Whale Watching | PhD Life Break
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- čas přidán 7. 06. 2018
- Last month a fellow grad student and I went whale watching as a tiny, exhilarating respite from PhD work. I finally saw one of my favorite animals, a humpback whale, up close. Well worth an early Sunday wakeup. Honestly, I was barely looking at what I shot, because I really wanted to watch the whales with my eyes, not through my camera, so I'm surprised this footage turned out as well as it did! Just a little whale vlog, just because! (And some dolphins too. I guess they're cool.)
Reports of humpbacks interfering with other animals:
www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/0...
• Whale 'saves' biologis...
news.nationalgeographic.com/2...
Study of humpback/orca interactions:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f...
Another giant thank you to my Patreon supporters, including my amazing ribosomes:
Marcel Ward
Christopher Miles
Colin Jones
Palle Helenius
Phiroze Dalal
Tim Rhodes
Peter Cook
Brad
Filip
Edgar Romero
Diane & George Dainis
Thomas Davis
Alexandra Daly
Don Burlone
Tim McNally
Jose Cruz
Brandon C.
William Pilkington
Kevin Hardesty
Nick Ramos
Music: "Walk With Me" by Silent Partner and "First to Last" by Gunnar Olsen
Trying to document grad school one CZcams video at a time, from lab equipment to genetics lessons to interviews with other scientists! Each video is a new view into life as a grad student, and the rollercoaster that is getting a PhD.
Twitter: @AlexDainis
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Patreon: / alexdainis
Thank you to DCMP for captioning! dcmp.org/
(All thoughts and opinions are my own and do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of my institution.) - Věda a technologie
Wow...clear day on the bay, and humpbacks AND orcas interacting??? Lucky trip!
I showed this to my dad and he watched it twice over. Loved the animal shots on the boat! SO smooth!
Thanks!! Hahaha there was definitely some motion stabilization in post to correct for the boat rocking!!
Hey Alex! Thank you for sharing this experience with us! My favorite marine animals, though not a mammal, are seahorses! They are gorgeous freaks of nature!
-Love from a Biotechnologist in Texas
Aren't you glad you went! I love whales too! Orcas have been my favorite since I was a tiny kid! Absolutely love them. Humpbacks are probably my favorite baleen whales because they are the singers of the sea. Canaries of the sea belongs to beluga whales, but humpback dongs can carry for miles! & I think that is so cool.
You can't go wrong with whales! Except orcas... they are scary... I didn't know that humpbacks are proactive in dealing with orcas, which makes them more endearing. I'll probably go with the humpback for my favorite marine mammal, but it's definitely the cuttlefish that's my favorite marine animal.
Ohhhh both good choices!
orcas are cool, not scary
by the way, is it true that orcas are actually somewhere in the dolphin family as opposed to the whale family?
Yes and no; in short, orcas aren't dolphins but dolphins are whales. As for orcas being cool or scary, I don't think those as mutually exclusive categories. I'm just glad they don't see us as a food source. A long explanation of the orca/dolphin thing is below, get ready for taxonomic fun; there's a helpful little taxonomic tree on wikipedia which will help, too (FYI, I'm not a biologist).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea#Taxonomy
Dolphins are classified as a type of toothed whales. What you're probably thinking of as a typical dolphin would be, I suspect, members of Dolphinoidea and this does include belugas, orcas, and pilot whales. There's a couple other branches that diverge earlier to give various river dolphin populations.
Therefore, to some degree, we could call these whales "dolphins", but we wouldn't really be using the words in their standard usage. "Dolphin" is a paraphyletic term, i.e. a grouping of species that does not include all descendants from a single ancestor, which makes it not a useful grouping in zoology. Wasps are an example: in saying "wasp" your include a whole host of insects but explicitly excluding bees, which are descendants of some of them, making it an evolutionary weird category (though we might have good reason to single bees out in our day-to-day discussions).
Dolphins refers to a bunch of species in cetacea, but we commonly think of them as not whale-like. Of course, this also makes "whale" paraphyletic in common usage, too. What the biologists actually do is think of whales as the (mostly) extant subgroup of cetacea, with dolphins being a subset of whales. So really, orcas aren't dolphins, but dolphins are whales.
Speaking of watching large marine mammals, there's an elephant seal overlook in Año Nuevo State Park in CA, just south of Pescadero. If you go during mating season you may even witness some elephant seal fights.
That's not far from me at all, that's an excellent tip! I will try and go see that!
I absolutely LOVE animals, but I have a special fondness for sea life, especially orcas! I'd love to go whale watching one day!
I suppose it depends on your definition of a "marine mammal", but Harp Seals have always been a favourite of mine.
If we're going for "spends *all* of its life in water", then Narwhals and Belugas are pretty high up there.
Really nice shots of the whales! I think my favourite marine animal is the octopus.
"Beautiful Jerks" best description I've heard for Dolphins yet :D
2:35 - One of the closest zoos to where I live used to have a sign on the edge of one of the penguin enclosures that said, "If I smell it's because *I'M A PENGUIN* and I eat fish." I thought it was hilarious -- and your video at 2:35 made me think of that. Seems appropriate to apply to whales, too.
That's cool information about the humpbacks!
Hahaha, that is a great sign!
If youtube lets this link through, you should be able to see it here:
facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=608268413230
Thanks for sharing! This was very cool!
Thanks for watching! Whales are the best!
Didn't know you were that into whales!
I used to work with Pacific Wild, installing underwater microphones, listening to whales up the BC coast. We had about 5 microphones beaming back to a central server recording. I still have hundreds of gigs of audio on my laptop, and there is a lot more up on the servers.
It was a dream, and we got a good amount of whale sightings. Craziest one was when we stopped in a channel to look at some humpbacks in the distance, then a massive guy surfaced RIGHT beside our small boat to check us out. Scary, gorgeous.
Humpbacks were amazing to listen to, but I did like the families of killer whales. The pods are so neat to watch swim together.
Dolphins are noisy and sound like somebody is playing with styrofoam.
That is so cool!!! I saw a presentation from a grad student working on something similar in Monterey recently and was absolutely fascinated by how many different humpback calls there are. What a cool job!
What blew me away was their ability to repeat their long songs with such amazing accuracy. I once had them two calls lined up in an audio editor, and they would keep their timing over a call over a minute long to within a few bars, even with some personal variations. I was never really on the biology side of things, just an impressed observer.
You are so full of life. I hope to have more qualities like you someday,
Hi, Alex.. love your vlog. I love whales too.
Ты где
I’ve been to that whale watching place in Monterey... I got super sea sick but I saw a shark which was cool
That is cool!! I was *very* glad I did not get sea sick. They suggested motion-sickness medication and I was very happy I took it...
Great video! looks like lots of fun.
Do you have a whale spout identification chart up on your wall?
No but now I want one...
Also it was super cool to see the differences just between the humpbacks and the orcas while on this trip! The humpbacks have a much larger spout while the orcas had a mistier puff!
I had a whale of a time watching this video!
Narwhals are my favorite animal!!
"Admiral...there be whales here!"
We have a cheeky boat tour on Lake Superior. One of the signs they have up directing people to their gift shop is a sign that reads "You have now walked the distance of a Lake Superior whale!"
Wait, what!? Whales in a lake? I didn't know that was a thing. What kind(s) of whale(s)? I tried searching on the internet but all it gave me was tourist stuff, no mention of what species or why they are there.
Sigh, never mind, found a credible source so I am now informed. I am a bit disappointed though. I really wanted there to be freshwater whales.
LiquoriceLover
Hence why I called them cheeky.
LiquoriceLover
It all stems from about 4 years ago. I work on a museum ship near the vista fleet and was waiting for the pedestrian bridge to go back down. While waiting a group of tourist came up and asked the operator and I about how to get on the "whale watching tour" It wasn't the first time the bridge op had been asked that question so he told them to go to the vista shop (he was very tired about arguing the non existence of whales in Lake Superior) Fours years on that sign popped up. Gotta love the Vista Fleet.
Well, every big lake needs a mythical monster, I guess a whale can count as one.
I LOVE BELUGA WHALES!!!
whats your instagram handle ?
Very cool, thanks!
This was awesome!
Beautiful jerks, great description of dolphins.
I actually edited out my rant about how dolphins and orcas are total jerks (but that's unfair because that's me anthropomorphizing animal behavior) because it felt off topic. But yes.
Transient killer whales are the douchy ones. Residents are your friends! So, uh, #notallorcas?
Personally, I love belugas, however I also have a fondness for hammerhead sharks and sea 🐢
Oh I also do love sea turtles. Another bucket list item is to see a turtle hatching event!
I was a tiny bit upset you were actually a volunteer and not just randomly carrying vertebrae 😉
Thanks, really enjoyed this .. best for the PhD ..
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
you asked for a favorite marine mammal - i'm in england, can i please give a shout out to the Common Gull, they are so ignored and whenever i see them esp in high winds are excellent flyers -- diving into food from a height and up again in a heartbeat , with wing span at 1.3m up close they deserve so much respect -- yet as i said ignored, ''oh that .. it's just a seagull'' www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/common-gull .. / of course Mr Back may of thought so too, he of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull
Thumbs up for Hanna.
Always!
I. Hate. Orcas.
My middle school science teacher was obsessed with orcas, particularly because of Free Wiley. We watched that stupid movie three times at least in her class. She was a militant conservationist, preaching the evils of mankind. We butted heads on more than a few occasions when she got the science wrong, and would not listen to reason and evidence. I eked by with a passing grade in that class because she didn't want me for a second time around.
The look on her face when I had not only the highest score by far on the standardize end of year tests, but a perfect score.
Anyways, I love cephalopods. I think there might be intelligent life we've yet to discover in the deep, and it most likely is a branch of octopi or cuttlefish. Then again whales might actually have language we've already heard, just don't understand.
I want to like this video but because of the imperial system I can't, sorry. Please use metric next time.