Communicating with whales through AI? Introduction The increasing availability of artificial intelligence (AI) may also have repercussions on the way conservation is applied in the future. Of particular interest in this regard is the way different whale species communicate with each other. Already in the 1960s, Roger Payne was fundamental in catalysing the ‘Save the …
No vote on the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary at the International Whaling Commission Introduction The establishment of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary (SAWS) was once again an agenda item for the International Whaling Commission (IWC) during its 68th meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia. This time, it was the governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay aiming to …
A small, two-minute survey on whales and whaling For the purposes of a chapter on the cultural role of whales, we are starting a small, two-minute survey on whales and whaling. The chapter will be included in the book Japan's Withdrawal from International Whaling Regulation: Implications for Global Environmental Diplomacy, edited by Dr Nikolas Sellheim …
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Fathoms. The unit by which depth is measured. 1 fathom = 1,82m = 6 feet. The title of the first book by Australian writer Rebecca Giggs immediately implies a depth of content, a deep-dive into the world in the whale - a book to better understand the order of cetaceans maybe? One might expect a …
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This review was originally published in Polar Record on 2 April 2019 (here). Whales are indeed fascinating animals. Their gigantic size, their cultural and social characteristics, their being mammals living in a marine habitat all make whales and their benign nature “almost a human dream of alien life: approachable, sophisticated and inscrutable” (p. 26). Over …
Introduction The Southern Resident killer whale (Orcinus orca) is the smallest of four resident, extant, orca populations in the North Pacific. It can be found in the Salish Sea, south of Vancouver Island, crossing the border between the United States and Canada. Due to lethal and live takes in the 1960s, the population dropped to …
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