Bob Brown to board Sea Shepherd for gas hub campaign

GLENN CAMPBELL

17 Jul, 2012 10:00 AM

Former Greens leader Bob Brown is joining the Sea Shepherd environmental action group in a campaign against the $35 billion Browse gas hub project near Broome in Western Australia.

The activist ship will leave Melbourne this week for the Kimberley coast to draw attention to potential impacts on humpback whales by the giant project.

"I'll be helping to lead this trip to draw attention to the fact that this is not a good place for a giant gas factory, with huge ships coming to and fro," said Dr Brown, who has joined the Sea Shepherd advisory board.

Dr Brown and Aboriginal activists will meet the ship in Broome, Western Australia, before steaming to the site of the development early next month.

It is the first Australian mainland campaign by the Sea Shepherd, which has mounted campaigns against Japanese whaling in the Antarctic.

Woodside and its partners will pipe gas ashore from the Browse Basin for processing and export at James Price Point, if one of Australia's largest energy projects gains final investment approval.

The project includes the dredging of a 20-kilometre channel and the building of a two-kilometre jetty to access the liquified natural gas from an onshore plant.

Impacts on marine fauna such as whales, dugongs and turtles were admitted when the West Australian government gave the environment green light to the project yesterday.

The WA Environment Protection Authority's chair, Paul Vogel, said the region's humpback stock had increased "exponentially" since last century's whaling, despite the parallel increase in iron ore and petroleum projects along the coast.

"Creating any industrial undertaking, particularly one of this magnitude, will have an environmental impact, however these impacts and risks can be managed to an acceptable level," Dr Vogel said.

Conditions imposed by Dr Vogel include suspending marine pile driving and blasting for part of the humpback migration season. He made the approval decision alone, after four other EPA board members declared conflicts of interest.

Until now, Sea Shepherd has seen Australia mainly as a base for its hard-fought campaigns against Japanese whalers in the Antarctic.

A group of Aboriginal leaders of the Golarabooloo people told Sea Shepherd in a letter: "We have seen the work you have done to protect the whales in the Southern Ocean.

"We would appreciate any support you can give us to protect the humpback in our Sea Country from the proposal to build an industrial port at James Price Point for LNG export."

The activists' leader, Paul Watson, replied that the project was disrespectful to the area's original people and marine species.

"There are sacred places in this world that should not be scarred with the ugliness of greed and disrespect for nature," Mr Watson said.

He said he would not be able to join the ship for the action. He is being detained on bail in Germany while its courts consider an extradition request from Costa Rica over 10-year-old navigation charges. Papers outlining the case have arrived in Germany from Costa Rica, he said.

Sea Shepherd's Australian director, Jeff Hansen, said the Kimberley whale campaign would not be aggressive.

"Australians need to see what's at stake there," Mr Hansen said.

Dr Brown said political leaders from Western Australia and Canberra would be invited to join the voyage.

"We'll find room for them," he said.

Kimberley Whale Report 2011

Kimberley Whale Watching has released its 2011 Cetacean Survey results detailing the abundance of whales in Kimberley waters during the period from the 18th July - 10th August 2011 from a continuous survey track.

The highest concentration of Humpback whales was found to be between the Lacepede Islands and Broome, with significant numbers  off James Price Point.  The areas between Camden Sound and Adele Island, and between Adele Island and the Lacepede Islands were also found to be important Humpback habitats.

Read the report online

Whales have a sensory organ unlike anything we’ve ever seen

i09.com
Contact Robert T. Gonzalez

It's possible that whales can sense things that no other living creatures can. Scientists have discovered a grapefruit-sized mass of vessels and nervous tissues located in whales' chins, and they believe it's an entirely new kind of sensory organ. It's possible the organ is what allows these massive creatures to eat using a lightning-fast mouth movement called "lunge feeding."

To find out more, we spoke with the study's lead researcher, paleobiologist Nick Pyenson. He says this sensory organ is just one more thing that makes whales like "mammals from space."

The first thing you need to understand about baleen whales is that they're enormous. The biggest of the baleen whales are known as rorqual whales, a group that includes humpback whales, fin whales and, of course, the blue whale — the largest animal to ever live.

Animals as large as rorquals obviously need plenty of food to survive. To acquire that food, they rely on their uncommonly large mouths and a technique known as lunge-feeding. When lunge-feeding, a hungry whale will accelerate to great speeds and open its mouth wide, allowing its pleated throat to expand like a parachute while taking in a giant gulp of water. The mouth then swings shut, and the whale begins the process of straining its prey through filter-like "mouth hairs" known as baleen. Fish, krill, and various other sea creatures are caught in the baleen, and water is expelled.

We know rorquals lunge-feed because we've seen them do it. What's less clear is how they go about orchestrating the behavior, which involves the careful cooperation of several enormous anatomical structures. The scale, quickness and precision of rorqual feeding behavior is nothing short of spectacular. In today's issue of Nature a team of researchers led by paleobiologist Nick Pyenson describes the discovery of a heretofore unknown sensory organ, located in the chin of rorqual whales, that they believe is responsible for coordinating that behavior.

