#long-finned pilot whales

[hellsitegenetics]

Hi, This is sooo so very cool, I’m in the middle of my final exams right now and every so often I forget why I love biology, and chemistry and then I think dammit I should have just picked languages as my high level courses. But whenever I see your blog, I am reminded of why I want to study biochemistry. It’s just so insanely cool. Anyways, you don’t have to answer, but I just wanted to let you know. Many thanks!!!!

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Closest match: Globicephala melas genome assembly, chromosome: 19 Common name: Long-finned pilot whale (dolphin)

[chaotic-thing]

Greetings!

You may call me Min, and my main is @bored-dromaeosaur.

This is for posting about my silly nonhuman self! You can ask me about alterhuman shit too. :::3

[inatungulates]

Southern long-finned pilot whale Globicephala melas edwardii

Observed by oscarkokako, CC BY-NC-ND

[rinusuarez]

Long-Finned Pilot Whale (South Emisphere Form) Globicephala melas edwardii) Family: Delphinidae Genus: Globicephala Status and Conservation: Least Concern This is the final subspecies in this small family, and they closely resemble each other. Distinguishing them requires expertise. This form, for instance, exhibits more prominent white stripes on its sides and top compared to the other subspecies, though the presence of this pattern is not exclusive to it. This form resides in the Southern Ocean near the Antarctic Pole, as its name suggests. __________________________ Please consider joining the club where you can find more detailed information about every post here, spreads of the book that is in the making, and have access to the collectible E-Stickers. Just click here

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

It takes an hour to drive from Tórshavn all the way up north to Hvannasund, a fishing village of 248 people. Marshfield and Østrem won’t tell me if someone tipped them off, or if there’s another way they heard about the hunt. But they do share their plan: to document everything, even if it means breaking the law by flying a drone over the site of the hunt.

The roads are drilled straight through mountains to save the trouble of climbing up or around, and each time we exit a tunnel, I catch my breath. Waterfalls flush down emerald hills, dotted with small sheds for sheep, and tumble into glittering fjords. Marshfield talks about how nervous he is. It’s his first grind; he’s unsure how he’ll handle the blood.

Østrem has more experience with it. He was here for a couple of months in 2022 after several years of volunteering with other animal rights organizations in Oslo, Norway. He’s horrified by the way people treat animals around the world, including at fish farms in Norway. To him, the grind is just one example of the way humanity abuses other beings.

Marshfield is similarly resolute. He got involved with Sea Shepherd about eight years ago, after seeing an online photo of a slaughtered whale that left him deeply upset. His activism gradually scaled up; he started by donating, then sharing things on Facebook and selling T-shirts. Eventually, he joined Sea Shepherd campaigns in Sicily and Iceland. Now, he’s here. He grows more solemn as we drive, steeling himself to see a dead whale in person.

Watson’s followers have a long history of fighting the grind. Activist groups, including Sea Shepherd, first started protesting the tradition back in the 1980s, putting the archipelago under global scrutiny. “People were telling us it didn’t look nice,” says Bjarni Mikkelsen, marine mammal specialist at the Faroe Marine Research Institute.

According to Mikkelsen, environmentalists grew troubled over whether the hunt was hurting pilot whale populations. “People walked around with banners, saying it was unsustainable,” he says. Around the same time, sighting surveys were launched to estimate population levels. The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission, a body comprising the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway, has since carried them out every six years.

Using standard international sampling techniques, surveyors most recently estimated the population of pilot whales in the Faroes–Iceland area to be around 380,000. Survey to survey, this number changes, depending on timing and coverage. But scientists consistently report abundances that can sustain the Faroese catch. “The population is high compared to other species in the North Atlantic,” Mikkelsen says, and there’s no significant downward trend.

Greenpeace eventually abandoned their opposition. But Sea Shepherd held firm. In 2014, under Watson’s leadership, around 70 volunteers descended on the islands for Operation GrindStop, donning black hoodies stamped with Sea Shepherd’s distinctive Jolly Roger insignia and physically intervening in hunts by jumping into the bay. The following year, the organization returned with the same conduct, resulting in fines, arrests, and court cases.

Resentment for the disturbances lingers among many of the Faroese, especially since Sea Shepherd Global continues to fight the hunt, though in softer ways. “Sea Shepherd’s history with the Faroe Islands has been quite aggressive and colorful,” says Valentina Crast, the group’s current Stop the Grind campaign coordinator. Now, she’s working on a tamer strategy, focused on building a local community of supporters.

Watson’s new foundation, meanwhile, wants to maintain the same level of pressure Sea Shepherd once brought. “We’re living in a world where there is no enforcement of international conservation laws,” Watson says. “The high seas are the Wild West. And we’re sort of vigilantes.”

The 73-year-old self-proclaimed pirate (a title confirmed by a United States Court of Appeals in 2013) is against the killing of whales on moral grounds, no matter who does it, or how. He has carried out his brand of vigilantism for nearly 50 years. Talking to him is like talking to a buccaneer who shares stories of sirens and sword fights, except Watson’s tales consist of ramming Portuguese whaling vessels, sinking Icelandic ships, and tricking Soviet soldiers. He’s been criticized for targeting Indigenous peoples over their traditional subsistence hunting practices, including seal hunters in Canada and teenage whalers in Alaska.

After the crackdown by the Faroese government, protests quelled for a while. But in recent years, social media and an increase in tourism have put the grind back in the spotlight. The Faroe Islands now receive about 100,000 visitors a year, and the nation is often included on top destination lists for its dramatic landscapes. During the summer when seabirds breed, bird lovers flock to spot puffins, guillemots, and other species that nest by the thousands on the steep cliffs. Hilton opened a hotel here in 2020, and the local airline is testing out a weekly direct route from New York. Unaware tourists might encounter a whale hunt occurring in the harbor, as those on a docked cruise ship did last summer; in that instance, most were not happy about the spectacle. Such stories, along with rather gruesome photos of the hunt itself, can be shared worldwide. The Captain Paul Watson Foundation seeks to capitalize on this.

Seizing its moment after splitting from Sea Shepherd, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation sent its first vessel—the John Paul DeJoria, registered in Jamaica and named after the cofounder of John Paul Mitchell Systems hair products—to the Faroe Islands in July 2023 to stop the whale hunts. But the Faroese government barred the ship’s entry to the archipelago via executive order. Ultimately, Watson made only two brief, albeit dramatic appearances, entering the nation’s waters once in an unsuccessful attempt to reach a grind and again 10 days later at news that someone had spotted a pod.

After the second breach, Jamaica stripped the ship’s registration at the request of the Faroese government, and the John Paul DeJoria was ported in the United Kingdom. Land crew, including Marshfield and Østrem, remained in Tórshavn to document what they could.

[elwenyere]

"I wanted to write a poem about how the extreme heat of the ocean is breaking my heart, but the whales beat me to it. In late July, almost 100 long-finned pilot whales left the deep, usually cold waters where they live—so deep, so cold that scientists have barely been able to study them. Together they came to the coast of western Australia and huddled into a massive heart shape (if your heart were shaped like 100 black whales, like mine is). Then, collectively, they stranded themselves on the shore. As soon as they lost the support of the water, their chest walls crushed their internal organs. They literally broke their hearts. Choreographed under helicopter cameras.

I want to write a poem about how capitalism is a sinking ship and how the extreme wealth-hoarding and extractive polluting systems that benefit a few billionaires are destroying our planet and killing us all. But the orcas beat me to it. Off the Iberian coast of Europe, the orcas collaborated and taught each other how to sink the yachts of the superrich. They literally sank the boats. While Twitter cheered.

The sinking ship is no longer a metaphor. The broken heart is no longer a metaphor. Who needs a metaphor in times as hot and blunt as ours? Let’s make it plain."

-- Alexis Pauline Gumbs

[amnhnyc]

Meet the long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas)! Reaching lengths of up to 25 feet (7.6 meters), it's the second largest member of the dolphin family; the orca is the largest. This nomadic cetacean is widely distributed, and can be seen throughout the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. It wanders in search of food such as squid, fish, mollusks, and other sea critters. This species is highly social, with family units called pods consisting of up to 100 members. Pilot whales have even been observed participating in multi-pod gatherings with more than 1,000 individuals congregating at once!

