Extinction of whales nearly here

Whales possess the largest and most complex brains ever to exist on Earth. They have been in existence in their present form for nine to thirty million years. Yet despite our scientific and technological advances, their nine to thirty million years of evolving communication and culture continue to defy our understanding.

Within the span of less than three human generations we've reduced most whale populations to two percent of their original size. And it is in our life-time that we are witnessing the first cetacean extinctions to occur in human history. It is a sobering awareness of being alive to witness fifty million years of evolution ending in our life-time. Less than one millionth of one percent of the human population will swim with these creatures in the wild and experience the full profound effect of their presence on the soul. MMCTA seeks to heal this rift between humanity and whales.

http://www.mmcta.org/whatwedo.html

 

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Which star trek movie was this? was it 4 or 5? If they're so smart, why don't they capsize the whaling vessels? Survival of the fittest!

 

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Simple case of weight, the ships weigh over 250,000 tons and the whales weigh only a few hundred tons.

 

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This night I dreamed that a whale with very large teeth was trying to eat my brother, and I had my hands in its mouth to keep it from closing, and it was chewing on my fingers.
So I want whales to fucking die right now.

 

To be honest - in comparison to many other marine spoecies whales are ecologically irrelevant - they wouldn't make much of a difference to overall ocean ecology if they went - they simply don't perform as important a function as say sharks do.

But sharks arent cuddly and anthropomorphic so we couldn't give a fuck and kill 100,000,000 a year

So I'm going to be a bit contraversial and say - fuck the whales! - fuck them in their stupid arses! - Sideways with a rusty crowbar wrapped in barbed fucking wire! and do the same to the fucking whale huggers too!

Seriously though, I'd hate to see them go but the amount of attention they get is seriously disproportionate, and species conservation based on cuteness is apallingly stupid - we turn parts of our seas into deserts through bottom trawling but couldn't give a shit as long as we get a Mac Fillet for a pound - but a dolphin swims up a river, is too stupid to find its way back out to sea (just turn around you dumb fucker!) so it carks it and there's a national fucking media campaign.

While I wait for the nurse to bring my medication, I'll leave you with this little nugget:

http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=3701&sc=&ac=d&an=

 

So you know what will become of whales if they were to survive into the future? What do you have to understand this type of for knowledge? Tell me, what would they become if they were left alone for another 1 to 3 million years? They don't have a chance to survive if humans don't try and preserve what remains of them. I'd say let us rid the human race of itself except for one percent of it and see what develops in the future.

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The fact that they were wiped out before the oceans were even begun to be studied may have presented us with the illusion that wiping them out made no difference,

but it's not a reasonable assumption. They are the major "herbivores" and most significant predators in every environment they still populate.

Some recent research has pointed to even their dead bodies as having enormous influence, providing entire "island" ecosystems and stepping stones on the ocean floor.

And they populate - or used to - all latitudes, all oceanic systems. They are not restricted to warm water, as sharks mostly are.

 

I wasn't being entirely serious - just having a rant for the lulz

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- although I do think they receive way above their fair share of conservation attention - if we are serious about protecting marine ecosystems, money and time could be much much much better spent in other areas - aquaculture and improved fisheries research for example.

All whales are carnivorous - they either eat fish, other marine mammals (incl other whales), or zooplankton - there are no herbivorous whales.

The planktivorous whales are of the least ecological importance- in the short food webs they occupy , and with no predators above them, there is a plenty of horizontal movement for other animals to move into their niches -I honestly would be very sad indeed to see them go - I dived with humpbacks using a rebreather in Tonga a few years back and got within inches of them - amazing!!, but the oceans would get along pretty much fine without them

Toothed whales fare somewhat better as they have a more varied diet and can thus occupy several niches and serve several ecological functions.

Ask a marine biologist about this research - most think its not been properly thought through - it was proposed as a method for hydrothermal vent communities to disperse between vents as no-one is quite sure how that happens yet
Seriously I ask you - as if the ancient HV communities waited a few tens (or hundreds most likely) of millions of years for whales to come along before evolving a dispersal method. :bugeye:
(that's not to say the study wasn't entirely without merit)

Nope sharks are global - pole to pole too

 

What good are whales, anyway? I mean, really, what good are they?

Baron Max

 

Hence the "quotes" around my label - although they are getting a good poundage of algae in their diet.

Which would make an enormous difference in the oceanic ecosystems involved, no? I mean, you can get rid of the buffalo and a bunch of grasshoppers and stuff will move in and eat the grass, but it does make a pretty big difference.

The question was not whether they were necessary, but whether they were important- whether their loss has been significant. And not just for vent communities, but in general.

Again the qualification- mostly. Comparatively. Compared with whales, who can range.

They'd be excellent eating, if they hadn't been killed off. Prime subject for some kind of nomadic herding or domestication?

 

A better question is "what good are humans"?

 

Clearly the fault lies within your mind.

Cease thinking/imagining immediately.

Who's gonna eat all them krill, North Korea ?

 

What good are you?

Seriously. Not an insult, a serious question.
What makes you more important/significant than a whale?

 

I'm preparing a list of who should go first, starting with several members of the forum. (Relax, you aren't on it.)

 

star trek four "the voyage home"
i have them all except "insurrection"

 

:thankyou::thumbsup:

 

Its an insignificant amount - most is expelled along with the water when they gulp down their prey - and its nutritionally insignificant for them also

I don't deny you have a point, but my view of conservation - particularly marine conservation (bear in mind I do work in conservation biology dealing with marine organisms, so I do have a slight inkling of what I am on about) is that individual species conservation is utterly pointless because it does not consider the ecosystem as a functional unit with interdependent parts, so "Save the Whales" type campaigns - good and worthy that they are - divert attention - and more importantly money - from the real science that needs to be done.

 

In the grand scheme of things, none of us good for much, if anything. We just exist. But by the same token, if someone were to shoot me tomorrow, it would have virtually no impact on the world at all ...maybe not even on my own neighborhood. So, no, I'm not good for anything ...but that doesn't answer the question about the whales, does it?

Me, personally? Or "me" as a human?

Personally, I'm not more important. Just like the whale, I simply exist and do things.

As a human, however, it's a bit different. Humans are more important ONLY because we can kill the whales, whales can't actually kill us humans.

Baron Max

 

But as supposedly higher thinking primates aren't humans supposed to have enough sense not to destroy their own environment and decimate animals around them? What humans have achieved is very little when they cannot recognize that they are destroying things around them that perhaps one day will be needed for medicines, foods or other life giving things.

 

Well, no, they aren't that smart. And isn't that perfectly obvious by just looking around the world a little bit?

Well, I suppose. but then it sorta' depends on what you mean by "achievements", don't it?

Let's face it ....Humans suck giant donkey d**k!

Baron Max