Prayer

 

- Varuna? Who´s Varuna again?

Oh, Varuna, you are the lord of the orcas just as you ride the sea-monster Makara. Please stop your magnificent creatures from attacking our shipping off the coast of Tarshish. Direct your most loyal servants to sink Hind ships instead, in retaliation for PM Modi´s geopolitical alliance with Cathay and Scythia, Modi, the puranic smarta heretic who blasphemes the Indo-European fire sacrifice in Your honor. Oh Lord Varuna, master of the night-sky and the vast waters, hear the plea of your simple servant. Om shanti shanti shanti!   

The kraken wakes

 

Or maybe it never went back to sleep. Is this the new normal now?

Orcas are attacking boats in Europe again

Well, actually

 

AI´s fantasy picture of a basking shark 

"Sveriges hav - Nordsjöns giganter" is a somewhat peculiar nature documentary, probably German in provenance, but I haven´t been able to locate the original version. The Swedish title means "The Seas of Sweden - Giants of the North Sea".

Ahem, the North Sea is *not* Swedish...

Indeed, most of the docu seems to be taped on or around the Shetland Islands, which are (of course) British?! Not sure who came up with the idea to call this a "Swedish" documentary. Some old Viking romantic? Dude!

But sure, if you like dramatic vistas, this might be for you. Killer whales, basking sharks, grey seals, sea otters, dolphins, skuas attacking and eating puffins, the invasive red king crab...you get the picture. Shetland sure looks pretty dangerous, LOL. 

  

Throw it back into the sea

 

No rare whales were harmed
when generating this picture

A dead specimen of a rarely seen whale has washed ashore a beach in New Zealand. Best line from the BBC´s news article: "New Zealand's Māori people regard whales as a sacred treasure, and DOC said local Maori communities would take part in deciding the whale's fate."

Ahem, are these the same Maori who exterminated the New Zealand charismatic mega-fauna and genocided the Chatham Islanders? Not sure why they should have any say in the matter, but if you insist...

I hope the Maori tell the scientists to throw the whale carcass back into the sea. I mean, the tears from the cryptozoology nerds on Reddit would be *epic*, LOL. 

World´s rarest whale species washes up on NZ beach

 

The land of desolation

 

So I just watched the nature documentary "Wild Ireland: Kingdom of Stone", about the apparently world famous karst landscape between County Clare and County Galway known as the Burren. I admit I never heard about it before! Or maybe I did, since parts of this docu reminds me of - surprise - other documentaries about western Ireland.

Animals shown include the pine marten, Daubenton´s bat, whooper swans and the butterfly known as the marsh fritillary. In the Atlantic Ocean we also find the finback whale (the world´s second largest animal) and the basking shark (the world´s second largest fish). The basking sharks occasionally gather in one place and swim in a large circle, nobody really knows why. But yes, it does look majestic.

The Burren also has an interesting human history. Here we find Neolithic grave monuments, abandoned churches and monasteries, and a mysterious tower once inhabited by none other than W B Yeats (who apparently saw whooper swans as near-divine). Indeed, the landscape is man-made in the sense that Neolithic farmers cut down all the trees, presumably to give room for agriculture and cattle. 

"The Kingdom of Stone" has a romantic (or Romantic) undertone, and frequently shows ravens (?) flying across the bizarre landscape of karst and ruins. Ahem, Ireland is a modern, globalized territory these days...

Still, could be interesting on a boring Wednesday evening. 

Pygmy cryptids

 

OK, another one. There is apparently a "pygmy" subspecies of the blue whale, which "only" reaches 24 meters in length. LOL. So apparently some kind of early warning system á la Dr Strangelove detected two previously unknown populations of said pygmies in the Indian Ocean, one around the ill-reputed Chagos Archipelago, the other in the vicinity of Oman. 

I admit this little story made me somewhat more optimistic about the prospects of cryptozoology...

Nuclear bomb detectors uncover secret population of blue whales hiding in the Indian Ocean

Dark Brandon´s whale

 

Credit: National Park Service

The article is from 2022. So did the Joe Biden administration take any action or not? Maybe the Don should ask Kamala about it during the next debate! That would be the ultimate whale of a tale...

Newfound whale species found in US waters may already be on the brink of extinction

The alien whale

Credit: Jolene Bertoldi

So it wasn´t aliens, but baleen whales. A population of Bryde´s whales, to be more exact. But then, cetaceans are kind of "alien" anyhow, so maybe it doesn´t really change much... 

Mysterious sound from the Mariana Trench has finally been explained

 

RIP Hvaldimir

 

Credit: Ein Dahmer

Norway´s most well known whale is confirmed dead. RIP Hvaldimir.

In the land of Hvaldimir 

Cthulhu´s spawn

 

THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR TACTICS!!!

Infamous boat-sinking orcas are baffling scientists 

The body found

 

It´s actually quite funny that the media creates a panic (or is it a silly season) everytime some carcass of a sea animal washes ashore. The term "globster" for seemingly mysterious carcasses was apparently coined by notorious sensationalist Ivan T Sanderson. I assumed it was Charles Hoy Fort (who was definitely on the same wave length, LOL). 

This week, the unidentified fishy object is a "mermaid globster" (no less) from Papua New Guinea. Or strictly speaking the small Simberi Island a bit north of the PNG mainland. The experts are *baffled*, baffled I say, except of course they really aren´t, with guesses ranging from a whale of a tale to the pudgy dugong, but alas, nobody guessed a plump mermaid on a suicide mission.

The natives of the volcanic island, who presumably have better things to do, didn´t take any DNA samples and promptly buried the rottening mass of ectoplasm at an undisclosed location. Well, at least the media spared us the details!

So it seems we have to wait a few months until the next globster comes onland, hopefully with its monstrous mer-squid-megalodon DNA intact...  

Mermaid globster found in New Guinea

Life on the edge...or just another Tuesday?

 

"Wild Scandinavia: Life on the Edge" is the first part of a three-part BBC nature documentary about...wait for it...Scandinavian wildlife. It deals with the Scandinavian coasts and features the Stockholm Archipelago, the sand dunes of Jutland, Norwegian fjords and the Arctic coast. 

Perhaps good if you never seen any Scandinavian animals before, but personally, I recognized most of the species shown: the grey seal, the white-tailed eagle, killer whales, sea otters, puffins and so on. But sure, the various marine invertebrates were suitably disgusting. I don´t think I want to swim in Norwegian territorial waters! 

In a later episode, they cheat and take the viewer to Iceland and Svalbard, which are not part of Scandinavia as the term is usually understood in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 

Could be of some interest on a boring February evening. As long as you know that the wildlife shown is far, far away... 

The minds of killer whales

Credit: Henk Caspers/Naturalis Biodiversity Center

A highly disturbing look at the ocean´s smartest animal: the killer whale a.k.a. orca. They seem to be using their intelligence to really weird ends, such as killing substantially larger blue whales only to feast on their tongues, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot. Or killing sharks (including whale sharks) with the sole purpose of extracting their livers?! 

But sure, I suppose the rest of the dead whales or sharks become food for other scavengers. And the reason the orca´s behavior looks disturbing to us, is presumably that *we* are the only animal who has the right to help itself to delikatessen. Or so we imagined. 

Other orca behaviors are too bizarre to mention here. 

It´s not clear whether the orcas are *really* getting smarter, but they are certainly changing their behaviors through social learning. For instance, the population off the Iberian coast that rams and sinks boats. New hunting techniques could have been developed in response to changes in the fauna due to climate change.

Still, it seems humans may yet have the last word. Off the coast of Washington State, overfishing has led to the dissolution of orca groups and hence their social bonds, as individual orcas strike out on their own in desperate search for food. But this also makes it more difficult to learn and pass on new hunting techniques. 

Perhaps the killer whales aren´t really getting smarter at all. They are getting dumber! Something tells me many Homo wouldn´t mind... 

Are orcas getting smarter?

Smash the patronymy

 

I must have heard about Lyall Watson before, since I recognize the title of his apparently pro-paranormal book "Supernature: The natural history of the supernatural", but I knew next to nothing else about the man. Until now. This South African writer had degrees in a wide variety of fields, including biology and anthropology, and even commented on and wrote about sumo wrestling! He also coined the phrase "the hundreth monkey effect".  

The book reviewed in the link below is titled "Whales of the World" (1981) and was intended as a field guide to these particular sea mammals. However, it seems that Watson was very heterodox in his approach to whale evolution, systematics and naming conventions. His illustrator Tom Ritchie may also have taken some liberties. To take just one example of Watson´s unusual takes, he believed that baleen whales and toothed wales are really two different groups with separate evolutionary ancestries.