Photo: titouan_roguet, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[deadly-espresso]

(The Distortionist)

I unfortunately had to turn The Distortionist into a fish because it's MerMay (oh no)

(also for a little bit of story about this image, while deciding on what kind of sea creature to turn Christopher into, I originally thought of turning him in a shark (that's where the idea of the bottom left image came from), but nah I didn't fit for some reason. I had also considered turning him into a cephalopod (like a cuttlefish or an octopus) but nahh that felt too stereotypical even if cephalopods tend to be crafty and deceptive characters (although I did end up letting him keep the extra arms on his back). I end up settling on basing his lower half on a cetacean, specifically a long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas) since cetaceans are also known for being very smart sea creatures and also the smooth, dark flesh of pilot whales just fit with the Distortionist for whatever reason.)

Oh also as a bonus I ended up drawing the Distortionist's head over a photo of an IKEA shark because I wanted to at least actually make the Distortionist into a FISH (the chris pierre fish design I settled on ended up just giving him the lower half of a pilot whale)

[revindicatedbyhistory]

I think if you were a cetacean, you would be a long-finned pilot whale.

you know i do feel identified

[rjzimmerman]

More than 100 long-finned pilot whales stranded along the shores of Western Australia on Thursday have returned to the ocean, while 29 died on the beach, wildlife officials said.

Officials were working to remove the 29 whales that had died on the beach, Pia Courtis, a regional wildlife officer with the Parks and Wildlife Service for Western Australia, said on Thursday in a news conference posted by the agency on social media. The agency planned to take biological samples and measurements from the dead whales for research.

After marine officials and volunteers had helped the other whales back out to sea, boats were on the water and a spotter plane was monitoring the area to ensure they did not return to shore.

The four pods of 160 pilot whales were spread across about 1,640 feet of beach at the Toby Inlet, near the town of Dunsborough, in Western Australia on Thursday morning, local wildlife officials said, in a statement on social media.

Photos shared by the wildlife service on Facebook showed rows of whales lying on the shore as crowds gathered to see the mass stranding.

The rescued whales had moved farther offshore on Thursday and were last seen traveling north, the wildlife department said.

“So far, so good — they haven’t made it back to shore, but we will keep monitoring them,” Ms. Courtis said.

Officials said they did not know what had caused the stranding, which included mostly adult females and a few calves. In general, experts have theorized that the causes for such strandings may include pods of whales following a sick, or stuck, whale and getting stuck themselves; the confusion brought about by undersea noise caused by humans; or an attempt to avoid predators.

Several mass strandings have unfolded in Australia in recent years.

[inatungulates]

Northern long-finned pilot whale Globicephala melas melas

Observed by lospinguinos, CC BY-NC

[rinusuarez]

Long-finned Pilot Whale Globicephala melas melas Family: Delphinidae Genus: Globicephala Conservation Status: Least Concern This whale is not a whale but a large dolphin. Despite the minimal differences between the Short-finned Pilot Whale and this species, they are indeed two distinct species. If that is not perplexing enough, this dolphin also possesses one subspecies—actually two, although one became extinct long ago along the coasts of Japan. In fact, scientists aren't sure that was a subspecies but almost sure. Let's say %93,2 sure. You see, science is consistently regarded as an exact discipline. Consider joining the club here. No money? No problem. Follows, likes and shares will help too. Hasta la vista.

[focsle]

I understand if this is not…. The Content you want on your blog, but in your readings of logs and journals/diaries of whalers, do they talk about the sheer size of the whales? Especially in comparison to the boats used to hunt them? Maybe I just haven’t been reading closely enough, but there doesn’t seem to be much about the whales themselves in whaling logs. Which maybe speaks to how few and far between whales were successfully caught? But I also know that is faulty, because of how big the whaling industry was and how much devastation was wreaked on whale populations… LOTS OF THOUGHTS so I thought I would ask Tumblr’s resident expert.

Oh this is the exact content for my blog lol, call me Ishmael! Content warnings for animal death.

Because they're whalemen, when speaking about the size of whales they always referred to them in terms of 'barrels', meaning how much oil they imagined they'd yield. Many are the laments of losing a '100 barrel whale', which would be quite a massive animal indeed, and was very rare to see (though not unheard of). I think the largest whale I've seen a log capture was 120 barrels. This sample from the back of the logbook of the bark Osceola II, 1866, shows some of the typical sizes of the whales it caught:

[id in alt]

The average size of whales taken ranged from 30-60 barrels, from sperm and right whales. And the average length of a sperm whale is 35-50ft and 13-50 tons depending on if it's female or male, and for a right whale around 45-55 ft and 45-80 tons. So the rare 100 barrel whale seen here was likely a very large bull. They'd also take calves (😢), hence the smaller numbers too.

