The Whale didn't know any better, she just knew it was time to give birth to her beautiful baby calf. She was in the warm waters off the coast of Florida during her usual migration and it happened.. Incredibly, NOAA was there to take photos of this amazing event as it happened.
So what's the big deal? Well, this is only the second time it's been observed and it happened while a debate rages on about the building a Naval training range right off the coast where this incredible birth took place.
Scientists surveying the area near a planned Navy training range said Tuesday they witnessed an endangered right whale giving birth off the Northeast Florida coast.
The discovery was made within several miles of the rectangular patch of sea the Navy selected last year for construction of an undersea warfare range. The exact distance wasn't clear, but appeared to be somewhere near 10 miles.
"It was near the box ... [but] drawing a line in the ocean is a difficult thing," said William McLellan, a University of North Carolina-Wilmington research associate overseeing Navy-financed survey work done with Duke University.
The Florida-Georgia coast is the only known calving ground for right whales, which gather each winter after traveling from New England and Canada.
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So you can see why this birth has thrown a huge wrench into things. The planned Naval training area would cover 58 miles of sea off the coast East of Jacksonville...
The Navy plans to install hundreds of devices on the ocean floor that can track vessels during combat training involving ships, submarines, helicopters and planes. Trainers located onshore would use the devices to give crews nearly immediate analysis and feedback on their performance, which advocates of the range say would help crews quickly learn from their mistakes.
That's bound to be productive to the whales calving area. And all of this would include year round Sonar activity by the Navy, which has already been proven to be disruptive to whales and dolphins ability to communicate and find food and even cause death. By the way, you can send a message to the Obama administration to push for more review.
The Right Whale is not just endangered, but extremely endangered and to willfully ignore our responsibility to protect these whales that come to our coasts to reproduce is beyond inexplicable and irresponsible.
And to further make my point there's a story I want to share about dolphins protecting a whale caught in some netting. Humpback whale and its calf seen in distress off Treasure Coast.
Capt. Patrick Price of Daymaker charters out of Four Fish Marina in Jensen Beach and his clients saw an unusual site while fishing offshore Friday morning. They saw an estimated 10-foot long mako shark leaping out of the water.
Upon closer inspection, as they moved closer to try to catch the mako, they saw a humpback whale calf and an adult humpback, and a hammerhead shark below it. Then the adult whale began greyhounding away while Price maneuvered his 40-foot fishing boat to keep the shark away from the young whale. Price said the adult whale was in obvious distress.
Captain Patrick Price "It has polypropylene rope wrapped around its head and pectoral fin and its attached to an anchor," said Price at 2:30 p.m. Friday while still on the water. "The whale was jumping and we could see the line all wrapped around it."
Price said at one point, he and his clients saw and heard the large whale breach - as it did many times - and from the distance they saw a pod of about 100 dolphins (mammals, that is) approach them. The dolphins seemed to encircle the whale, Price said, to buffer the whale from his own boat and the sharks that were in the area. The dolphins escorted the whale for over an hour until Price saw another large splash on the horizon a mile to the south and the whole pod of dolphins took off in that direction.
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Yes, these dolphins were trying to help a fellow mammal save her and her calf and keep her safe from the circling sharks. It's amazing there wasn't more on this part of the story. But we are affecting Whales in the ocean. Just today there is a story of a Fin whale being hit by a ship and washing up on the coast of Delaware.
"She did have some broken fragments in her skull," said Suzanne Thurman, executive director of the Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute. "She was most likely hit by a large vessel."
Whaling is not the only threat to whales as the IWC reconsiders lifting the ban on whaling and it's why we should support Senator John Kerry's Bill to protect whales.
US Senator John Kerry on Monday introduced a bill to protect whales, sending a message as nations debate a compromise that critics say would end a moratorium on commerical whaling.
Kerry's bill, which is similar to a bill before the House of Representatives, would affirm US support for a 1986 ban by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on commercial whaling.
It would also call for research on whale habitats and look for ways to end harm and harassment of the ocean giants.
"Thousands of whales die each year from commercial whaling, ship strikes, and habitat disruption," said Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has led legislation against global warming.
"We should be leading the effort to protect them," said Kerry, the Democratic Party's unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004.
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Yes, we should be leading the effort, thank you Senator Kerry. As my diary shows, whales have a lot more to worry about than whaling alone. And all these incidents happened within days of each other.