"Whales of the World" became something of a hit among the reading public, but the scientific community rejected it. The reviewer, Darren Naish, points out that the 1970´s were an exciting time when entrenched orthodoxies were often challenged, so in that sense Watson´s work was typical of the period. 

Can we please go back to such times?  

Whales of the World

Oh no, Juan Posadas was right

OMG, it´s true! Strangest news item from the Russo-Ukrainian war so far. 

Trained Russian Navy Dolphins are Protecting Black Sea Naval Base

In the land of Hvaldimir

 

Hvaldimir the beluga whale
(credit: Ein Dahmer)

"Ut i naturen" is a Norwegian TV series featuring Kari Toft. I recently watched the 2019 season on Swedish TV. I admit I did it to get away from the distressing news about the war in Ukraine. The series is based on footage of nature and animals sent in by the viewers. Kari Toft then selects the best footage, and often travels to the location in Norway where it was made, which often leads to even more footage of familiar animals in slightly crazy situations. 

In  2019, the big star was (surprise) Hvaldimir, the "Russian spy whale", a mysterious beluga whale found on Norwegian territorial waters wearing a man-made harness with a small camera attached. Many suspected that the whale was used by the Russian navy to spy on the Norwegians, hence the funny nickname Hvaldimir (a pun on Vladimir Putin and the Norwegian word for whale, "hval"). However, since the harness was clearly marked "Equipment St. Petersburg" (Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia), the theory of a secret spy whale seems far-fetched. The most likely origin of the poor creature was a location at the Kola Peninsula where the whale had been used as a therapy animal for children (i.e. an emotional support animal). Hvaldimir was unusually tame, and tourists from all over Norway traveled to Hammerfest, where the whale lived in the harbour area. Even the prime minister paid him a visit! 

"Ut i naturen" contains much other interesting footage, too. There is the family that lives with two wild otters which have gotten used to humans (including human children), the lumberjack who is almost harassed by flocks of hungry moose while felling trees in the forest, the albino roe deer, foxes freely interacting with people in a dog-like manner, and a lot of white-tailed eagles (sea eagles). The young eagles, which haven´t yet learned how to fly properly, play dead in their nests if approached by humans. Kari Toft can literally touch one of the eagles without the large birds reacting! Weirdly, the adults (which are even larger) don´t try to defend their nests against the intruders. Brown bears munching on a dead moose and whooper swans on the search for blueberries in the forest are other highlights. One episode is almost entirely about hedgehogs.

Most of this production is slow-paced, but a segment titled "Frykt" (fear) is anything but. Kari´s crazy associate Ludvig Lökholm Lewin is a recurring character in the series, and in every episode voluntarily gets stung or otherwise attacked by some dangerous animal, just to see what´s shaking. A fish called greater weever stings him so badly that he essentially screams like a maniac for one hour straight! Other encounters are with European hornets (a very large wasp), stinging jellyfish or leeches. It doesn´t look scripted...

While "Ut i naturen" is interesting, I admit that I don´t really like the human-animal interaction thing. Foxes are *not* dogs, otters are not cats, and moose showing up at your doorstep or licking at your car doesn´t strike me as behaving entirely naturally. Wildlife can carry all kinds of disease, and is better left alone. But sure, the fear factor was real. 

With that little remark, I close this review.  

Moby-Dick has never been so angry

"In the Heart of the Sea" from 2015 is a film inspired by Herman Melville´s famous novel "Moby-Dick" and the events that supposedly inspired *that* work, the sinking of the American whaling ship "Essex" in 1820. I don´t deny that the film is well done, with an almost authentic early 19th century "feel", but it nevertheless comes across as boring and old fashioned. Perhaps for that very reason? I mean, there isn´t really much you can do with a story about an angry whale stalking a whaling ship! Especially not if the chemistry between the main non-whale protagonists is almost entirely lacking...

