Plattsburgh, NY
This week I am going to talk about blue whales, especially a huge Blue whale colony which was discovered nearly 3 years ago in the southern coast of my native homeland, Sri Lanka. My colleague Jesse's Blue Whale blog post led me to write this story. The blue whale (scientifically known as Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal. At 98 feet in length and 190 tons in weight, it is the largest known animal to have ever existed (COSEWIC 2002). For over a century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community around 1960s and created a Blue Whale sanctuary in the Indian Ocean. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide (COSEWIC 2002). Southern Californian coastline is a well known blue whale colony but other than that blue whale colonies are very scarce around the word. The 30 year long Sri Lankan Civil War was one of the reasons which withheld from surveying the whale sanctuary in the Indian Ocean. Now that the war is over (ended in early 2009), marine scientists have made many new discoveries in the Sri Lankan waters, the blue whale being one of them. The discovery of the blue whale colony, it has been a major tourist attraction in the southern Sri Lanka. But because of unregulated whale watching boats and ships of the newly built Hambantota port, this whale habitat has been threatened. Asha de Vos is a PhD student from University of Western Australia; she is the first person to start a major study on this Blue Whale habitat. According to her, these whales travel very long distances. Sometime they travel from North Pole to South Pole. Since the blue whale numbers are very minimal compared to the area of the oceans, they travel very longer distances, extensive studies concerning habitat, reproduction, survival and feeding of Blue whales have not been made to the date. Her work has been featured in the media. The video below is an excerpt from Sunday night live which aired on Australian Network 7, Sunday April, 10 2011.
Not only these whales, there are so many other attractions in Sri Lanka. Since its civil war ended, country is promoting tourism in large scale. Sri Lanka topped couple of times in Lonely Planet’s and New York Time’s best travel list. Below is a video excerpt from Moldovan tourist Max kegfire who traveled Sri Lanka in 2012.
Special Thanks to:
- Asha De Vos
- Max kegfire
- Jessie Bushey
I am a Biology graduate from SUNY Plattsburgh, NY. I was employed at Lake Champlain Research Institute, Plattsburgh, NY during 2011-2013. There, I studied, longterm trends of zooplankton in Lake Champlain. One day, I hope to utilize my skills and experience towards a conservation of aquatic biology and make a worthy contribution to the science.
0 comments:
Post a Comment