Pete Thomas Outdoors

Spotters alerted as tagged great white shark is tracked swimming close to shore off South Africa

Shark spotters were put on alert Saturday in the Fish Hoek/Kalk Bay area in South Africa after a tagged great white shark was tracked swimming along the coast (see graphic).

The female shark, one of several great whites tagged by the nonprofit group OCEARCH, is named Lesley. She measured 13 feet, 8 inches and weighed 1,742 pounds when she was tagged off False Bay on April 15, 2012.

Fish Hoek is on the western shore of False Bay. Lesley, who is classified as an immature shark, had previously zigzagged about while swimming as far to the southeast as Cape Agulhas, which is about 80 miles from the shark's present location.

She has not rounded the Cape of Good Hope (toward Cape Town) and has stayed reasonably close to land.

Among white sharks being tracked by OCEARCH are four that were tagged off the East Coast of the United States. One of them, at the time of its last "ping" on March 22, had rounded Florida's tip and entered the Gulf of Mexico.

--Pete Thomas

Dolphin 'funeral procession' witnessed off Dana Point (video)

 

The waters off Dana Point on Tuesday were the scene of what one boater described as a dolphin funeral procession.

The accompanying footage shows a bottlenose dolphin, presumably a mother, carrying her dead calf on her back, while other dolphins followed close by. (Cetaceans have been known to tote dead offspring in what appears to be mourning behavior, but the phenomenon is rarely witnessed.)

The macabre episode revealed that not every mammal sighting is a cause for celebration, and that dolphins, like people, experience the loss of young and deal with that loss in ways that are both sad and touching.

The footage was provided by Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari (above) and Dana Wharf Whale Watch (below).

"I believe this calf has been dead for many days, possibly weeks," Capt. David Anderson states in his video description. "You can see the flesh is decaying. In my nearly twenty years on the water whale watching I have never seen this behavior. Nor have I ever seen anything quite as moving as this mother who refuses to let go of her poor calf."

Said Tony Green, a passenger aboard the Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari vessel: "The last thing I expected to see today was a funeral procession and it was a pretty profound statement about the emotions that those animals feel and how much … alike we are."

 

No buyer for whale shark 'accidentally' killed off India

If there's good news to be gleaned from a report in India, about fishermen who claimed to have accidentally netted and killed a protected whale shark, it's that they could not find a buyer in either their local market, in Dighi, or at a larger market in Mumbai.

Maybe this will help cut down on so-called accidental catches of docile creatures that are vulnerable to fishing pressure throughout their tropical habitat.

The bad news, of course, is that one of these mysterious gentle giants was killed and ultimately dumped at sea.

DNA India reports that the whale shark caught last week weighed 780 kilograms, or more than 1,700 pounds.

The story quotes a forest department official as saying, "It is obvious that it was an accident; the fishermen did not intend to catch this particular fish."

Plankton-eating whale sharks, which are still hunted in parts of Asia, are the largest fish on the planet and can reach lengths of 40 feet or more.

Little is known about their migration patterns or their overall population, but their numbers are believed to have declined sharply over the years.

They're prized as tourist attractions at scuba-diving destinations within their range, and in these areas, obviously, they're worth far more alive than they are dead.

Great white shark ignores bait, shoves head inside dive cage

 

Shark divers off Gansbaai, South Africa, received a bigger thrill than they were expecting this week when a large great white ignored the dangling bait outside the cage and instead tried jamming its head through the steel bars. (Note: footage contains profanity.)

Bryan Plummer was on the boat and captured the footage, along with the reactions from others watching from the deck.

States Plummer in the video description: "Apologies for any profanity in the video. It was an out-of-control situation."

It's not clear how many divers were in the cage but a newlywed named Roger can be seen closest to the shark's head. Fortunately, he swam downward and avoided injury.

The shark eventually swam off.

Penguins conquer boredom by mastering iPad video game

 
For two penguins named Jeremy and Newsom, March Madness is pursuing a virtual mouse on an iPad video game.

