Days-old beluga whale calf rescued in Alaska

SEWARD, Alaska -- A beluga whale calf, believed to have been separated from his mother during a storm, has been rescued from Alaska's Bristol Bay.

The calf, estimated at 2 to 3 days old when it was found Monday, was taken in by the Alaska SeaLife Center, after attempts by others to encourage the calf to the open ocean failed.

This is the first beluga the center has housed.

President and CEO Tara Riemer Jones said the biggest challenge has been providing 24-hour care. She said staff from U.S. aquariums with experience with belugas have come or are coming to help.

Jones said a federal agency will ultimately decide placement of the animal, as he won't be released into the wild. Calves in the wild nurse for about two years.

RELATED: 

Japanese rescuers save finless porpoise stranded in rice paddy by tsunami

State troopers escort wayward sea lion off Oregon highway and return it to ocean

-- Associated Press

Photo: A rescued beluga whale calf swims at the Alaska SeaLife Center. Credit: Associated Press

Japanese rescuers save finless porpoise stranded in rice paddy by tsunami

Animal rescuers working to save imperiled dogs and cats in the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami wound up helping a very different, but just as needy, sort of animal: a young finless porpoise.

The porpoise had become trapped in a flooded rice paddy in Japan's Miyagi prefecture after the March 11 tsunami and was struggling and growing weak in the shallow water.

"A man passing by said he had found the [porpoise] in the rice paddy and that we had to do something to save it," Ryo Taira, a pet-store owner who has been instrumental in rescuing animals affected by the earthquake, told Reuters.

Taira and other volunteers rushed to save the animal, fashioning a stretcher of sorts from objects -- including a futon mattress -- strewn in the area. But they were unable to catch the porpoise with a net.

Eventually, Taira managed to catch the porpoise in his arms -- a feat he speculated to Reuters was possible only because the creature was so exhausted from its ordeal.

According to Agence France-Presse, damage to nearby aquariums caused by the disaster left the rescuers with no choice but to release the porpoise into the ocean. They wrapped it in wet towels for the trip back to open water and set it free.

Taira told Reuters that the porpoise's condition seemed to improve when it was returned to the ocean. "I don't know if it will live, but it's certainly a lot better than dying in a rice paddy," Reuters quoted the rescuer as telling Japan's Asahi Shumbun news organization.

Canadian harp seals coming to American waters in larger numbers

PORTLAND, Maine — Harp seals from Canada are showing up in U.S. waters in greater numbers and farther south than usual, and biologists want to know why.

Small numbers of juvenile harp seals are typically found each winter stranded along the coast of the northeastern United States. But this year, well more than 100 adult harp seals -- not juveniles -- have been spotted, said Mendy Garron, regional marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Gloucester, Mass. The sightings are reported by 14 seal stranding and rehabilitation organizations in New England and the Middle Atlantic.

"In some areas they're reporting three times the normal number of sightings," Garron said. "This year, we've had four sightings of adult harp seals in North Carolina, which we've never had before. We typically don't see them that far south."

Seals are common in New England waters, where the most abundant type is the harbor seal, with a population estimated at about 100,000 the last time they were surveyed a decade ago. Gray seals are the second most common seal.

But those numbers are piddling compared to the number of harp seals found in the northwest Atlantic. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans says 9 million of them can be found off Canada and Greenland.

Rare Pacific gray whale tracked on migration from Russia had previously been in North American waters

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Marine researchers say a rare whale tracked across the Pacific Ocean into North American waters this year had been there before.

Photo analysis has confirmed that the highly endangered western Pacific gray whale dubbed Flex -- one of only 130 remaining -- was photographed in 2008 off Canada's Vancouver Island and was assumed to be part of the eastern gray whale population.

U.S and Russian researchers started tracking the male whale Oct. 4 when they tagged him with a satellite tracker off Sakhalin Island, Russia, as part of research into where the animals spend winters.

The whale left Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on Jan. 3 and began swimming east. It swam halfway across the Bering Sea, turned southand swam between Aleutian Islands into the Gulf of Alaska. It continued southeast to shallow coastal waters off Washington and Oregon. Its last confirmed location was Feb. 4 off Siletz Bay, Ore., where researchers believe the satellite tag fell off. The whale had traveled 5,335 miles over 124 days.

The project stirred the interest of other whale researchers, said Dave Weller, a marine mammal ecologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.

'Cove' director gives copies of dolphin slaughter documentary to residents of Japanese village of Taiji

TOKYO — Copies of the 2010 Oscar-winning film that depicts the slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese fishing village of Taiji have been delivered free to its residents, compliments of the director.

Louie Psihoyos, director of "The Cove," said Monday that the film dubbed in Japanese was delivered via regular mail over the weekend to all households, with the help of a local group called People Concerned for the Ocean.

An official at Taiji city hall confirmed that two copies of the DVD had been received, but no one had looked at them yet.

Psihoyos said he was concerned that many Japanese have yet to see the film, but especially the 3,500 people of Taiji in the southwest of the country.

"The people in Taiji deserve to know what millions of others around the world have learned about their town," said the U.S. director.

