Harbor porpoises are being seen more and more in the San Francisco Bay for the first time in about 60 years, and researchers are trying to understand why they’re returning.

Researchers and onlookers on the Golden Gate Bridge are seeing the porpoises in number, and snapping photos of the “puffing pigs” — as they are referred to by old-time sailors who’ve heard their exhalations.

Why Did They Disappear 60 Years Ago?

But first there’s the question of why they disappeared in the first place. Sightings were common until the 1930s, and the porpoises — averaging five feet long, smaller than most porpoises — were last seen in number during World War II, when San Francisco was a major ship-making hub. With ship building comes pollution, one of many reasons that could account for the porpoises’ departure.

From KQED:

San Francisco Bay became a wartime port. It was a major ship-building center. One newsreel reported that 14 warships at one time sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. And the Navy strung a seven-mile-long net underwater across the opening of the bay to keep out Japanese submarines. Hundreds of mines were planted in the waters outside the Golden Gate.

Keener (with Golden Gate Cetacean Research) says all of this certainly would have disturbed the porpoises. But there’s a bigger change that may have driven them away: water quality.

The bay waters today are a far cry from those of the 1950s and ’60s. As the region boomed, so did water pollution. Keener says raw sewage used to flow right into the bay.

Water Quality Improved After Passage Of The Clean Water Act

After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the bay’s water quality began to improve. But it took time for the food web to come back. San Francisco State University whale researcher Jonathan Stern says maybe the porpoises had to rediscover the bay. But now that they are back, the tourists strolling on the Golden Gate Bridge are thrilled.

What a great story, one of the rare feel-good stories in the news of the environment these days. Let’s try to ensure that these shy creatures stay around.

News about the rescue mission to save 100 Beluga whales trapped off Russia’s Far Eastern Peninsula of the Bering Sea took a turn for the worse on Monday. Emergency services reported they were suspending the operation because of bad weather.

Officials said the tug boat that was sent by Russia’s Emergencies Minister to break through the ice and free the whales was unable to make it through the thick ice floes leading to the spot where the whales are trapped. It returned to a nearby port to refuel and wait for the weather to calm down.

“If the weather and ice conditions in the area improve, the operation may continue,” said spokesperson Lubomir Mukha.

The Belugas were discovered on December 14 by local hunters. A wide belt of ice that is 30 to 50 feet thick is surrounding the whales, making it impossible for them to swim to the open sea.

Holes in the ice have allowed the large mammals to come up for air, but there is great concern the whales may eventually starve because food in the enclosed area is limited.

The good news is that experts from the Chukotka Fishery Research Center have calculated there is enough food in the channel to feed the whales at least until January. So keep your fingers crossed that the weather improves and the whales get another chance to be rescued.

Beluga whales are highly intelligent creatures. One of the huge white mammals was caught showing-off for a photographer at Kamogawa Sea World near Tokyo on Christmas Day. The whale is seen waving and blowing a bubble ring to the audience. 

Related Stories:

100 Beluga Whales Trapped In Bering Sea

Written by Marina Fastigi of Carriacou, Grenada

One late morning in March 2006, the Kido Foundation team was showing a slide presentation to a classroom of children at the Harvey Vale primary school in Carriacou Island, Grenada, West Indies. The presentation was highlighting the desperate plight of sea turtles on our planet, hunted and killed in many cruel ways by humans, directly and indirectly. The children were silently fascinated by the exceptional video projecting almost life-size images of these magnificent animals on their classroom wall. Minutes later, as the Kido team packed up their gear and was about to leave the school grounds, a 10-year-old boy who was part of the audience rushed to us emphatically reporting that a huge turtle had been carried on a beach to be slaughtered.

“You must go NOW to its rescue!” he urged us. “How big is that turtle?” we asked the boy. He stretched his arms wide and claimed the animal was much much bigger than that. And it was black, which meant it was a leatherback turtle, the most endangered of sea turtle species. We wasted no time and got Donnell, the boy, in our Land Rover to guide us to the site. As we drove for a mile along a dirt track, we came upon the last beach on the extreme south of the island and then saw a huge animal, upside down, helpless and suffering. It was almost too much to bear.

