🚀 go-pugleaf

"Bill Mulcajhy" <rockaway2@hvi.net> wrote in message
news:tjajoc525js580@corp.supernews.com...
>
> If  we can put transponders on planes to avoid collisions, why not whales.
> There are only 300 right whales left before total extinction!!!  Bill
> Mulcahy
>
>
> Marine scientists alarmed over year's fourth right whale calf death
>
>
> By Theo Emery, Associated Press, 06/23/01
>
>
> BOSTON -- A baby North Atlantic right whale has been found dead off Long
> Island, N.Y., the fourth calf of the endangered species to perish this
year,
> and the second believed killed by a ship strike.
>
> The four deaths represent more than 10 percent of the record 30 right
whale
> births reported this year, and a 1 percent decline in the total right
whale
> population of about 300.
>
> "Every death is significant," said Scott Kraus, the New England Aquarium's
> director of research, who announced the death Saturday. "Right whales are
> currently in a crisis and we really have to look at developing a strong
plan
> for coexisting with right whales."
>
> A necropsy of the whale corpse, found Monday, indicated that the 6- to
> 7-month-old calf was slashed with propeller cuts from head to tail and its
> skull was crushed, apparently the result of a collision with a mid-sized
> boat, Kraus said.
>
> Officials have no information about the boat, Kraus said.
>
> Another death this year has also been attributed to a ship collision.
Causes
> of the other two deaths are undetermined, Kraus said.
>
> The death was reported even as a team of marine biologists planned a
> first-of-its-kind rescue of a distressed 50-ton adult right whale with
> fishing line embedded in its upper jaw.
>
> On Friday, a federal judge denied an environmental activist's request to
> stop the planned rescue, clearing the way for the operation that could
> involve sedating the whale.
>
> Of the 300 or so North Atlantic right whales remaining, about 70 are
> breeding females.
>
> The whales are vulnerable to often deadly ship collisions because their
> migration patterns closely follow East Coast fishing lanes, Kraus said. In
> addition, the whales move slowly and may be hard of hearing.
>
Could actually be that they are 'not' hard of hearing, but their 'sonar'
communication functions have been 'scrambled' or rendered ' disfunctional'
because of the Military's testing with great blast of sound through the
oceans?

I bet it is!

> Teri Frady, spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said
> marine officials hope to augment an existing plan to reduce whale deaths
> with new technologies, such as sonar that would allow boats to detect
whales
> on the surface and change course.
>
> "This is a problem we've been wrestling with in a systematic way for some
> time now, and we have been making some progress," she said.
>
> The 30 calves born this year delighted marine scientists after several
years
> of few calf sightings. Births fell from 22 in 1996 to 18 in 1997. In 1998,
> only five calves were reported. Last year, just one was sighted.
>
> Kraus said scientists can't explain why births declined so sharply before
> this year, and hypothesized that disease, famine or natural birth cycles
> could be the reason.
>
> "It's very worrisome," he said. "No one has any answers."
>
>
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