Scubaism

Dolphins living off the coast of Wales whistle, bark and groan in a different dialect from dolphins off the western coast of Ireland, scientists have discovered.

Different physical environments might have contributed to the mammals developing distinctive sets of vocalizations or “dialects”, said Simon Berrow from the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation.

Berrow supervised a master’s thesis by student Ronan Hickey at University of Wales, Bangor, who analyzed 1,882 whistles from the dolphins in the Shannon estuary and bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay in Wales. The study found 32 different sound categories, of which eight were only produced by the Shannon animals.

“The idea that the sounds are different is not a bad notion — you’d expect the information had to be different given the diversity of the areas where they reside,” Berrow told Reuters, adding he would use the data to create a dictionary of sounds and pursue the research further, should time and money allow.

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The problem with Dave the Dolphin is that he looks just like his relatives who pull smiling children around sunlit pools in America. He turned up a year ago in the waters off Sandgate, near Folkestone, Kent, and stayed - to the delight of crowds who have gathered on the beach each day this summer.

Swimmers pat him on the head while others give him a hug and Dave responds with a dolphiny smile. But after reports that a father tried to put his little boy on the animal’s back for a ride, Kent police have stepped in.

Dave is still wild and unpredictable, they warn - not like dolphins who have been trained in how to handle humans. There have been reports of him trying to stop swimmers from leaving the water when games are over.

And the danger of putting a child on his back is that he is likely to head miles out to sea.

“There are fears that as Dave becomes used to human contact, he actually becomes a danger. In similar cases, dolphins start to display their dominance and that is when there is a likelihood of injury,” said PC Andy Small of Kent police.

“There have also been reports of small craft getting close to Dave and, as his natural fear of human contact diminishes, the chance of him being struck by a boat or propeller increases.”

Officers are now keeping an eye on the beach, warning Dave’s growing army of admirers that it is illegal to intentionally harass a dolphin. And that he might hit back.

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Staff at a German marine centre have turned to Justin Timberlake in a bid to get their shy sharks in the mood for mating.

The marine predators were so slow in the romantic stakes that, as an experiment, Sea Life staff began piping music into the sharks’ aquariums for two hours a day to stir their libidos.

And the tunes seem to have had the desired effect, with 50 eggs discovered at the end of the four-week experiment, the Independent reported.

Among the top shark love ballads were Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body, Push It by Salt-n-Pepper, Joe Cocker’s You Can Leave Your Hat On, and Traumschiff by James Last. But Britney Spears elicited no reaction from the discerning sea creatures.

The experiment was conducted by 10 Sea Life centres in Germany after the country’s captive breeding program began to lag.

The experiment followed a research project six years ago at the Rowland Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which showed fish processed music in a similar way to humans and appreciated different melodies and tunes.

In Konstanz and Dresden, staff and tourists watched the sharks follow each other and bite each other on their fins. At the Timmendorfer Strand aquarium, the sharks reportedly “danced” to the tunes of Joe Cocker.

Jenz Hirzing from Sea Life Timmendorf said: “The study gives us and scientists the chance to investigate how much influence music can really have on sharks and their mating behaviour”.

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Spain has launched a campaign to investigate and collect a plague of jellyfish on its coastline, and so far has collected eight tons of them, the Environment Ministry said on Tuesday.The ministry’s “Campaign for the Study and Detection of Groupings of Jellyfish” has attracted 200 volunteers who are being specially trained to study the jellyfish and find out what attracts them to the coastline.

“A vigilance network has been created to detect banks of jellyfish and predict their possible arrival on beaches,” the ministry said in a statement.

The increase in jellyfish, a nuisance for holidaymakers in the Mediterranean in particular, is believed by climate experts to be due to warmer sea temperatures and the reduction in predators such as tuna and turtles.

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The US Navy has been ordered not to use mid-frequency sonar equipment during training exercises off the coast of California until the end of 2009. A federal judge ruled in favour of campaigners who argued that the devices harmed marine mammals in the area.

The legal action was brought by a coalition of animal welfare groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). They said noise pollution from sonar disorientated whales, causing them to become stranded on beaches.

“The court’s order confirms that during sonar testing and training, the navy can and must protect whales and other marine life in the extraordinarily rich waters off our southern Californian coast,” said Joel Reynolds, a senior lawyer for NRDC.

The group, in a statement following the ruling, said the federal judge had recognised that even the Navy’s own assessment concluded that the sonar exercises would “cause widespread harm to nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including five species of endangered whales”.

US District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper issued the temporary sonar ban following the navy’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the NRDC in March, which alleged the widespread use of high-intensity sonar during training exercises breached environmental legislation.

The US Navy’s Third Fleet commander, Vice Admiral Samuel Locklear, said they would appeal against the injunction. “This court decision prevents us from using active sonar,” he told the Associated Press. “It potentially puts American lives and our national security at risk.”

In a statement, the navy said it already took steps to minimise risks to marine mammals. It added that it had monitored the waters off southern California for 40 years, and had not seen any whale injuries resulting from the use of sonar equipment.

In 2006, a UK government-commissioned report called for more research into the effects of noise pollution on marine animals. It concluded that there were many noise sources in the seas, including seismic surveys for oil and gas, shipping, offshore wind farms, military sonar and scientific research.

The study by the Inter-agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology (ICMST) identified 13 cases of strandings by whales and dolphins that appeared to be linked to noise; adding that most of the cases did involve naval vessels.

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Cleaner waters and a more plentiful supply of fish could be luring more sharks to the territory than at any time in the last 10 years, a media report said on Sunday.

The main beach at Stanley, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, was closed after the carcass of a juvenile blacktip reef shark was found entangled in a shark-prevention net, the South China Morning Post said.