We had mobilized some local volunteers and immediately set forth to rescue and hopefully return this amazing creature to the sea.  Of course, we first had to make a deal with the fishers who had unintentionally, they claimed, caught the huge turtle in their fish net…and they had to bring her ashore. Yes, it was a she. A costly price for their service to help us release the animal was arranged and the operation went forth: first wetting the animal with buckets of sea water to prevent and alleviate dehydration of the skin, then digging a huge hole in the ground alongside her to facilitate the turning over of her estimated over 1,000 lbs of body weight. This took seven people to accomplish.

Donnell, our truly courageous rescuer boy, helped and encouraged his new giant friend, the leatherback, all the way and that went on for two hours of pushing and coaching. At last she reached the shallows of the southern lagoon and took off swimming slowly, albeit confusedly, to deeper water across the reef bar. Finally she was free! But the eventful story of Donnella the leatherback (named after her rescuer) did not end here. From March to September each year, during the sea turtle nesting season, Kido Foundation Monitoring Team patrol the sandy beaches of High North ‘proposed’ National Park in northern Carriacou to ensure that nesting sea turtles have a chance to lay their clutches of eggs undisturbed and that poachers do not take the eggs.

Two months after Donella’s rescue operation, Kido Team met her at night nesting happily in Petit Carenage beach (part of High North Park), though still bearing the scars of the ropes which dragged her on land. We recorded her nesting on the same beach during the 2008 and 2010 seasons and we look forward to seeing her again next year. She still bears the pink scars and measures a little bigger. Her return, every two years, was and is the happiest of omens for our team working with endangered species and for the future of sea turtles.

Donnell, the boy, who now lives and studies overseas, receives our emailed photos of her nesting events and the great news that his 1000 pound sea friend is still roaming the oceans free, thanks to his courage and spirit of justice.

Leatherback turtles have lived for more than 100 million years, sharing the planet with the dinosaurs and outliving them long before humans inhabited the Earth. They are able to travel across oceans and they dive deeper than whales in search of their feeding grounds. Leatherbacks and other sea turtle species are threatened with extinction unless humans cease the merciless destruction of these amazing creatures and of their habitat, the oceans.

• Long line fishing for tuna and swordfish hook turtles and drown them.
• Gill nets entrap them, preventing them from reaching the ocean surface to breathe.
• Turtle meat and egg consumption and massive beach destruction for developments wipe out entire generations of turtles.
• Finally, the multilevel role of Sea turtles in the Marine Web of Life is so important that, if they disappear from the oceans, fish, reefs and other marine species will go down faster too.

To learn more about volunteering at the Kido Foundation and their many ecotourism opportunities, visit their website here.

Life under the sea is wetter but it’s not exactly getting any better for marine animals and especially for cetaceans, large aquatic mammals like whales and dolphins. Octopuses and squids are also affected. Human activity has raised the noise level of the ocean by 20 decibels over the last 50 years and it’s likely to get ever noisier. While we might imagine the deeps of the ocean to be silent, the reality is that military testing, freighter propellers and seismic oil and gas exploration — which uses air cannons to create tremors in the sea bed — have combined to create an “acoustic fog” that scientists compare to living in a nightclub where you have to shout to be heard.

We’re not only polluting the ocean with plastic bags, syringes and all manner of refuse. We’re creating so much din in the ocean that the very survival of many animals is in question, as cetaceans depend on their hearing to travel long distances to find food and shelter.

Mark Simmonds, the international director of science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), says that, for cetaceans, “hearing is as important as vision is for us,” so all the ruckus we’re creating is most likely affecting their communication with each other, as well as their sense of direction. Just basic small boat traffic at low speeds in shallow waters can lessen the reach of sounds by 26 percent for bottle nose dolphins and by 58 percent for pilot whales. 15 beaked whales in the Canaries died in 2002 after a NATO exercise using anti-submarine sonars. A number of whale strandings have also been linked to military sonar use.