Hugh Ryono, a volunteer at Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, donated an old iPad loaded with a cat game app to the aquatic birds as an enrichment tool.

"Sure enough, when Jeremy and Newsom noticed the iPad in the exhibit they both waddled on over," Ryono wrote on his aquarium blog. "Jeremy was the first to try it out but Newsom was the only one that really got into it… "

Newsom especially seemed to like the squeak that the mouse made when he put his beak on the virtual critter."

For those who are familiar with this game, Ryono added, Newsom set the penguin high score of 1,600.

The young penguins are part of the new June Keyes Exhibit and the iPad was intended to keep them busy while the older penguins are pairing up during the spring mating season.

--Pete Thomas

Seal harassment at Children's Pool leads to nightly closure

 

A recent video showing two women harassing harbor seals at Children's Pool beach in La Jolla has prompted San Diego Mayor Bob Filner to order the immediate closure of the beach overnight.

“I felt it was important to take this step after evidence of individuals seen on videotape harassing, taunting and causing stress to the seals,” Filner said in a statement.

The closure will be enforced until May 15, when the pupping season is expected to end. San Diego Police Department officers have also stepped up patrols of the area.

The video footage, seen above, is from a recently installed web camera put in place so that viewers can watch the seals. The cam includes infrared capability -- which is how the two women were caught on video harassing seals.

"The pregnant seals are giving birth and when they’re harassed, they end up being separated from their offspring, and then the chances of survival for the offspring are very much reduced," Larry Wan, founder of the Western Alliance for Nature, which installed and oversees the video camera, told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

"And if they’re forced into the sea when they’re giving birth, that also doesn’t bode well for the seals."

San Diego Police Department Capt. Brian Ahearn, who oversees the department's Northern Division, said that the harassment case involving the two women caught on the video is still being investigated.

-- Kelly Burgess

Video from La Jolla Light via YouTube

Researchers deploy drones to spy on sperm whales

Drones are being developed at an increasingly rapid pace and privacy watchdogs are concerned about the way the unmanned aircraft might be used. But for one group of scientists ramping up the use of drones, there will be no complaints from the study subjects: large whales.

Wayne Perryman, a marine biologist for NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center, recently returned from a pioneering spy expedition to the South Pacific, where two drones were tested in the study of sperm whales.

Perryman was among the first scientists to adapt military spy technology to monitor dolphin populations in the 1980s (when thousands of dolphins were dying in tuna nets).

He had also used unmanned aircraft to study penguins and leopard seals on land. 

Perryman, additionally, has studied whales extensively from airplanes, gleaning such information as age, weight and whether a whale is injured, entangled in fishing gear or pregnant.

But airplane research is costly, invasive and impractical. Large planes cannot be flown closely to the mammals without altering their behavior.

Much smaller, quieter drones, on the other hand, are inexpensive and can be flown almost directly overhead. (Said Perryman via email: "I tend to call them unmanned aerial systems (UAS) rather than drones because of the knee-jerk negative reaction in some about drones.")

In the South Pacific off New Zealand, however, Perryman learned first-hand the challenges associated with piloting unmaned aircraft from a small research boat (large boats cannot get close enough to the whales).

"Catching the bird from an active deck was a bit like trying to catch a knuckleball bare-handed," Perryman said in an NOAA report on the drone aspect of the expedition. He was working with Don LeRoi, an engineer with Aerial Imaging Solutions.

Like so many drones being produced today, theirs was built using inexpensive electronics and consumer-grade cameras. Because of the knuckleball effect, and at least one of the small vessels ending up in the water, the two are designing a model that's entirely waterproof and designed for splash landings, for retrieval by net.

Perryman also is planning a second mission, during which he intends to send the drone directly over the whales' blowholes and through their towering plumes, as they're exhaling. The mist contains various cells and enzymes that can reveal a DNA profile, hormone levels and other indications of a whale's health and physiology.

"If you're going to manage a population of whales, you need to know more than just how many there are," Perryman said. "You have to know something about the condition of the animals in the population." Drones, it seems, will become the ideal spy tools to help determine just that.

--Photos: Top image shows Wayne Perryman attempting to catch an incoming drone. Third image  shows Perryman (left) and Don Leroi inspecting an unmanned aircraft. Credit Moira Brown/New England Aquarium. Middle image shows view from a drone. Courtesy of Wayne Perryman/NOAA Fisheries

--For more information on the Sperm Whales New Zealand project, check out the expedition blog.

--Note: This is a reprint from a Pete Thomas post on GrindTv.com

Slippery surfboard presents major challenge for seal pups

 

Providing harbor seal pups with a floating platform might seem helpful, but when that platform is a slippery surfboard such an experiment might also seem a bit cruel.

But the accompanying footage, uploaded over the weekend by HydRemote, sure is cute. It reveals that some seals are more adept than others at sliding onto a windsurfing board moored in their habitat, in this case in waters off Puget Sound, Wash.

It also reveals that persistence sometimes pays off.

HydRemote, which is a company that designs cable systems for mounting cameras, stated that the clips were pulled from 30 minutes of "Slip n' Slide" footage.

No animals were harmed, and no Vaseline was applied, according to the video description.

Red tide bloom kills record number of Florida manatees

A red tide algae bloom off the coast of southwest Florida has killed a record number of manatees so far this year, and that number will likely grow.

Through Sunday 174 manatees have died, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

While results are preliminary, that number includes all manatee carcasses collected within the known red tide bloom boundary -- approximately 70 miles of coastline from Sarasota County to Lee County.

"This is probably going to be the worst die-off in history," veterinarian Martine DeWit told the Tampa Bay Times.

The previous record for manatee deaths attributed to red tide was 151 and was set in 1996.

DeWit, who oversees Florida's marine mammal pathology laboratory, believes that toxins in the algae bloom have settled onto the sea grass that manatees consume, causing the gentle sea mammals to become paralyzed and drown.

DeWit added that the manatee die-off will probably continue for months after the red tide bloom ends because the grass beds will likely retain this toxic coating.

So far, almost a dozen manatees have been rescued and taken to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo for treatment.

With an estimated population of 4,000 to 5,000, Florida manatees are endangered mammals protected by both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

-- Kelly Burgess

Image of a healthy Florida manatee courtesy of Keith Ramos / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Orcas surprise Baja anglers, emerge just inches behind boat

For Bryan MacGowan and friends, a recent Sea of Cortez fishing trip will remain memorable not because of what they caught, but what they saw: several large killer whales that emerged off the stern of their 31-foot boat, two of them just inches away, at times seeming to inspect the anglers and crew.

"As the stern dipped in the waves, they would peer into the cockpit," MacGowan said. "It was intimidating--they are big!"

The encounter, involving at least 12 killer whales, or orcas, occurred off Baja California's East Cape region as the anglers were cruising offshore to hunt for marlin. There were no lines in the water during the encounter.

Two were immediately behind the boat when MacGowan captured the top image, revealing a killer whale practically within touching range. "There was another orca in the prop wash on the other side, but my camera could only capture the one," he said.

MacGowan captured a second image (posted below), showing a killer whale "playing in the stern wash, after the close ones dropped out."

It was startling because everyone had been looking forward until the captain spotted the mammals and shouted for everyone to turn and look.

The top image first appeared Saturday on the Pisces Sportfishing blog and Facebook page, with a post that reads: 


Look very carefully at this photo, sent to us by Brian MacGowan from Newport Beach, California, who is out today on the Tracy Ann. He was fishing at the East Cape recently, when the captain yelled for him to look back... he did, glad the lures were not in the water, he could have had the fight of a life time on his hands.

The captain told MacGowan that he sees what he thinks is the same pod two or three times a year.

Boaters farther north, off Loreto, enjoyed a similar encounter last fall. Perhaps those were from the same pod or family group.

--Pete Thomas