09-06-2024, 01:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-06-2024, 01:35 AM by Durian Fiend.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/scien...0Institute.
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]If you hit a paywall here's the gist of it. [/color] Sorry about the font crap. Don't know how to get rid of it.
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]"When Adam A. Pack, a marine mammal researcher at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, was photographing whales in Alaska’s Frederick Sound in July, he instantly recognized the flukes of an old friend.[/color]
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]Emphasis on old. The tail — mostly black, with a wash of white speckles near the edge — belongs to a whale named Old Timer. First spotted in 1972, Old Timer is now a male of at least 53 years, making him “the oldest known humpback whale in the world,” said Dr. Pack, who is also the co-founder and president of [color=var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891)]The Dolphin Institute[/color].[/color]
Earlier this year, Mr. Cheeseman, Dr. Pack and dozens of other researchers used Happywhale’s image recognition tool to estimate humpback whale abundance in the North Pacific from 2002 through 2021. Initially, the population boomed, climbing to about 33,500 whales in 2012.
But then it dropped sharply. This population decline coincided with the severe marine heat wave, when Dr. Pack last spotted Old Timer. It lasted from 2014 to 2016 and slashed the supply of fish and krill. “There’s a lot more we want to learn about the event, but it is quite clear: warmer waters mean food is less available overall, and what is available is more dispersed and deeper,” Mr. Cheeseman said in an email.
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]If you hit a paywall here's the gist of it. [/color] Sorry about the font crap. Don't know how to get rid of it.
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]"When Adam A. Pack, a marine mammal researcher at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, was photographing whales in Alaska’s Frederick Sound in July, he instantly recognized the flukes of an old friend.[/color]
[color=var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)]Emphasis on old. The tail — mostly black, with a wash of white speckles near the edge — belongs to a whale named Old Timer. First spotted in 1972, Old Timer is now a male of at least 53 years, making him “the oldest known humpback whale in the world,” said Dr. Pack, who is also the co-founder and president of [color=var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891)]The Dolphin Institute[/color].[/color]
Earlier this year, Mr. Cheeseman, Dr. Pack and dozens of other researchers used Happywhale’s image recognition tool to estimate humpback whale abundance in the North Pacific from 2002 through 2021. Initially, the population boomed, climbing to about 33,500 whales in 2012.
But then it dropped sharply. This population decline coincided with the severe marine heat wave, when Dr. Pack last spotted Old Timer. It lasted from 2014 to 2016 and slashed the supply of fish and krill. “There’s a lot more we want to learn about the event, but it is quite clear: warmer waters mean food is less available overall, and what is available is more dispersed and deeper,” Mr. Cheeseman said in an email.
The Hawaii humpback population was especially hard hit, falling by 34 percent from 2013 to 2021. Although there had been some sightings of Old Timer reported after 2015, Dr. Pack was excited to finally set eyes on the whale himself. That excitement soon gave way to curiosity: Why had Old Timer survived, when so many others had perished?.."