"The Cove" received a Best Documentary Oscar a year ago for its scathing portrayal of Taiji's dolphin-hunting tradition. It showed about a dozen fishermen scaring the dolphins with metallic banging noises into a cove, then stabbing them as they bled and writhed in the water.

Japan suspends its whaling expedition after harassment by Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group

TOKYO — Japan has temporarily suspended its annual Antarctic whaling after repeated harassment by a conservationist group, a government official said Wednesday.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships have been chasing the Japanese whaling fleet for weeks in the icy seas off Antarctica, trying to block Japan's annual whale hunt, planned for up to 945 whales.

Japan has halted the hunt since Feb. 10 after persistent "violent" disruptions by the anti-whaling protesters, said fisheries agency official Tatsuya Nakaoku.

So far, the attacks have not caused any injuries or major damage to the vessels, he said, but the protesters are throwing rancid butter in bottles and once the protesters got a rope entangled in the propeller on a harpoon vessel, causing it to slow down.

"We have temporarily suspended our research whaling to ensure safety," he said. The fleet plans to resume hunting when conditions are deemed safe, he added, but declined to say how long the suspension will last.

The Sea Shepherd group has been shadowing Japan's whaling fleet for several years, and its campaign has drawn high-profile donor support in the United States and elsewhere and spawned the popular Animal Planet series "Whale Wars."

Dog and dolphin forge an unusual friendship in Ireland

How's this for evidence that we really can all get along? A Labrador retriever named Ben and a dolphin named Duggie inexplicably became the best of friends a few years back, despite the fact that one lives on land and the other lives in the ocean.

Dublin's Independent newspaper reported that locals on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal in Ireland, first spotted Duggie the dolphin in the spring of 2006. The dolphin became popular with locals and tourists alike; Duggie was a frequent sight from the decks of incoming ferry boats.

Soon, Ben the Lab started swimming out to meet the dolphin, and the unusual pair would play for hours. Other local dogs even joined in.

Duggie, whom locals named in honor of island celebrity Willie Duggan, hung around Tory Island -- sometimes taking breaks to swim with a traveling pod of dolphins -- for a few years before sightings stopped. We like to think Duggie eventually joined a pod for good. Fortunately, the delightful dog-dolphin friendship was captured on video for posterity.

See more videos of Ben and Duggie after the jump!

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delays protections for Pacific walrus

Pacific walruses need additional protection from the threat of climate warming but cannot be added to the threatened or endangered list because other species are a higher priority, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

Walrus will be added to the "warranted but precluded" list, said agency spokesman Bruce Woods, a designation under the Endangered Species Act that allows delays in listing if the agency is making progress listing other species and does not have resources to make a decision on others.

"The threats to the walrus are very real, as evidenced by this 'warranted' finding," said Geoff Haskett, the service's Alaska region director, in a statement. "But its greater population numbers and ability to adapt to land-based haul-outs make its immediate situation less dire than those facing other species such as the polar bear."

He said cooperation with Alaska Native groups, the state and other partners could lessen the long-term effect of climate change for the walrus and help it avoid an endangered listing.

The decision was condemned by the Center for Biological Diversity, which in 2008 petitioned to list walruses as threatened or endangered, citing threats to walruses' sea ice habitat. Center spokeswoman Shaye Wolf said the warranted but precluded designation is a black hole for imperiled species. Some have been so designated for more than 20 years.

Decision on endangered listing for Pacific walrus coming soon, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says

ANCHORAGE — A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the agency is waiting for a publication date from the Federal Register before announcing whether it will recommend listing the Pacific walrus as a threatened or endangered species because of global warming.

The agency is under a court-ordered deadline to decide on a listing petition filed three years ago by the Center for Biological Diversity. The group claims walruses are threatened by a loss of sea ice.

Agency spokesman Bruce Woods says decisions are announced a day before they are published in the Federal Register.

In three of the last four years, walruses have congregated by the thousands on Alaska's northwest shore as sea ice melted beyond shallow continental shelf waters where the animals dive for clams and other prey.

RELATED CONSERVATION NEWS:
• Center for Biological Diversity says it plans to sue over polar bears' critical habitat
• Alaska sues over planned fishing restrictions aimed at protecting sea lions  

-- Associated Press

Photo: Pacific walrus on Alaska's southwest coast. Credit: Associated Press

Scientists track rare western Pacific gray whale's migratory path to the Gulf of Alaska

ANCHORAGE -- A highly endangered whale that spends summers in Russian waters has crossed from the Bering Sea into the Gulf of Alaska.

American and Russian researchers have tracked the 13-year-old male western Pacific gray whale, dubbed "Flex," from Russia across the Bering Sea, through the Aleutian Islands into the Gulf of Alaska about 400 miles south of the Alaskan fishing community of Cordova.

Bruce Mate, head of Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, called the whale's location "pretty darn amazing." No one has documented winter habits of western gray whales, he said. Others of the species may spend winters elsewhere, but a route over deep water in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska is "something of a paradigm shift" given that eastern gray whales are considered near-shore animals.

"Flex is writing a new chapter for western gray whales, but there may be several chapters to be written yet," he said.