Won’t someone please think of the children?!?!
Now that that’s out of the way, how’s the whale doing? Any updates?
And here I thought this was going to be about Britney being sighted shopping at Harrod’s for the new kid…
A pod? Oh, God, no! First a whale in the Thames, and the pods are decending! The end of days is surely upon us! Humanity’s reign on earth is at an end!
There coming for us.
In the UK, a bottlenose whale has been spotted swimming up the Thames through London. London, an extremely important financial and political capital. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10940878/
In the US, two rare right whales have been spotted in Corpus Christi Bay, hundreds of miles from their winter range off the coast of Georgia. http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-01-18T191847Z_01_N18203664_RTRIDST_0_OUKOE-UK-ENVIRONMENT-WHALES.XML
Corpus Christi. A vital commercial port, particularly concerning oil and gasoline.
The only possible explanation - scouting parties. The whales are PREPARING THEIR ATTACK!!!
Sua
(Previous thread on the port side, Captain!)
Actually, SuaSponte, I decided to merge the two threads instead of just closing yours. I didn’t want the mention of the Corpus Christi whales to be beached by the closed thread.
This is the most recent article I could find.
I was just about to ask a mod to do that, SkipMagic. Thanks.
Sua
Ya know, when a human does something stupid and dies, we all say it’s natures way to improve the gene pool. (Darwin Awards, anyone?)
Perhaps the gene pool of this species of whale will be be improved by this obviously dolt-headed specimen offing himself in the Thames.
Just to be a Devil’s advocate, eh?
Darwin or not–tide’s on the way out in London–whale is basically a goner at this point…
Where’s Willy? Or somebody?
Somebody British–DO something, OK?
fighting the urge to go read Melville…
Looks like they might try a rescue attempt.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=100982006
It’s dark there now (2pm, Chicago time). Poor whale.
As whales aren’t fish, an ichthyologist wouldn’t be much help to you. A cetologist is what you want.
I don’t think it makes a difference to whales: belugas and other whales have a habit of coming up the Saint Lawrence, sometimes as far as Montreal.
No, not a dumb question. And yes, it’s salt water, and tidal - heard a news report on this earlier today which said big tides at Westminster cause around 8 metre rises in the river level. That’s a lot of water coming in and out from the estuary!
I knew someone was gonna bust me on that! :smack: But I couldn’t remember the word for whale-scientists and I figured a fish-scientist would probably know the answer.
It’s mainly of interest to me because we’ve been learning about osmosis in massage school, and the example that finally helped it sink in for me was fresh water fishy in salt water (dries up) and salt-water fishy in fresh water (slowly explodes).
So, I wonder why some fishies (like salmon) and mammals (like whales) can handle the shift. Larger size? Thicker skin? Vaseline?
IANAI (ooh, palindrome!), but I am a whale watch naturalist and marine ecologist. There are no marine mammals that are dependent on salt water. All whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc. can survive just fine in fresh water (assuming they can find enough food and avoid navigational hazards like tidally-exposed mudflats.)
Here in SF Bay we get Grey Whales coming into the estuary very frequently, and we infrequently get Humpbacks, who often need rescuing. (Humphrey was a particularly famous case - scroll to the bottom.)
The Marine Mammal Center has rescued a Sea Lion from as far inland as Los Baños (65 miles inland) and a Harbor Seal from Lake Tahoe (well, actually that one was illegally picked up by humans and transported up into the Sierras.)
This guy/gal looks a lot more manuverable than a Humpback.
Just watch out, you let one whale move in, soon it invites its friends over, then they start spending the night - pretty soon you can just kiss the neighborhood goodbye…
Just like human skin, whale skin is pretty much waterproof and does not allow free exchange of ions or water molecules from dermis to the epidermal surface (in fact, probably much more so than human skin - these suckers have huge skin! - Yeah, I know that should be thick, but oh well.) Osmosis only works if the membrane is permeable, which mammalian skin is generally not. Human skin is imperfectly waterproof, but no so much so that you would kill yourself by swimming in the ocean. 
Salmon are a completely different situation - they essentially rebuild their osmoregulatory physiology and kidneys during development from parr to smolt and again in the move from salt back to freshwater. They generally stop for some time in brackish water to acclimate themselves to taking in less salty water.
Very cool! Thanks, wevets.
So, what’s the latest on our cetaceous friend in London?
Is it trapped? Is a rescue being mounted?
I hope he/she survives. It must be a male. It didn’t ask for directions.
Have they named it yet?
Until further news, I offer another whale of a story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4633878.stm
“Mr Woodley said it was upstream of Vauxhall Bridge, close to Dolphin Square in Pimlico”
does this tell us something? (Sorry i don’t know how to do that indent thing)
isn’t terry Nutkin from ‘the really wild show’? (if that’s still on).