2019, wildlife photographer Rainer Schimpf found himself with his head and torso inside a 15-ton whale's mouth off the coast of South Africa, missing a story like Packard's by a mere few feet. That incident was caught on camera.

Both incidents were quite clearly accidents. In general, whales are not aggressive to humans and certainly don't want them as food.

"Basically, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Kerr said of Packard's adventure. "I think he was very lucky. It could have been a nasty situation. But I am sure the whale was almost as freaked out as Michael was.

Packard was examined at Cape Cod Hospital, having sustained some soft tissue damage but no broken bones or serious injury. He says as soon as he is healed, he'll be back in the water catching lobster again.

And he'll definitely have one heck of a tale to tell the rest of his life.

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