Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'cetaceans'

The Value of a Dolphin

January 25th, 2012 · Comments Off on The Value of a Dolphin

The loyalest of y’all may have noticed that I have a longstanding fascination with the legal system’s efforts to value the supposedly invaluable. Which is why I was struck by this recent tidbit out of the Solomon Islands: THE High Court has ordered the Solomon Islands Government and the Ministry of Fisheries to pay Marine […]

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Only the Lonely

December 20th, 2011 · 2 Comments

While in Pittsburgh last week, I had a chance to catch up with an old friend who’s now an archaeology professor. He just returned to the Lower 48 after four years in Alaska, where he spent much of his time digging up the artifacts left behind by ancient inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands. On our […]

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Buried Whales, Cont’d

January 22nd, 2010 · 3 Comments

Our recent post about the hazards of whale burial attracted a celebrity commenter: Steve O’Shea of the Auckland University of Technology. Best known for his squid-hunting endeavors, O’Shea is also overseeing the research into the public-health consequences of interring beached whales. He takes us to school thusly: I can assure you that E. coli is […]

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A Sadder Breed of Fail Whale

January 19th, 2010 · 5 Comments

What to do with beached whales who can’t be guided back out to sea, and so perish on the sand? In parts of New Zealand where the indigenous Maori hold sway, this has become quite the conundrum. The trust that oversees Maori fisheries recently proposed harvesting such unfortunate cetaceans for meat—arguably a more humane option […]

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Mortality as Morality, Cont’d

August 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Eleven days ago, we questioned whether it might be immoral to keep certain animals captive in zoos. Our hunch is that a species’ ability to thrive in a zoo is based not only on its physical needs, but also its intelligence—animals who become aware of the limits of their existence will certainly suffer psychological stresses […]

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“A Profound Instinct…for Vengeance!”

July 31st, 2009 · Comments Off on “A Profound Instinct…for Vengeance!”

Here’s a doozy of a me-too flick for Bad Movie Friday: 1977’s Orca, which tried oh-so-hard to copy the Jaws formula. But the film flopped miserably, in large part because its target audience wasn’t all that terrified by killer whales. (Thanks, Shamu.) Oh, and also because Richard Harris gnaws on the scenery like it was […]

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Against All Cetaceans

June 18th, 2009 · 5 Comments

We’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the two main holdouts against international whaling laws are Japan and Norway—nations from opposite ends of the globe, with no apparent shared culture or history. How did these two countries form such a strong alliance in favor of the continued slaughter of aquatic mammals? The stock explanation […]

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