"In blue whales, jaws can be up to six meters long, and those jaws open and close under water in les than ten seconds," explains Pyenson in an interview with io9. Speed is important, "especially if you want to capture a big swarm of krill before they disperse."

But lunge feeding-involves more than opening one's mouth and blindly rushing a group of prey. Pyenson says that a whale needs to be able to sense what's going on inside its mouth and respond to that sensation in turn, actively controlling both the state of its throat pleats and the positioning of its jaws in order to capture as much prey as possible.

So when Pyenson and his colleagues happened upon a large, nerve-laden mass positioned between the jaws and throat-pleats of dissected fin and minke whales (two rorqual species), it wasn't long before they realized that the fleshy structure might be implicated in the coordination of the whales' mouth movements.

The organ rests inside the whale's chin, in the gap between the whale's bony jaws (pictured above, click to enlarge). The structure is pinched by the jaws, explains Pyenson, "and compresses through the course of a lunge." But the organ also sits atop a y-shaped stem of fibrous cartilage that connects to the whale's throat pouch. All this is wired up to the whale's sensory nervous system. The result is an organ that is well-placed anatomically to help control both the flexible, blubbery tissue of the whale's throat, and the bony tissue of the jaws, "coordinating both hard and soft tissue together, and linked mechanically to both sets of tissue types."

What's really interesting about this find is that the organ appears to be missing from smaller whales, a fact that could point to the organ's evolutionary importance:

"In terms of evolution, the innovation of this sensory organ has a fundamental role in one of the most extreme feeding methods of aquatic creatures," said co-author Bob Shadwick.

"Because the physical features required to carry out lunge-feeding evolved before the extremely large body sizes observed in today's rorquals, it's likely that this sensory organ — and its role in coordinating successful lunging — is responsible for rorquals claiming the largest-animals-on-Earth status," he explained.

When we asked Pyenson if there was a human sensory process that he thought this organ could be most closely tied to, he said it was difficult to say, but was a good enough sport about it to take a shot. The nerves and connective tissue that comprise the organ, Pyenson says, show the hallmarks of what are known as mechanoreceptors:

[Humans] have different mechanoreceptors all throughout our skin and joints that relay information about position and pressure. It's an unusual structure, and what's really unusual about it is its position. But it's not about temperature, it's not taste, it's really about movement and pressure. That's probably the closest analogy we have.

The more we investigate the ocean's largest mammals, the more mind-boggling discoveries we seem to make. Pyenson notes that studies like this one are notoriously difficult to perform, and that whale anatomy is something that remains incredibly mysterious to researchers.

"Whales are like mammals from space," he explains. "they just have all these strange adaptations to living life in the water."

"It's a great irony that we've hunted and studied large baleen whales for well over 100 years, and for all those thousand and thousands of whales that have ben killed, nobody's ever looked at the anatomy at this level of detail. We are still only beginning to understand the anatomy of the largest ocean predators of all time."

The researchers' findings are published in today's issue of Nature.

Top image by Duncan Murrell/Steve Bloom Images / Barcroft Media; illustrations by Carl Buell

The loneliest whale in the world.

Check out this link to the 'Loneliest whale in the world', possibly a cross between a Fin whale and a Blue whale, and first recorded by the navy in 1992.  Whales use sound to communicate across vast distances, so imagine speaking a language that no-one else understands.

New WA Kimberley marine park

The biggest humpback whale calving area in the southern hemisphere will be protected within a new marine park to be created on the Kimberley coast by the West Australian government.

The creation of Camden Sound Marine Park, about 300km northeast of Broome, was announced by Premier Colin Barnett and Environment Minister Bill Marmion on Thursday.

"Creating this marine park reaffirms our election commitment to protect this significant and biologically important region," the premier said.The park will cover nearly 7000 sq km and will be created by mid-2012.

Camden Sound is internationally recognised as the biggest calving area for humpback whales in the southern hemisphere with more than 1000 humpbacks found there during the calving season.

Mr Marmion said a special purpose zone would be created covering about 1670 sq km to protect the calving grounds, with vessels required to remain at least 500m from humpback mothers and calves.

There will also be two sanctuary zones comprising about 20 per cent of the marine park area around the Champagny Islands and Montgomery Reef.

Mr Marmion said the marine park's zoning scheme would help protect a unique marine environment, while allowing recreational and commercial fishing as well as aquaculture and pearling.

He said for the first time in WA there would be a zone providing for a 'wilderness' fishing experience where recreational fishers must either catch and release or eat their catch before leaving the zone.

Pearling operations will be recognised in a designated zone, and some commercial fishing operations will be phased out, with 48 per cent of the marine park closed to commercial trawl fishing and 23 per cent closed to all forms of commercial fishing.

Mr Marmion said compensation would be paid to affected fishing operations if appropriate.

