Studying the sperm whale skulls

Skull of sperm whale from 2014 Yorke Peninsula mass stranding stripped and studied - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

"The beaching of a pod of sperm whales in 2014 has given Adelaide-based researchers a rare opportunity to study the ocean mammals.

Scientists at the South Australian Museum have removed one of the whale's skulls from a macerating vat, where it has spent the past 12 months.

After drying and cleaning, the skull will join the rest of the skeleton, which the museum hopes to put on public display.

The whale was one of seven that beached themselves on Yorke Peninsula in 2014, but museum staff say their research will not be able to explain why the pod became stranded.

David Stemmer, the collection manager of mammals at the South Australian Museum, oversaw the skull retrieval.

"It's a fairly big skull, it weighs probably around half a tonne," Mr Stemmer said.

"It needs heavy equipment to get out of the tank, so we've asked our neighbours from SA Water to bring the crane truck and sit the whale up for the crane to then lift out of the vat and onto a trolley that I've prepared."

Extricating the skull from the vat, where water and bacteria slowly rotted away its flesh, was a delicate operation.

'via Blog this'

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An increase in the number of irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong

Some good news this week about the Irrawaddy dolphins of the Mekong River. A joint report from the Cambodian government and the World Wildlife Foundation tells how, following decades of seemingly irreversible decline, the population is increasing. They report the number of dolphins in the region has risen from 80 to 92 in the past two years—the first increase since scientists began keeping records more than twenty years ago. The first official census in 1997 estimated that there were 200 Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong, a figure that fell steadily due to bycatch and habitat loss. By 2015, only 80 dolphins remained. The recent census showed that more dolphins are surviving into adulthood, and there’s been a significant drop in overall deaths. Nine calves were born this year, raising the number of dolphins born in the past three years to 32. Seng Teak, Country Director of WWF Cambodia, said the census had positive implications for the Greater Mekong region, wher...

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There have only been eight blue whale sightings in southeast Tasmanian waters in the last six years so the Marine Conservation Program was naturally a little bit excited this week.

The blue whale in the red sea

Huge Blue Whale Sighted in the Red Sea for the First Time | Smart News | Smithsonian : "On Tuesday morning, a fisherman off the coast of Eilat, Israel spotted something unexpected: a huge whale swimming along in the Red Sea. Experts were even more surprised to discover that the creature was a blue whale—marking the first time that the world’s largest mammal has been seen in the Red Sea, as Zafrir Rinat and Almog Ben Zikri report for Haaretz. Two days after it popped up in Israeli waters, Egypt’s environment ministry announced that the animal had also been sighted in the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba, according to Aham Online. The ministry revealed that the whale measures 24 meters (nearly 80 feet) long, and belongs to a subspecies known as the pygmy blue whale. Monitoring teams in the South Sinai and the Red Sea have been deployed to track the whale’s movements." 'via Blog this'

Whales and other cetaceans

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