Wildlife rescue teams scoured Australia’s east coast on Monday to find and free a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope. Aerial footage showed the whale swimming south of Sydney Harbour trailing a rope attached to a floating buoy. “It makes it more difficult for the whale to dive,” said Pip Jacobs from whale rescue…
How does an 18-foot-long, 2,000-pound carcass just disappear? That question has puzzled some divers and photographers who regularly plunge into the waters off San Diego. It started earlier this spring when Doug Bonhaus took advantage of some calm weather to scuba dive in Scripps Canyon. As he descended, a hulking mass took shape below him….
A South Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to importing sperm whale teeth and bones from four countries and selling them in the United States, federal prosecutors said. The man, Lauren H. DeLoach, 69, of St. Helena Island, S.C., pleaded guilty to Lacey Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act charges for importing and selling sperm…
Paddling through choppy waters under cloudy skies, Adrián Simancas and his father were packrafting only a few yards away from each other when something huge lunged, mouth open, from the waves below. A humpback whale appeared to gulp Mr. Simancas down, then rolled over into the waters of Chilean Patagonia. Moments later, Mr. Simancas bobbed…
The English language is full of wonderful words, from “anemone” and “aurora” to “zenith” and “zodiac.” But these are special occasion words, sprinkled sparingly into writing and conversation. The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane. And they follow a remarkable statistical rule, which is universal across human languages: The most common word, which…
A third endangered whale has been spotted entangled in fishing gear off the East Coast, marking an alarming end to the year for a species threatened with extinction. The whales are North Atlantic right whales, which number fewer than 400 and are vulnerable to ship collisions and entanglement in gear. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric…