Blue whale numbers rising
450397
The blue whale, once on the verge of extinction, is making a comeback.
533131
Veterinarians tracking two whales lost in the Sacramento River swabbed samples from raised blotches on their skin Sunday as efforts to prod the mother and calf back to the ocean dragged into a third week.
118056
Visitors to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve were in for a treat this summer: A record number of humpback whales were sighted either in Glacier Bay or in waters just outside the stunning marine wilderness in southeast Alaska.
34281
GOLD RIVER, British Columbia - A "playful" killer whale who likes to frolic alongside fishermen has damaged three boats in separate incidents in recent weeks.    Luna, described by fishermen as a friendly 5-year-old whale, has made frequent contact with people and boats in waters off Vancouver Island, about 125 miles north of the U.S...
111339
By Roy Goh  KOTA KINABALU: A whale, about 20m in length, became a hubbub of attention when it was found stranded in shallow waters off Pulau Gaya near here yesterday morning.
759347
The number of endangered Steller sea lions counted between the Gulf of Alaska and the tip of the Aleutian Chain has increased again, according to new data released by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
443564
The blue whale, possibly the largest animal ever to live on Earth, is making a comeback, scientists say.
765672
Endangered giant pandas have boosted their numbers in the wild by almost half in just a few years thanks to enlarged habitat and improved ecosystems, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.
759286
When environmental protestors boarded a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean, images of the action quickly flashed on the world&#39;s TV sets, followed by photos from the Japanese ship after the protestors were taken into custody. Getting these images out is crucial if either side is to win the global PR battle, but doing so can be problematic when you&#39;re at sea, thousands of kilometers from the nearest cell phone network or broadband connection.To solve their problems, both sides take advantage of digital video and photo technology to get the footage, then look to the skies and tap into the global satellite communications network run by London-based Inmarsat. The company specializes in providing voice and data services to maritime vessels and other users at sea, or in remote areas that traditional telecommunications networks don&#39;t reach.On Tuesday, as the protestors approached the Japanese whaling vessel &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; a digital video camera was rolling onboard the small inflatable craft sent from the Sea Shepard Conservation Society&#39;s ship, &quot;Steve Irwin.&quot; The camera caught the moment when two of the conservationists jumped aboard, and within seconds the video was speeding back toward the Steve Irwin on the inflatable.Once back onboard, the video was fed into a Macbook Pro laptop and edited into a 13MB MPEG2 clip that was just 12 seconds long, said Jonny Vasic, a spokesman for the society.&quot;One of our big tools in these whale wars is these video and digital still cameras. They really help us expose the bad guys,&quot; said Vasic.The clip was then sent via satellite to the society&#39;s FTP server and made available to the world&#39;s media.The ship&#39;s satellite communications system is a $35,000 &quot;Sailor Fleet 77&quot; unit that was donated to the society last year by Australia&#39;s Bluetongue Brewery. It supports up to 256Kbps&#160;transmission, although actually getting that speed depends on several factors. In calm seas, a gyro-based mount keeps the antenna pointed at the satellite, but in heavy seas, maintaining a reliable signal can be a problem. Keeping the link gets increasingly difficult as the ship goes further south because the satellite appears very low on the horizon.&quot;It&#39;s about 90 percent reliable,&quot; said Vasic.Crew onboard the &quot;Steve Irwin&quot; are also using the satellite link to attempt to send e-mail to the Japanese ship, in addition to marine-band radio calls, in an attempt to secure the release of their two members, who remain aboard the &quot;Yushin Maru 2.&quot;The Institute of Cetacean Research, the Tokyo-based organization that operates the &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; declined to comment on the technology at its disposal, citing security reasons.&quot;I&#39;m sorry to say, you might be Greenpeace posing as a journalist,&quot; said Gabriel Gomez, a spokesman for the group in Tokyo, when contacted by telephone on Thursday.The systems employed by the Japanese group don&#39;t appear as sophisticated. Only a handful of still images from the ship have been released by the group to the media, and they are a relatively low VGA (640 pixels by 480 pixels) resolution. No video has been made available.The satellite communications technology being employed by the two ships is increasingly being used by media, governmental and relief organizations in remote areas. Earlier this month, Cable News Network (CNN) won a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its satellite news gathering system based on Inmarsat&#39;s BGAN broadband system. The BGAN system offers a standard IP (Internet Protocol) connection as fast as 492Kbps and is small enough that it can be built into a backpack.
768827
More than 100 whales and dolphins die in two separate beachings in islands off Tasmania in Australia.
131647
The blue whale, possibly the largest animal ever to live on Earth, is making a comeback, research shows.
212326
Southern right whales are coming under increased attacks from an unlikely predator: seagulls hungry for the mammals' skin and blubber.
500582
The Pacific gray whale population, thought by some experts to have rebounded fully from the ravages of whaling, actually is back to a mere fraction of historic levels, scientists said on Monday.
433800
The evolution of whales from four-legged land dwellers into streamlined swimmers has been traced in fossilised ears, Nature reports.
44483
Researchers think they have found the modern whaleâs closest evolutionary ancestor.
360166
By MARY PEMBERTON     ANCHORAGE, Alaska  -- North Pacific right whales may not be going extinct after all. Scientists have found twice as many right whales in the Bering Sea as previously spotted, giving them hope the rare whales are making a comeback...
723137
An extremely rare whale with a beak like a dolphin found dead on a Byron Bay beach has excited Australia&#39;s marine researchers.