In particular, animals whose long-time habitat is in the arctic are finding their way of life threatened as humans venture north drilling for oil and gas:

“Narwals for example have a narrowly defined habitat,” explains Simmonds. “They are very adapted to that cold environment. If it gets too noisy, where will they go?”

The same problem applies to the highly sound-sensitive beluga, or white whale, that migrates to Canada’s northern shores.

These mammals, which are capable of detecting ships 30 kilometers (18.7 miles) away, will struggle to maintain their migration route through the narrow straits circling Baffin Island as shipping in the area risks increasing sharply to accommodate a new large-scale mining project.

Offshore wind farms are environmentally-friendly, but building them means using a hydraulic hammer to drill the sea bed, so a monopod can be affixed to it:

This so-called pile-driving can emit noise levels up to 250 decibels, which is a deadly dose for nearby marine mammals, though experts say it’s easy to diminish the threat by creating a curtain of air bubbles surrounding the drill site.

But on top of pile-driving, ship traffic linked to maintenance, cable-laying and the expansion of port infrastructure are also shrinking sea mammals’ habitats.

Michel Andre, a French researcher at the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics at Barcelona University, says that we actually know how to reduce the sounds made by boats. The European Commission is financing an initiative, Ships-Oriented Innovative Solutions to Reduce Noise and Vibrations, or SILENV, to create an “acoustic green label” for ships. The European Union itself has undertaken a directive to reduce noise levels in its waters.

The adverse effects of offshore oil and gas development on the ocean’s marine life providesmore evidence for why we need to protect arctic waters from industrial development. While such efforts can provide new economic opportunities, they also bring new problems in the form of “stresses to local indigenous communities and .. pressure on a fragile ecosystem that is adapting to profound environmental changes,” including noise in places that once never knew of such a thing.

Meet Furia (Fury). He’s a baby boy La Plata dolphin who was found still alive, with his umbilical cord still attached in Uruguay. He had net marks on his body and his mother was nowhere to be seen. This rather fabulous photo shows Richard Tesore, the Head of S.O.S Rescate Fauna Marina, who hand-reared the little baby. He bottle-fed him and took him from his small tank at the rescue center for swims in the sea. Furia was getting 24 hour care. Unfortunately, after twelve days of rehabilitation, Furia died from respiratory symptoms and hypothermia.

S.O.S Rescate Fauna Marina wrote on their website:

Today is a day of sadness and reflection. The loss of animals is very hard, but it is something we face every day. We all know that this is part of the work and that we must find the strength to continue working.

Tesore’s work has made the news before. Last year, another picture with a similarly cute juvenile dolphin, rescued in similar circumstances, showed the little fella being introduced to a rescued penguin. The La Plata Dolphin or Franciscana (Pontoporia blainvillei) is found in coastal Atlantic waters of southeastern South America. It is a member of the river dolphin group and the only one that actually lives in the ocean and saltwater estuaries, rather than fresh water. The La Plata Dolphin is a particular conservation concern because of its restricted distribution and vulnerability to incidental capture in fishing gear. Large numbers are killed in gillnets.

Related stories:

Dolphin Dies After Deafening Rave at Park

Endangered Dolphins Almost Extinct

Dolphins May Understand Death

While other marine fish do use sounds (some cod make their swim bladder vibrate to produce a kind of drumming sound), so far it’s only some herring species that seem to use the art of the fart to communicate. Ben Wilson, a marine biologist at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre, British Columbia, Canada, and his colleagues have given the phenomenon its own special name, Fast Repetitive Tick — or FRT, to use the acronym.

Even more, scientists have been airing concerns about the possible impact of noise pollution on the herrings’ form of communication. Engine noise from ships or seismic guns used for oil surveys could interfere not only with the herring’s hearing, but also with that of those who feed on them, dolphins and whales. These animals rely on hearing farts — that is, FRTs — to find their food.

Some fishy things mean more than words can say.