American Cetacean Society Speaker Series

If you are in the Puget Sound region, I highly recommend going to one of the events put on by the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. The next one is happening on Wednesday, May 20th in Seattle, Washington. This free event is held in Room 6 at the Phinney Neighborhood Center (6532 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle). Doors open at 7 and the program begins at 7:30. See below for program description -- and witty title!

Tales from the field: The lifestyle of a not so rich and famous marine mammal observer

Laura Morse, of NOAA Fisheries Service's National Marine Mammal Lab, will talk about what it's like to live in the field and her experiences on projects around the world. She will share photos, video and acoustic recordings of the rare and beautiful species studied and observed.

Laura Morse joined the Cetacean Assessment and Ecology Program at the National Marine Mammal in the spring of 2008. Laura is the field team leader for aerial surveys conducted in the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea and provides support for additional field research effort within CAEP. Laura has degrees in biology and anthropology from SUNY, Buffalo, NY and is currently working on a Masters in Coastal Zone Management through Nova Southeastern University, Florida. Prior to joining NMML, Laura spent the past 14 years working as a marine mammal field biologist worldwide on aerial, shipboard and land/ice based projects. She has participated in multiple large scale cetacean abundance surveys throughout US waters, the Norwegian Sea, Southern Ocean, Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and Asian waters and has specialized experience in field identification, photo-id and passive acoustics. Laura's favorite hobby in the field is photography of marine life , images from her collection will be presented here.

The Whale Galaxy

As a self-proclaimed geek, I subscribe to a variety of blogs and websites. I'm not just into whales; I also geek out over knitting, psychology, webcomics, and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).

Today's featured picture is of the Whale Galaxy, also known as the Herring Galaxy or NGC 4631. (NGC stands for New General Catalogue, which is a catalogue of deep space objects.) The Whale Galaxy, which is a mere 25 million light-years from Earth, has been featured a couple of times on APOD, and each image is fascinatingly beautiful.

Most whales are quite large. This whale is as large as the Milky Way. Take that, Big Blue!

"It came within inches."

Photo by Brian Skerry

National Geographic photographer, Brian Skerry, recounts his experience photographing right whales. No, this is not new news, but this picture always takes my breath away. My favorite part of the interview is when he describes how it felt to be so close to such a creature...

It was amazing. I mean, I have to tell you there were days when I was at the bottom at 70 feet, and here comes this bus swimming down. I’m standing on the bottom, and as it comes down, I get on my knees, lean over backwards—my scuba tank is now digging into the sand. And of course their eyes are on the side of their heads, so it had to turn and look at me. It came within inches. Here’s this softball-size whale eye looking at me. But then it stops—stops on a dime. It’s just hovering there, and literally one flick of its tail, and it would have crushed me like a bug. But it doesn’t. It was just highly curious.

Skerry's photo above shows his assistant with a right whale. Quite close. Can you imagine being that assistant in that moment?