Entangled Humpback “Thanks” Rescuers

This article is a bit old, but it’s a favorite…

Daring rescue of whale off Farallones

Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged its rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter.”It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that we had helped it,” James Moskito, one of the rescue divers, said Tuesday.Sunday’s daring rescue was the first successful attempt on the West Coast to free an entangled humpback, said Shelbi Stoudt, stranding manager for the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County.The 45- to 50-foot female humpback, estimated to weigh 50 tons, was on the humpbacks’ usual migratory route between the Northern California coast and Baja California when it became entangled in the nylon ropes that link crab pots.

It was spotted by a crab fisherman at 8:30 a.m. Sunday in the open water east of the Farallones, about 18 miles off the coast of San Francisco.

Mick Menigoz of Novato, who organizes whale watching and shark diving expeditions on his boat the New Superfish, got a call for help Sunday morning, alerted the Marine Mammal Center and gathered a team of divers.

By 2:30 p.m., the rescuers had reached the whale and evaluated the situation. Team members realized the only way to save the endangered leviathan was to dive into the water and cut the ropes.

It was a very risky maneuver, Stoudt said, because the mere flip of a humpback’s massive tail can kill a man.

“I was the first diver in the water, and my heart sank when I saw all the lines wrapped around it,” said Moskito, a 40-year-old Pleasanton resident who works with “Great White Adventures,” a cage-diving outfit that contracts with Menigoz. “I really didn’t think we were going to be able to save it.”

Moskito said about 20 crab-pot ropes, which are 240 feet long with weights every 60 feet, were wrapped around the animal. Rope was wrapped at least four times around the tail, the back and the left front flipper, and there was a line in the whale’s mouth.

The crab pot lines were cinched so tight, Moskito said, that the rope was digging into the animal’s blubber and leaving visible cuts.

At least 12 crab traps, weighing 90 pounds each, hung off the whale, the divers said. The combined weight was pulling the whale downward, forcing it to struggle mightily to keep its blow- hole out of the water.

Moskito and three other divers spent about an hour cutting the ropes with a special curved knife. The whale floated passively in the water the whole time, he said, giving off a strange kind of vibration.

“When I was cutting the line going through the mouth, its eye was there winking at me, watching me,” Moskito said. “It was an epic moment of my life.”

When the whale realized it was free, it began swimming around in circles, according to the rescuers. Moskito said it swam to each diver, nuzzled him and then swam to the next one.

“I never felt threatened. It was an amazing, unbelievable experience,”Moskito said.

Humpback whales are known for their complex vocalizations that sound like singing and for their acrobatic breaching, an apparently playful activity in which they lift almost their entire bodies out of the water and splash down.

Before 1900, an estimated 15,000 humpbacks lived in the North Pacific, but the population was severely reduced by commercial whaling. In the 20th century, their numbers dwindled to fewer than 1,000. An international ban on commercial whaling was instituted in 1964, but humpbacks are still endangered. Between 5,000 and 7,500 humpbacks are left in the world’s oceans, and many of those survivors migrate through the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

Whale experts say it’s nice to think that the whale was thanking its rescuers, but nobody really knows what was on its mind.

“You hate to anthropomorphize too much, but the whale was doing little dives and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it,” Menigoz said. “I don’t know for sure what it was thinking, but it’s something that I will always remember. It was just too cool.”

Humpback whales hold a special place in the hearts of Bay Area residents ever since one that came to be known as Humphrey journeyed up the Sacramento River in 1985. The wayward creature swam into a slough in Rio Vista, attracting 10,000 people a day as whale experts tried desperately to turn it around. Humphrey went back to sea after 25 days of near-pandemonium and worldwide media attention.

In the fall of 1990, Humphrey turned up again inside the bay in shallow water near the Bayshore Freeway, finally beaching on mud flats near Double Rock, just off the Candlestick parking lot. He remained stuck for 25 hours, until volunteers, helped by a 41-foot Coast Guard boat, pulled him free and sent him back to the ocean. He has not been seen since.

Humpbacks like Humphrey do seem to relate to people more than other whales, according to Stoudt.

“You do hear reports of friendly humpbacks, whales approaching boaters, especially in Baja California,” Stoudt said, “but, for the most part, they don’t like to be interacted with.”

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Gorilla’s Mate V-V!

Wild Gorillas in ‘Face-to-Face’ Copulation

Caption: Taken by researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, this image is one of a series showing western gorillas mating ‘face-to-face’ in Mbeli Bai in the Republic of Congo. These images are the first capturing such behavior in wild gorillas.

Credit: © Thomas Breuer – WCS/MPI-EVA

Usage Restrictions: The image is for one-time usage only with this story. Please use with the photo credit.

Related news release: Study garners unique mating photos of wild gorillas

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Public release date: 12-Feb-2008
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Contact: John Delaney
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Wildlife Conservation Society

Study garners unique mating photos of wild gorillas

‘Face-to-face’ a first for endangered apes

Taken by researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, this image is one of a series showing western gorillas mating ‘face-to-face’ in Mbeli… Click here for more information.

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild. This is the first time that western gorillas have been observed and photographed mating in such a manner.

The photographs were part of a study conducted in a forest clearing in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo that appeared in a recent issue of The Gorilla Gazette.

“Understanding the behavior of our cousins the great apes sheds light on the evolution of behavioral traits in our own species and our ancestors,” said Thomas Breuer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and WCS and lead author of the study. “It is also interesting that this same adult female has been noted for innovative behaviors before.”

The western lowland gorilla is listed as Critically Endangered as a result of hunting by humans, habitat destruction, and health threats such as the Ebola virus.

The female gorilla in the photograph, nicknamed “Leah” by researchers, made history in 2005 when she was observed using tools – another never-before-seen behavior for her kind in the wild. Breuer and others witnessed Leah using a stick to test the depth of a pool of water before wading into it in Mbeli Bai, where researchers have been monitoring the gorilla population since 1995.

Researchers say that few primates mate in a face-to-face position, known technically as ventro-ventral copulation; most primate species copulate in what’s known as the dorso-ventral position, with both animals facing in the same direction. Besides humans, only bonobos have been known to frequently employ ventro-ventral mating positions. On a few occasions, mountain gorillas have been observed in ventro-ventral positions, but never photographed. Western gorillas in captivity have been known to mate face-to-face, but not in the wild, which makes this observation a noteworthy first.

“Our current knowledge of wild western gorillas is very limited, and this report provides information on various aspects of their sexual behavior,” added Breuer, whose study is funded by the Brevard Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Max Planck Society, Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, Toronto Zoo, Wildlife Conservation Society and Woodland Park Zoo. “We can’t say how common this manner of mating is, but it has never been observed with western gorillas in the forest. It is fascinating to see similarities between gorilla and human sexual behavior demonstrated by our observation.”

Scientists estimate that western gorillas have declined 60 percent in recent years due to habitat loss, illegal hunting, and Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which is the only organization working to protect all four gorilla sub-species (also including the Cross River Gorilla, the mountain gorilla, and the Grauer’s gorilla), has been studying gorillas and other wildlife in the Republic of Congo since the 1980s. In 1993, the Congolese Government, working in tandem with technical assistance from WCS, established Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.

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The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild lands. We do so through careful science, international conservation, education, and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together, these activities change individual attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in sustainable interaction on both a local and a global scale. The WCS is committed to this work because we believe it essential to the integrity of life on Earth.

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Conservation Cognitive Science

Please take a moment and examine your setting. Notice the things, perhaps on your wall or on your desk, or even the materials of your structure. Notice the environment that has been built by our fellow men and women, notice our interactions with these things, and the rules by which we interact with things. Imagine the tools that built the tools, that built these things; the departments through which each thing may have passed before arriving in your setting. Notice the expertise with which you use these things. The forces of humanity are strong and spectacular. Together, we have built a world that makes us intelligent, a culture that guides our interactions, and a consciousness that allows us to examine these forces.

For ten months I worked on an observational study of bonobos (Pan paniscus) at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I became immersed in their complex social interactions, in the ways they attended to one another and the ways they communicated with one another. These behaviors were so reminiscent of human behavior, it became a very difficult task to discern the two. But then, one day, as I sat on a friend’s sofa, I noticed the thing upon which I sat, and the television on which they played games with controllers on wires with buttons they knew how to push; and the music in the background. I noticed the structure in which I sat, the carpets on the floors, the windows on the walls, the sink where dishes were placed to be later put in the dish washing machine – and I saw the difference in these things. But I also saw a male coalition, a game of strategy and coordination, displays, and communication.

These things that make us human are the often very things that jade our decisions, to the extent that we forget the power of our consciousness. We often assume superiority without examining the truth of this arrogance. It infiltrates the manner in which we conduct our government affairs, and can be seen in much of science where the question became “how human are they?” rather than “what complexities are at hand?”

In the year 2008 and the years to follow; we have a global problem to address and a tremendous opportunity to change the consciousness with which we interact with our world. The awareness of global warming has already begun to make these changes. Words like “eco-friendly”, “recycle”, “fair trade”, “carbon footprint”, and “organic” have infiltrated our households and have sparked a change in people to become aware of their co-existent state.

I am a conservation cognitive scientist. I strongly believe in the power of knowledge, and that knowledge can lead to co-existence. I run observational studies on beluga whales at SeaWorld in San Diego because I believe in the power of these studies to teach us about the social complexity of this intelligent cetacean species. The belugas are a widespread circumpolar species whose livelihood is in endangered by the realities of new shipping routes, fishing grounds, and oil fields, that will become available as the polar ice cap continues to melt. I believe that if we act now to document the complexities of beluga societies, we can use that knowledge to help educate an increasingly receptive human audience and create a global consciousness that will help to change the way we interact with our world.