A whaleboat was about 25-30ft long, to get a sense of scale of boat vs whale. Whaling museums like installing whale skeletons alongside whaleboats to give that perspective. Here's the exhibit in Nantucket's museum:

[id in alt]

And here's an example, in relation to a man, of a sperm whale's jaw:

[id in alt]

The jaw alone could be up to 25 ft long. I've stood in front of these jawbones myself and MAN it gives me the willies every time.

The drawings of whalemen also can give a sense of what it feels like to be alongside such an animal. 2nd mate Benjamin Boodry of the Arnolda, 1852, drew an image of his experience of almost having his ‘brains knocked out by a whale' the day before, named here as 'Head breaker'.

[id in alt]

He wrote-- "I do not think that whaling will agree with mine that is if they are a going to Bite as Close to me as they did yesterday this being knocked 15 feet right into the air and coming down alongside of his jaw by a whales rooting is not what it is cracked up to be."

In the 19th century, whalers tended to go after Right whales and Sperm whales and, in the latter half of that century, Bowhead whales. Right whales and bowheads were sought after because they tended to be slow moving and rather peaceable, (😢) and had a lot of blubber and baleen. Sperm whales were much more aggressive, but had much more valuable spermaceti in their head case. Those three also tended to float when killed, though that wasn't always the case. Whalers also lowered for 'blackfish' (pilot whales), but only for practice because there wasn't much oil to make the labor worth it.

Humpbacks weren't particularly popular to hunt because of their tendency to sink when killed and their baleen was too short to be of commercial value. 'Mussel diggers' or 'devil fish' (grey whales) were also not hunted often because they had a reputation of being very aggressive and also had a tendency to sink when killed. 'Sulphur bottoms' (blue whales) were avoided almost entirely, because they were Way Too Big and Way Too Fast and sank. And 'finbacks' (fin whales) as well, because they were too fast and sank. Many a logbook complained about seeing nothing but 'humpbacks, mussel diggers, sulphur bottoms, and finbacks' and often didn't bother them much. Whalers only lowered for these whales when things were particularly desperate, and they usually ended up regretting it. Here's Mr. Stetson from the bark Arab, 1855, talking about a situation when they fastened to a mystery whale that escaped. He shared his thoughts on what it may have been based on its behavior:

‘[…] he gave the whale chase, went on and got fast to him immediately without any difficulty, but as soon as the whale was struck off he started like an affrighted race horse, and although he did not sound, yet he went so fast that they could not hold on to the line at all and the whale accordingly took the whole tubfull nearly as fast as it could run out of the boat, the boat in the meantime going like a locomotive engine. The 2nd mate allowed the whale to take the line until it became very evident that he could not prevented from taking the whole of it if they held on, and accordingly just before the end was reached he cut the line saying he could save enough for a “short warp” about four fathoms. Of all the traveling that I ever saw whales do, this I think was beaten only by the finback that we shot on Kodiak the day before leaving, and that fellow I think traveled at the extreme height of a whale’s speed. What manner of whale this was that the second mate struck was a subject of some controversy, as the transaction passed so quickly that no one hardly obtained a good sight of him: by some he was pronounced a sulphur bottom and by others a humpback, but the general opinion was that he was a sulphur bottom. Whatever species he belonged to he was certainly a racer of the first class.”

Either way, a whale is a huge animal regardless of species. It was an absolutely brutal endeavor--there was no way to kill an animal of that size quickly or cleanly. And the ones who killed it (which would often take hours) would then have to row those dozens of tons of deadweight back to the ship that was often miles off (which would also often take hours).

On a successful voyage, a ship might take 40 whales over the trip, but there were many voyages that didn't kill that many. Regardless, with hundreds of voyages every year, those numbers added up to the point that those whale populations are still in recovery today. But it can't all be attributed to 19th century whalers--there's 20th-21st century commercial whaling, boat strikes, fishing line, fracking, chemical and plastic and noise pollution, etc. that continue to harm those populations today. And there are also folks working to heal both old and continuing harm so...that's what's important.

[videogamewhales]

[ID: An image of a long-finned pilot whale from Petz Dolphinz Encounters. End ID.]

Long-finned pilot whale from Petz Dolphinz Encounters (2009)