The plot revolves around the whaleship "Essex" and its strange odyssey around the world. Both the Atlantic and the Pacific turn out to be almost empty of whales (in 1820?), but the greedy Yanks from Nantucket finally get a pro tip from a Spanish captain which takes them to a mysterious part of the Pacific, the Offshore Grounds, where sperm whales are super-abundant. Unfortunately for our brave provider-males, one of the cachalots yearns for eternal fame through inclusion in an American Renaissance novel, and promptly sinks the "Essex" without further ado. Yes, this is the famous "white whale" (although it´s not really white in the film). The surviving crew descends into madness, despair and cannibalism, and soon realize that Moby-Dick is stalking them, still bent on avenging the Offshore Grounds massacre.  

Interestingly, the zenith of the combat ends with first mate Owen Chase *not* throwing his harpoon at the dangerous beast, at which point it quietly disappears into the deep blue ocean, never to be seen again. Cetaceans, it seems, have a sense of fair play! Years later, budding author Melville talks to one of the survivors of the ill fated journey and learns that the Nantucket whaling industry families covered up most of the story for reasons of profit. We also learn that crude oil has been discovered in Pennsylvania, heralding the decline of the whaling industry...

"In the Heart of the Sea" could work as matinée film on a rainy afternoon, but it will probably never take the pride of place of Ishmael and Ahab.

Back to Galapagos

 

"Oceans" is the fourth part of the five-part documentary "A Perfect Planet" from the BBC. Or rather ocean, since strictly speaking there really is just one large sea on planet Earth. As usual, we get to see spectacular footage of more or less bizarre creatures. There is the flightless cormorant on the Galapagos Islands (it´s an excellent swimmer and diver) and the sea iguanas, large lizards which seek their food in the oceans...but die of cold unless they swim back to shore within 30 minutes. When really hungry, they simply attack the nests of the cormorants, eating the algae the nest are made of! 

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the Pacific, surgeon fish gather to release their eggs and sperm into the water to be carried away by the streams from any threatening predators...except the giant manta rays, which gather at the same place at exactly the same time, gobbling up substantial amounts of the nutritious mix! Another pelagic glutton is Bryde´s whale, which we see in action somewhere off the Thai coast. "A Perfect Planet: Oceans" also features sharks, sting rays, bony fish of all kinds, and a very bizarre octopus (or is it a squid?). 

The episode ends with another look at how "A Perfect Planet" was made, concentrating on the first part of the series, "Volcano". The team, led by Richard Wollocombe, descend into the crater of the dormant volcano at Fernandina, one of the Galapagos Islands. More people have been in space than down this particular crater, and I can´t say I blame Buzz Aldrin for choosing the former option! The place looks like a cross between Mordor and Dante´s Inferno, with huge rocks constantly falling down the steep slopes. At the bottom of the crater is a mysterious blue-green lake. But why on earth does anyone want to film *there*, and did they ever get an insurance, and if so, how much did it cost? If you´ve seen "Volcano", you know the answer: female land iguanas regularly descend into the crater, despite all the dangers, to lay their eggs in the warm ash at the bottom. How on earth evolution took *this* course is never explained, and perhaps we don´t even want to know...

The next and last episode of this stunning series is, perhaps ominously, entitled "Humans". Let me guess. We get to see a lot of house crows, house sparrows and cockroaches? A perfect planet indeed! :D 

Is this beluga whale a Russian spy?

Strangest news item this month... Will Mueller probe?

Birds in the monastery

“Ireland's Wild Coast” is a documentary directed by Cepa Giblin and John Murray. The latter is most known for his award-winning “Broken Tail” about Indian tigers. After the inevitable stint in the tropics, Murray returned to his native Ireland and help direct two documentaries about its stunning nature and wildlife, the first being “Ireland's Wild River” about the Shannon.

In “Ireland's Wild Coast”, we are introduced to the Irish Atlantic coast, from Skellig Michael in the southwest to County Donegal in the northwest. Animals featured include seals, whales, basking sharks, blue sharks, outcast dolphins (sic), seemingly feral sheep and a wide variety of birds. At Skellig Michael, Manx shearwaters nest in an abandoned medieval monastery. Donegal turns out to be the winter quarters of whooper swans from Iceland - perhaps the only migratory bird spending the winter in Ireland!

I admit that I found “Ireland's Wild Coast” fascinating. The underlying theme of this production is wildlife taking over after humans leaving. In real life, of course, it's the other way around. Murray himself pointed out when interviewed by Swedish television that Ireland, previously regarded as the end of the world, has become one of its most exploited spots…

Five stars. For the documentary, that is.