The new park will contain coral reefs and seagrass areas, mangrove forests, tidal flats, and habitats for dugong, sawfish, dolphins and crocodiles.

It will be jointly managed by the Department of Environment and Conservation and traditional owners, including the Dambimangari and Uunguu peoples.

The government has committed $10 million over four years to protecting and managing the park, with ongoing funding of $2.3 million a year from 2015-16.

The Pew Environment Group, which advised on the park's boundaries, said it took the region a step closer to becoming an international tourism and conservation attraction alongside the Great Barrier Reef.

Spokesman John Carey said an estimated 22,000 mothers and baby whales would have a safe and secure home during WA's winter months.

"The reefs and marine life of the Kimberley are as significant as what's found on the Great Barrier Reef. However, to date less than one per cent of the region has had any protection," he said.

Conservation groups welcomed the release of the final boundaries for the park.

WWF WA Director Paul Gamblin said the park was an important and historic step forward for the Kimberley.

"This represents government getting it right for the Kimberley, this is what the future of the Kimberley should be," he said.

Mr Gamblin said oil and gas developers would now be expected to show no interest in the Camden Sound area.

Wilderness Society marine campaigner Jenita Enevoldsen said the region was one of Australia's last remaining large and healthy refuges for many threatened species, including humpback whales, snubfin dolphins, dugongs, saw sharks, and six turtle species.

She said the creation of the park was recognition that the region's future lay in protecting its unique natural and cultural values through a conservation economy, not in pursuing destructive industrial projects such as Woodside Petroleum's proposed gas precinct 60km north of Broome.

Conservation Council of WA marine coordinator Tim Nicol said the park showed leadership and vision from the premier at a time when the future of the Kimberley was at a crossroads.

Kimberley Whale Watching on Camden Sound Marine Park

Kimberley Whale Watching on Camden Sound Marine Park

Kimberley Whale Watching congratulates the Western Australian State Government on the creation of the Camden Sound Marine Park on the Kimberley coast covering an area of nearly 7,000km2.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Breach at Lulim Island

PRLog (Press Release) - Apr 19, 2012 - Kimberley Whale Watching congratulates the Western Australian State Government in announcing the new Camden Sound Marine Park.  The park, which was announced by former Environment Minister Donna Faragher in October 2009 covers a large area considered one of the main calving grounds for Breeding Stock D,  the world's largest population of Humpback whales, and Montgomery Reef, which at 350km2 is considered to beone of Australia's largest inshore reefs. The State Government will be working closely with traditional owners and sea rangers in the joint management of the park.

The Kimberley's Humpback whales use the islands and reefs of the marine park as areas to shelter whilst feeding and nurturing young calves.  Through our observations of Humpback whale distribution and behaviour along the Kimberley coast and outer reefs and shoals over the past six years, we have also noted the importance of the Dampier Peninsula as a whale calving, resting and feeding area, and urge the State Government to consider increased protection for the Humpback whale population along this part of the coast.  We hope that the state government will extend the areas under marine protection to include the Buccaneer Archipelago, Talbot Bay, Dugong Bay and the Horizontal Waterfalls.

Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/11853279/1

www.kimberleywhales.com.au

Whales Turn up in Kimberley waters

    PRESS RELEASE

The first humpback whales for 2010 have been spotted in Kimberley Waters.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PR Log (Press Release) – May 28, 2010 – Humpback whales have turned up in Kimberley waters a week earlier than last year.  Gregg Davey from Kimberley Kayak Fishing Tours (http://kimberleykayakfishing.com.au/) spotted the first pod of 3 juvenile whales near Talboys Rock, off Manari on the Kimberley coast on Monday the 24th of May 2010.  This year's sighting is a week earlier than the first reported whale sighting for 2009, which occurred on the 31st of May.  

Juveniles form the advance guard for the migrating whale population, which is estimated at approximately 22,000 individuals. The Breeding Group D population of Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrate from the frigid waters of the Antarctic to the warm tropical waters of the Kimberley coast to give birth.  The calving grounds extend from just south of Broome to north of Camden Sound, which will soon become the Kimberley's first inshore marine park.

The whale sightings herald the beginning of the Kimberley's whale watching season.  Broome will also host the second Kimberley Whale Festival, which will be held in Broome from the 15th to the 18th of July 2010.  As part of the festival, "Kimberley Whale Watching", a Broome based research group, is offering a framed whale photo for the first photo taken of a humpback whale in Kimberley waters in 2010.

Send your photo with time, date and location to kimberleywhales@bigpond.com.

Kimberley Whale Watching -  http://www.kimberleywhales.com.au
Kimberley Whale Festival - http://www.kimberleywhalefestival.blogspot.com
Whale Images - http://www.kimberleystockphotos.com.au
Whale Images - http://www.kimberleymedia.com.au

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Kimberley Whale Watching conducts research and charters between Broome and Camden Sound on Western Australia's Kimberley coast.