Terri Irwin- Japan's scientific whale kill is a sham

Terri Irwin to Launch Whale Rescue
Associated Press

On a Mission Dec. 27, 2007 -- The widow of TV "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin announced Thursday she will launch non-lethal research of whales in Antarctic waters next year in hopes of showing that Japan's scientific whale kill is a sham.

Tokyo has staunchly defended its annual cull of more than 1,000 whales as crucial for research, saying it is necessary to kill the whales to properly gather information about their eating, breeding and migratory habits.

Environmentalists and anti-whaling nations say the slaughter is commercial whaling in disguise, because much of the meat from the whales ends up being sold commercially.

Terri Irwin said that a whale watching program she started to honor her late husband would expand into scientific research in 2008. Steve Irwin, the high-profile wildlife show host and environmental campaigner, was killed by a stingray last year off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

"We are working with Oregon State University to do formalized research in the southern hemisphere," Terri Irwin told the Nine Network television. "We can actually learn everything the Japanese are learning with lethal research by using non-lethal research."

Japan's whaling fleet is run by a government-backed research institute and operates under a clause in International Whaling Commission rules that allows whales to be killed for scientific purposes.

Japan had planned to kill up to 50 endangered humpback whales this season, but backed away from the plan in the face of strong international condemnation.

"We are determined to show the Japanese they can stop all whaling, not just humpbacks," Irwin said.

Further details of Irwin's planned research program were not immediately available.

Earlier this month, Irwin threw her support behind a radical conservation group that has vowed to disrupt Japan's annual whale hunt, allowing the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to rename one of its flagship vessels after her late husband.

Sea Shepherd has come under heavy criticism in recent years for engaging in violent tussles with the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

Bizarre Dinosaurs

AMARGASAURUS
X-FACTOR: Double row of spines on neck and back
WHEN: 130-125 million years ago
WHERE: Argentina
Like the tail fins on a 1959 Cadillac, a bizarre double row of spines extending from the vertebrae of Amargasaurus may have served little purpose other than to turn heads. Since the discovery of the sauropod was announced in 1991, paleontologists have pondered the function of the delicate bony rods, which would have offered limited defense at best against predators. Perhaps the bony rods were covered with skin, forming sails similar to those on some living lizards. If so, Amargasaurus might have flushed blood into the sails to help cool its body. But their likely function, says Smithsonian paleontologist Hans-Dieter Sues, was to attract mates or intimidate rivals. “In evolution nothing is really bizarre. Every structure makes perfectly good sense to the organism. In the case of extinct animals the challenge is to identify what the purpose might have been.”


CARNOTAURUS
X-FACTOR: Bull horns, tiny arms
WHEN: 82-67 million years ago
WHERE: Argentina
Consider the evolutionary hand dealt to Carnotaurus, or “meat-eating bull”: a big, bad, but seemingly underequipped predator, as if nature had set out to design a perfect killing machine but ran out of funding. Powerful jaws and long, agile legs suggest a highly mobile hunter prowling the lakeshores of what is now Patagonia. Its skull, constructed like a battering ram, features a stout pair of horns. Yet accompanying this formidable hardware are tiny arms (even more stunted than the famously puny arms of Tyrannosaurus rex) and surprisingly small teeth. Some scientists, like University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, envision Carnotaurus and its kin as dinosaurian hyenas—fleet of foot and short-snouted to track down and gnaw on carcasses. “Who needs arms for that?” he asks.


MASIAKASAURUS
X-FACTOR: Inscrutable teeth
WHEN: 70-65 million years ago
WHERE: Madagascar
The mouth of Masiakasaurus speaks to how this German shepherd-size meat-eater survived in the river basins of northwestern Madagascar, near the end of the dinosaurs’ reign. But what is it saying? Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause led the team that found the remains, including part of the lower jaw. Masiakasaurus has long, conical front teeth with hooked tips that curl out of its mouth—unique among theropods—while its back teeth are more typically blade-like and serrated. So how did it use such a specialized mouth? “Our best guess is the teeth up front were used to stab small prey, perhaps mammals, lizards, and/or birds,” says team member Scott Sampson of the University of Utah, “and the teeth at the rear of the jaw were then used to tear up the kill.” Despite its formidable dentition, Masiakasaurus was likely prey itself for crocs and other large carnivores, like the 20-foot-long (6 meters) theropod Majungasaurus, with which it shared territory. Against such monsters, its best defenses would have been speed and agility.

-National Geographic-

holy fish!

8-Foot Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia

November 19, 2007—Captured just before midnight on November 13 by fishers in Cambodia, this Mekong giant catfish is 8 feet long (2.4 meters long) ands weighs 450 pounds (204 kilograms).

"This is the only giant catfish that has been caught this year so far, making it the worst year on record for catch of giant fish species," said Zeb Hogan (far right), a fisheries biologist at the University of Reno in Nevada.

After collecting data on the fish, Hogan released it unharmed.

Giant catfish were once plentiful throughout Southeast Asia's Mekong River watershed, including the Tonle Sap River—home of the fish in these exclusive pictures taken near Phnom Penh.

But in the last century the Mekong giant catfish population has declined by 95 to 99 percent, scientists say. Only a few hundred adult giant catfish may remain.

Since 2000 five to ten fish have been caught by accident each year throughout the Mekong area.

Earlier this year Hogan, a National Geographic "emerging explorer," launched the three-year Megafishes Project to document the world's giant freshwater fish.

The project is funded in part by the National Geographic Conservation Trust and Expeditions Council. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

—Stefan Lovgren