Have you noticed that there are leaves turning colour? I could easily see the difference in the Sumacs between last Saturday and yesterday. Tuesday is the official start of astronomical Autumn at 9:30am EDT.
We're in September so we're in whale season.
If we were in Australia, we'd be familiar with the whales migrating to Antarctica. There is a "whale highway" and the drone footage is HERE. This is by far the best footage of whales that I've seen. I could go for a whale tv channel. One of the whales referenced is a subadult.
That's what one of the not-quite-mature whales is called in the video. A subadult: perhaps that is something we should consider for humans more explicitly. The definition of subadult does include humans - those who have passed through the juvenile period but not yet attained typical adult characteristics. But then, we would have to come to agreement on adult characteritistics...
Whales are migrating on the North American Pacific coast. What about the Wild Ocean Whale Society Live Stream HERE. It live streams from Powell River. It is very dark there now at 3:10am. We can't tell if this might be something interesting like the Australia footage.
We can see the written reports - the Vancouver Island Whale Watch had the September 16th sighting of two humpback whales - mother and son. Find out everyone's name HERE.
Going further south, on September 12th, there were humpback whales throughout Monterery Bay, ocean birds, great white stars and dolphins at the harbour mouth. You can see HERE that there is something to watch every weekend.
One can get the app to stay up-to-date on the latest sightings of whales and dolphins. I was looking at the Hawaii sighting map HERE. You can set a date range and see what's been spotted. This is sponsored by the Pacific Whale Foundation.
Would you like to see one year of whale watching around the world in one infographic? Go HEREto download the 2020 whale planner. This is the infographic.
Reaching back into the archives, we saw whales in 2012 on the ferry travelling to Seattle.
The oldest person ever was Jeanne Calment who lived from 1875-1997. That's 122 years and some days. There may be people who lived longer. The distinction is that Calment's age has been verified.
Across mammals, lifespan can vary 100-fold. Bowhead whales are considered the longest-living animals. They can live for more than 200 years. The whale’s enormous size – 20 metres long and up to 100 tonnes in weight – creates some unique challenges that are of particular interest to biologists. For instance, if its cells burnt energy at the same rate as mice cells, the excess heat would boil the surrounding water, so it has evolved to live with a slower metabolism and lower body temperature.
Isn't it interesting to find out about science facts in such interesting ways. Perhaps jokes are a similar sort of experience. The unexpected is fascinating and humorous. Here are the whale jokes that seemed to fit this experience:
I feel like school subjects need to be represented by animals English should be a hawk, they have good eyes, and you need good eyes for reading. History should be bowhead whales since they’ve lived through more than anyone else. And finally, maths should be snakes, I hear they’re great Adders.
I was sitting in a bar one day and two really large women came in, talking in an interesting accent. So I said, “Cool accent, are you two ladies from Ireland?” One of them snarled at me, “It’s Wales, dumbo!” So I corrected myself, “Oh, right, so are you two whales from Ireland?” That’s about as far as I remember.
What do you call a group of killer whales playing music together? An orca-stra!
What do groups of whales listen to together? *pod*-casts
What do whales like to draw with? A-krill-ic paint
Gerry is writing an article for the Porsche magazine about his car. I took this picture last Fall - the sun rays happened naturally - no filters applied.