The government also reported more than 20 shark sightings in July with two so far this month in a marine park near Sai Kung along the east coast of Hong Kong’s New Territories.

“Water quality has steadily improved over the years. In addition, the artificial reefs deployed in the eastern waters have successfully attracted fish, the small sharks’ main diet,” said Suzanne Gendron, head of zoological operations at the Ocean Park.

“The small sharks sighted within Hong Kong waters may have been attracted by the increasing numbers of fish.”

The sightings have led the government to temporary close some beaches and advise people to keep out of the water, leading to suggestions that officials had overreacted.

“These small sharks are primarily fish and invertebrate feeders and only show aggression when cornered,” Gendron said.

WWF conservation director Andy Cornish, agreed. “It should not be necessary to close a beach with a shark net, providing the shark net is properly maintained and any shark seen is outside the net,” he said.

Cornish speculated that the sharks may have been lured by the exceptionally hot weather. July was the warmest month recorded in Hong Kong since 1967

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Researchers at the world’s largest aquarium have found what is believed to be the world’s largest gathering of the world’s largest fish along the Mexican coast.

A study released Thursday by the Georgia Aquarium and Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., shows anywhere from 500 to 1,500 whale sharks feeding in the plankton-rich waters off Cabo Catoche between Mexico’s Isla Holbox and Isla Contoy during the summer months.

The researchers will travel to Mexico over the next two months to continue studying the animals’ behavior.

They have been working with Mexico’s National Commission on Protected Natural Areas since 2003 to tag the enigmatic fish and record their mating, eating and swimming habits. One whale shark traveled 550 miles in 31 days, and another dove 4,514 feet into the ocean, the study shows.

Mote Marine Laboratory, founded in 1955, is one of the largest independent nonprofit marine research facilities in the world.

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For more than 70 million years, sea turtle hatchlings have been instinctively scrambling toward the safety of the surf, drawn by the evening sky that illuminates the ocean.

But the controversy becomes illuminated at nighttime too because lights near the beach are killers. They draw hatchlings in the wrong direction. Sometimes there are bright lights on condos and businesses on the shore directly behind sea turtle nests.

The daylight reveals the results of a recent hatching in Deerfield Beach gone awry — dead sea turtle hatchlings littering parking lots and roads like A1A.

“Hundreds of turtle, baby turtle belly drag marks, little flipper prints all coming up through this area,” said Richard Whitecloud, a Deerfield Beach resident who saw hatchlings on a pathway, scurrying away from the ocean toward the lights and toward certain death.

“It was disgraceful,” said Whitecloud. “Because sea turtles should be an actually national treasure.”

Law requires that no one have lights that shine too brightly onto the beach during hatching season March through August. But NBC 6 has learned the city of Deerfield Beach itself is, according to monthly county surveys, the biggest single violator of its own ordinances. Specifically, citing lights in parking lots and walkways, even though some are partially shielded.

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The mother of the second finless porpoise to be born in captivity in China has died, forcing Chinese scientists to feed the six-week-old baby porpoise by artificial means, the first time humans have fed milk to the endangered freshwater mammal. “It is a great challenge for us as we have never done this before,” said Dr. Wang Kexiong with the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Wang and his colleagues feed the male finless porpoise, whose English name is Tom, every one or two hours with 30 ml of milk, fish pulp and other nutrients in a bottle.

Tom lost his mother, Donna, on July 11, after she died of digestive system failure caused by the birth of Tom. He was born on June 2 at the institute in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, becoming the second finless porpoise born in captive.

Tom was reportedly upset over the death of his mother but now the baby finless porpoise has established a close relationship with his human carers, swimming up to people if they enter his pool, Wang said.

After two months of milk feeding, Tom will become strong enough to eat fish. “We will keep a close eye on him and spare no effort to ensure his nutrition,” Wang said

Finless porpoises, like white-flag dolphins (or baiji), are rare mammals endemic to the mainstream of the Yangtze River, China’s longest, and its numerous lakes.

International scientists failed to find a single white-flag dolphin during an expedition from November to December last year. Most experts agree the species is “functionally extinct”. Experts estimate that only 1,200 to 1,400 finless porpoise currently inhabit the Yangtze mainstream, Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake.

Busy ship traffic interferes with the sonar dolphins and finless porpoises use to find food. Fishing nets and pollution are other factors that have contributed to the decline of the species.

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Millions of tilapia died over last weekend in the annual summertime Salton Sea fish kill in what was described as one of the largest die-offs ever at the giant desert lake.

A second mass die-off was narrowly averted Tuesday when high winds provided enough oxygen to revive thousands of air-starved fish, said Salton Sea Authority Project Manager Dan Cain. The weekend die-off was one of the largest he’s seen, Cain said.

It was too early to estimate how many tilapia died, but the number appears to have surpassed the 3 million that died in August 2006, Cain said.

On Tuesday, another round of fish were crowded at the shore, gasping for air, he said. “The top of the water looked like alka seltzer because they were all gasping for air. They were all shoulder to shoulder, there were thousands of fish,” he said. “Then, the wind came up.”

Fish die-offs occur at the lake every summer because of natural biological and chemical reactions that sap oxygen from the water during July heat waves when temperatures soar near 120 degrees.

There are an estimated 200 million tilapia in the Salton Sea.

The salty desert lake was created in 1905 when floodwaters broke through a Colorado River irrigation canal. It is fed mostly by agricultural runoff.

The Salton Sea authority, which has about $45,000 in its budget to remove the fish, was trying to clean up the fish before they sink. Ideally, winds would blow the fish together toward the shore.

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