A trail of milk disperses in the depths of the Pacific off Colombia’s coast as a whale calf breaks away after nursing on its mother in rare footage scientists hope would contribute to humpback conservation.
The 900kg calf is then seen rising to the surface to breathe in the Gulf of Cupica.
Such feedings have only ever been captured on camera twice before, said biologist Natalia Botero, whose team at the Macuaticos Foundation filmed the intimate moment between mother and calf in August last year.
Photo: AP
“Despite decades of efforts by thousands of researchers, hours of work, collaborations, lactation recordings are extremely rare,” she said at the first public presentation of the video in Medellin last month. “From a scientific point of view this is an important step, but also for conservation.”
The feat was made possible with sensors installed for just a few hours on the back of the calf with suction cups, so as not to hurt it.
The system included a camera and GPS, as well as a device to record the sounds the whales make.
After feeding for several months off the Antarctic Peninsula and the Strait of Magellan in Chile, thousands of whales make the long journey every year to the warm waters of the tropics to breed along a stretch of the Pacific from Costa Rica to Peru.
From June to November, the waters off Colombia play host to humpbacks — giant cetaceans that can grow up to 17m long, weigh about 40 tonnes and travel about 8,500km every breeding season.
“While humpbacks are now protected from commercial hunting, they still face a variety of threats,” Botero said. “By learning more about their behavior ... we can promote appropriate conservation actions.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS