337 whales dead in Chile in one of history's biggest beachings | Hacker News Reader

337 whales dead in Chile in one of history's biggest beachings

theguardian.com

120 pointsbenologist45 comments

I actually see this as a positive as it means the whale numbers are making a great comeback now that (most) nations have stopped hunting them. Here in Australia the humpback whale is back from 200 to 26,000 just on the east coast alone [1].

1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-27/humpback-whale-populat...

thanks so much for sharing this information, I had no idea the situation had improved so much.

In Western Australia they are doing even better - back to 90% of the pre-whaling number [1].

1. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/28/humpback-...

Isn't the problem with such interventions that returning a species to previous population levels can great an imbalance? What predates this species; are the predators able to keep the levels down such that this species doesn't boom and wipe out its food source?

Any sudden dramatic changes in population seem like causes for ecological concern.

Not the case here. Only a 25% of the normal population of this subspecies remain currently. About 24.000 Southern Sei whales in total or so. If food sources dissapear, overfishing by humans is a more probable cause.

> What predates this species?

Not much. This is pretty common, large animals are often at the top of the food chain

http://www.whateats.com/what-eats-a-whale

http://www.whalefacts.org/do-blue-whales-have-predators/

Those are southern sei whales, not humpback. They are fast and mostly solitary animals except in the mating season or when there is a lot of food.

UPDATED: just realise now that this happened in June in Patagonian waters. Mating season, then.

This is so sad. I'm surprised the team were able to rule out human intervention as whale beachings have been linked to military sonar exercises [1].

A human analogy I've read is to imagine if an alien spacecraft descended into our atmosphere and played noises all day so loud that our ears bled. The trauma would be so bad we might not have another choice but to end the suffering.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/03/whales-fl...

Maybe they found evidence for a red tide related stranding? And/Or they did imaging of the whales ear canals?

Certainly in the UK and, in my experience, around the world, military exercised are programmed, confined to specific areas and certain emitters such as sonar are carefully logged.

That said, we know little about how currents and water bodies move so I'm sure these researchers have something more concrete.

You should check out "War of the Whales" if you are interested in the interaction between whales and naval training exercises.

This kind of claim should require more documentation before publication.

Not that I don't believe it's possible, but you'd think pictures would be readily available by now, and a more precise location. I can see holding back right after the discovery, but six months later?

Also would have loved to know when the mass beaching took place. Lots of tectonic activity in that area. Someone else mentioned sonar...would have liked to see if the event could be cross-referenced with military exercises.

Hope this story is further vetted and explored.

Did you read the article? The article seems to demonstrate that the scientist behind the publication wants to wait to discuss the details of the stranding until the paper is released: "She declined to disclose the conclusions, which will be published by a scientific journal later this year."

Ugh. Scientific journals are for archiving information, not embargoing news.

The fact that you failed to even give lip service to peer review is strange maybe speaks to your understanding of professional science.

The fact that you think that's why people wait speaks to your naive view of how academia works.

The only reason they are waiting and not releasing on a preprint like arxiv is because the journal wants to force all citations through them and will reject the paper if they see an early release. It's disgusting.

Not really, the fact that it's not published is that they're afraid someone else will read it do the research again, submit it somewhere else, and get it published faster, at which point reviewers for $Journal_With_Actual_Impact_Factor will simply state "doesn't this replicate the recent findings? Rejected"

Which is why rosalind sat on her crystallographies, hoping to figure it out herself. And why the Wellcome Trust requires academics publish all data within 6 months of collection in such ironclad language that even Elvisier has to honor it: https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/open-access/agre...

Umm, I never said anything about why people wait. The comment/sentence I was replying to was about the purpose of Scientific journals.

So, serious question. Why can't Japan use these whales for their research instead of killing more?

Not enough anagonism or nationalist sabre rattling in that. Full disclosure: I'm from New Zealand.

"research"

Also. This is sad effin news. And that's your response?

yes, air quotes are implicit, but the Japanese who do this research probably believe whole heartedly in its necessity – it's worth having empathy for others, even if we disagree with their motivations.

This is very sad news, indeed. Are you a vegetarian? That may seem out of order, but, if you're eating meat, you're slaughtering animals as well, so, just food for thought... food :)

What research do the Japanese do with whales? Actually curious.

Nearby comment in case you missed it posted this link which is helpful: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/opinion/the-big-lie-behind...

The short answer is that they don't do real research.

As stupid as it is at least it makes sense now. Our political system has certain reached similar levels of insanity as well. They might have even been correct in their thinking in the past.

They probably don't wholeheartedly believe in its necessity. But the money's good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/opinion/the-big-lie-behind...

Thanks. That's really helpful. So basically Japan uses whaling under the guise of research to leverage their ability to access fisheries that they might otherwise be restricted from.

I'm vegan. Actually.

If you do some research on the topic, I'm confident that you'll find that the air quotes were not out of order.

The International Court of Justice (a body of the U.N.), Australia, and New Zealand are among others that agree the air quotes are appropriate. Japan is defying international consensus and law by continuing to kill whales.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/asia/japan-whaling-research/in...

I didn't say they where out of order. I said they were implicit, and you've gone way off topic. My question was pretty direct, why don't the Japanese use these dead whales to conduct what they believe is research instead of killing more.

Also, thanks for being vegan. High five.

They don't actually do research.

I'm guessing botulism is why not. Their research is acomplished inside the scientists' g.i. tracts.

I'm not refuting their claims that this isn't caused by humans, but I'm curious as to how they are able to prove that.

Red tide?

One day we're going to find out there are whale apocalyptic cults.

The scientist seems to be withholding information until her paper gets published. That seems wrong to me.

Yes, those damn peer reviews are so annoying. I recommend using journals that don't bother to verify anything.

- Ranjit Chandra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranjit_Chandra)

Have you ever heard of post-publication peer review?

Have you ever heard of any reputable venue that does that?

It's cool; we can let a small, overworked group of people who may or may not actually be very knowledgeable in that subject peer review it first. Might as well keep the data private forever too because reproducing the work might show something different.

I was up too late and grumpy, but the peer review process (while necessary) does prevent good papers from being published in a reasonable time frame. And acceptance is closer to random than you might expect.

Here's a review of the NIPs acceptance process.

http://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html

Stuff like arXiv is in theory very good for the actual process of science, but so is having free, accessible journals and those don't necessarily exist in every field.

This [0] BBC article says:

> El sobrevuelo del lugar de la catástrofe y los meses de análisis fueron financiados por la revista National Geographic, que había impuesto un embargo a la divulgación de la información hasta ahora.

Which translate that National Geographic paid for everything and put an embargo (same word) on the information.

[0]: http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/12/151202_chile_balle...

Near Antarctica? Any chance of fluctuation of tide sizes due to global warming?

Hum, this is a good point. We need more info about blubber thickness and sex of the death whales. Is a very interesting problem.

How much are tide sizes changing due to global warming? A few cm at max? How would that impact whales?

Pings from submarines.

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