On Friday, March 6, 2009, NOAA Fisheries Service and its Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Team partners successfully used sedation to assist a severely entangled North Atlantic right whale – one of five entangled right whales identified off the southeast United States this calving season. This is the first time in worldwide history a free-swimming large whale was successfully sedated in the wild according to experts at NOAA Fisheries Service and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The implications of this are far reaching as successful sedation can provide safer working conditions for humans and whales, and decrease the amount of time crews invest in pursuing and attempting to rescue entangled whales.

This whale was first sighted with entangling ropes off the Georgia coast by a Wildlife Trust aerial survey team on January 14, 2009. A Georgia Department of Natural Resources crew responded immediately via boat to assess the whale’s condition, attach a tracking buoy, and remove 560 feet of trailing rope. The whale was still severely entangled, so disentanglement teams attempted to assist this whale again on January 22 and 23, February 1, and March 5. The animal proved to be very evasive making it difficult for the teams to approach the whale to cut the entangling ropes during these attempts. After a sedation team successfully administered sedatives to the whale on March 6, the disentanglement team was able to safely approach the severely injured right whale to remove an additional 380 feet of rope.

Disentanglement team and veterinarian partners included NOAA Fisheries Service, Georgia Department of Natural Resources,Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Coastwise Consulting, Inc., Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Florida, Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, New England Aquarium, Wildlife Trust and the United States Coast Guard.


Photo courtesy of Wildlife Trust. Sketch by Scott Landry, Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. See more images and video here

Nearly 200 pilot whales and 6-7 bottle nose dolphins stranded themselves on a beach in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania Sunday night. Rescue efforts are under way. Here's more.

February 24th 2009 - Every year beaches around the world are closed because of red tide. Red tides are algal blooms that occur when too many single celled phytoplankton gather in a patch of water. The water is depleted of oxygen and the algae die along with many other living things. In areas affected by red tide the shellfish are poisonous and the water smells foul. The only good thing that can be said about red tides is that the phytoplankton are phosphorescent. On a nighttime beach affected by red tide the waves flash when they break and the agitated water glows. It's beautiful. How red tides form has been unclear. In a paper recently published in Science William M. Durham, John O. Kessler, and Roman Stocker describe a process whereby high concentrations of phytoplankton are formed.

Plankton swim upward toward the water's surface at night and downward during the day. In a stable column of water the concentrations of plankton are healthy. But when surface water and deeper water are affected by differing currents, the plankton are tumbled and gather in unhealthful high concentrations in a boundary layer between the currents. This finding should help in providing a means for forecasting red tides. Read more on this story from Henry Fountain/NYTimes.

February 22nd, 2009 - Three dolphins trapped by pack ice in Seal Cove Newfoundland were rescued two days ago by local fishermen with help from 17 year old Brandon Banks. The fishermen cut a passage through the ice with an 18' trawler. The youngest dolphin of the three was having trouble so Banks jumped into the freezing water in a survival suit to help him swim to safety. The mayor of the town had called on the Canadian government to provide an ice breaker. After the government said it was unable to help the locals were prompted to action. Here's the story from AP.