Blue Whales. https://spazyedits.wordpress.com/
Gray Whales. https://thegraywhaleproject.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/what-to-learn-from-this/
Unstoppable Whaling Industry in Japan, https://cetaceanswhalesanddolphins.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/unstoppable-whaling-industry-in-japan/
Marine Mammals : How to safely interact with seals, dolphins and whales.https://blog.doc.govt.nz/2022/12/19/marine-mammals-how-to-safely-interact-with-seals-dolphins-and-whales/
Pueden las ballenas ayudar a frenar el calentamiento global?. https://stigmatis.wordpress.com/2022/12/28/pueden-las-ballenas-ayudar-a-frenar-el-calentamiento-global/
Increasing Efficiency of Video Surveys with AI. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/increasing-efficiency-video-surveys-artificial-intelligence
Marine Life Viewing Guidelines. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/marine-life-viewing-guidelines
Atlantic Shark Art Contest. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/event/atlantic-shark-art-contest
Scientific Evidence for Whale and Dolphins Rights. WDC.https://us.whales.org/whale-culture/scientific-evidence-for-whale-and-dolphin-rights/
MONACHUS MONACHUS
La foca monaca mediterranea (Monachus monachus Hermann, 1779) è un mammifero pinnipede della famiglia delle foche. È una specie minacciata di estinzione, di cui sopravvivono in natura meno di 700 esemplari.
https://www.wikiwand.com/it/Monachus_monachus
The Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) is a monk seal belonging to the family Phocidae. As of 2015, it is estimated that fewer than 700 individuals survive in three or four isolated subpopulations in the Mediterranean, (especially) in the Aegean Sea, the archipelago of Madeira and the Cabo Blanco area in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean. It is believed to be the world’s rarest pinniped species. This is the only species in the genus Monachus. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mediterranean_monk_seal
About the Species
The Mediterranean monk seal is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world and one of only a few pinniped species to reside in tropical and subtropical waters. Currently, only 600 to 700 individuals remain. Major threats to the Mediterranean monk seal include displacement and habitat deterioration, deliberate killing by humans, and fisheries bycatch and entanglement. The Mediterranean monk seal is found in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Northwest Africa. The Mediterranean monk seal is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/mediterranean-monk-seal
In 2022 Sea Shepherd has launched a unique campaign to protect the endangered Mediterranean Monk Seal, or Monachus Monachus, working simultaneously in Greece and Italy to protect these seals and their natural habitat. Almost half of all Mediterranean Monk Seals live in Greek waters, inhabiting the National Marine Park of Alonissos in the Northern Sporades, where Sea Shepherd Greece is patrolling with the M/Y Emanuel Bronner.
In Italy’s Arcipelago Toscano National Park, Sea Shepherd Italy is patrolling with the M/Y Sea Eagle to stop octopus poaching in the area, an important food source for Monk Seals currently being decimated by illegal fishing traps.
https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/our-campaigns/monachus/
Are Mediterranean Monk Seals, Monachus monachus, Being Left to Save Themselves from Extinction?.
Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus), amongst the most endangered marine mammals, are showing localised signs of recovery warranting their recent down-listing, from Critically Endangered to Endangered, on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
This, however, cannot be taken as a reason for complacency, as the species’ condition is still very critical, having been extirpated from most of its historical range. Monk seals within the Mediterranean, a ‘unit to conserve’ separate from Atlantic conspecifics, were once widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean Sea, with their range also extending into the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.
Today breeding nuclei persist only in the northeastern portion of the region, in Greek, Turkish and Cypriot waters. The main reasons for their decline include deliberate killing and human encroachment of their critical habitat. Past conservation efforts have mostly failed due to the inability of implementing institutional commitments, lack of coordination and continuity of efforts and insufficient consideration of the socioeconomic implications of conserving monk seals.
Yet the small reversal of the species’ decline that has been observed in Greece may have resulted from conservation efforts by civil society, combined with ongoing societal change within the local communities coexisting with the seals. The inaccessibility of large portions of monk seal habitat in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea may also have contributed, by offering to the monk seals a refuge from persecution and encroachment.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27770990/
Further Reading
https://monachus-guardian.org/factfiles/medit01.htm Dedicated to Monk Seals and their Threatened Habitats.
First Description of the Underwater Sounds in the Mediterranean Monk Seal Monachus monachus in Greece: Towards Establishing a Vocal Repertoire. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/6/1048
The Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus: status, biology, threats, and conservation priorities. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mam.12053
Mediterranean Monk Seals, Monachus monachus. https://www.marinebio.org/species/mediterranean-monk-seals/monachus-monachus/
Mediterranean Monk Seal . “…monk seals are beginning to appear in habitats and places where they had not been seen for decades. In the last several years, small numbers monk seals have been seen in Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy, Sardinia, Syria, Spain, and Libya, and breeding has been documented in some of these countries…”
https://www.mmc.gov/priority-topics/species-of-concern/mediterranean-monk-seal/
Mediterranean Monk Seal Monachus monachus. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/41716-Monachus-monachus
In italiano :
Il vademecum del WWF
La foca monaca fa capolino tra le acque del Mediterraneo italiano: cosa fare quando la si incontra
di Giorgia Bollati 24 lug 2023. https://www.corriere.it/pianeta2030/23_luglio_24/foca-monaca-fa-capolino-le-acque-mediterraneo-italiano-cosa-fare-quando-si-incontra-657be4d4-29fb-11ee-84ae-fdab1efa7b6b.shtml
https://marevivo.it/approfondimenti/la-foca-monaca/
https://marevivo.it/approfondimenti/la-foca-monaca/
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.220158
Humpback whale song revolutions continue to spread from the central into the eastern South Pacific.
https://mresbec.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/sounds-of-the-ocean-how-do-whales-learn-their-songs/
What does the future hold?
Many questions remain regarding humpback whale song and cultural behaviour in cetaceans. However, studies like this demonstrate that they truly are cultural beings and that they learn from one another in a very similar way to humans. Perhaps one day we will even discover what they are saying. But for the time being, one thing is for sure- cetaceans are facing ever increasing pressure from anthropogenic climate change leading to warming of the oceans.
This could threaten their very existence; however, some scientists suggest that the cultural nature of these species may increase their ability to adapt to these pressures. An increase in our understanding of how culture affects this ability could help conservation efforts2. This is therefore a very important area of research if we are to successfully protect these species in the future!
https://flyingfishsail.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/whale-songs/
El ruido antropogénico, o la contaminación acústica del mar. Por (*) Carol Portabella (FPA2).
https://efeverde.com/blog-creadoresdeopinion-dia-oceanos-fpa2-monaco-ruido-antropogenico-o-la-contaminacion-acustica-del-mar-por-carol-portabella/
The complexity and aural beauty of whale and dolphin songs is studied by marine biologists around the world, composed of a variety of sounds and meanings that have made many researchers theorize that whales have a language with a particular grammar and hierarchical structure in a certain way similar to human syntax. Perhaps a language of frequencies that resonate through the vault of the sea as mystarious and angelic songs that keep the planetary secrets.
Beyond the semantic field of these songs, making a bridge of mathematical synesthesia between sound and image, we can appreciate that within its sound language is the fractal language that permeates the universe.
If we can see the galactic spiral in the Fibonacci sequence, in fingerprints, in weather systems or in a snail, it is also possible to see in the singing of whales and dolphins part of this formal code that unifies all things in the universe under geometric correspondence. It would not be exaggerated to say that within the frequencies emitted by cetaceans there are mandalas, mountains, galaxies and elements still imperceptible that reflect the underlying harmony in matter, the ubiquitous code, swimming in the sound.
The images gathered here have been generated by engineer Mark Fischer, using a mathematical transformation of sound. Fischer worked for the U.S. Navy by creating sonar software for military use but changed his profession – hapily – after following epiphastically to a group of blue whales for a work project.
This engineer realized that the standard method of interpreting whale songs using frequency spectrograms grouped over time did not provide an accurate representation of the intricate variety of whale songs, so he went to a field of mathematics known as “sound transformations”.
See also : https://mymodernmet.com/mark-fischer-aguasonic-acoustics/ Mark Fisher found his solution in the mathematical theory of wavelets,which he applied to sounds from different frequencies, translating them into color-coded visual forms. He calls the result “the shape of the sound”.
Aquasonic Acoustics is a project by 51-year-old creative computer engineer Mark Fischer that takes the sound waves from animals and transforms them into a brilliant array of colors and patterns. Essentially, the series of produced mandalas configure what Fischer refers to as “the shape of sound.” He adds, “It’s a kind of photography to me, with mathematics as the lens and the computer as the camera.”
Each hypnotic creation explores a visual sense of something that is meant to be an auditory experience. Fischer captures the pulsating rhythms of crickets chirping, birds squawking, and dolphins singing with high quality audio recording equipment and adds color to the renderings with imaging software. The results are a vibrant display of geometric and floral patterns, like looking through a kaleidoscope.
Though he is partial to the complex wavelets created by whales and dolphins, ultimately, there is no animal–avian, aquatic, or land dwelling–that Fischer hasn’t shown an interest in. In fact, he’s contemplating expanding his series to include man-made ships, which contribute a great amount of noise pollution in the world.
https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2022/10/11/ballenas-varadas-nueva-zelandia-muerte-trax/
https://organikos.net/2023/11/14/dominicas-whale-sanctuary/
https://www.wakingtimes.com/for-marine-life-human-noise-pollution-brings-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/
https://schlueter.foundation/en/anthropogenic-underwater-noise-international-symposium
https://animalia-life.club/qa/pictures/noise-pollution-animals
UNIVERSE 