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Today, there are only five kinds of river dolphin species, and they are all endangered because pollution, dams, shipping, and bycatch have taken their toll on these iconic species

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By 2030, we will have stopped the decline of river dolphin populations in Asia and South America, and will have restored and doubled some populations. We will achieve this by tackling the three major systemic threats to river dolphins - unsustainable fisheries, hydropower and infrastructure, and pollution.

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By 2030, we will have stopped the decline of river dolphin populations in Asia and South America, and will have restored and doubled some populations. We will achieve this by tackling the three major systemic threats to river dolphins - unsustainable fisheries, hydropower and infrastructure, and pollution.

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Weddell Seal Pups - Antarctica fact file

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"The tough love of the Weddell seal mother teaches a lesson about the difference between what is cute and what is necessary." (Gumb, chapter 2)

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Weddell Seals are animals of the ice, they live and breed further south than any other mammal.

Weddell Seal facts - Basics

Average Weight: 400 - 450 kg / 880 - 990 lb

Average Length: 2,9m - 9.5 ft males / females up to 3.3m - 11ft

Breeding Season: Pups born from September to November, females become pregnant again very quickly as the males guard territories around breathing holes, there is an implantation delay of 2 months and then the female is pregnant for 11 months, typically 2 pups are produced every 3 years.

Estimated world population: - 500,000 to 1 million. Very difficult to gauge the population size as the seals are circumpolar and many live in and amongst the pack ice. They don't form colonies as such other than loose associations of mothers and pups briefly after birth. The number of seals at sea during population estimates is a further unknown.

Feeding & diet: Mainly fish, especially Notothenids known as "Antarctic cod", squid and invertebrates (inevitably including krill) in much lower quantities.

Diving: Weddell seals are impressive divers, they can reach 600m in depth and spend as long as 82 minutes, the longest dives are undertaken when swimming under ice searching for new breathing holes.

Conservation status: Least concern. Protected by the Antarctic Treaty and the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals.

Distribution: Circumpolar, the most southerly breeding mammal in the world, as far north as sub-Antarctic Islands and as far south as 78° in McMurdo Sound.

Predators: Killer whales, Weddell seals were taken as one of the main food sources for sledge dogs when these were used in Antarctica from 1899 to 1994, any local effects of population seem to have been reversed now.

What are Weddell Seals like?

Weddell seals are animals of the ice. They live further south than any other mammal. Between the end of August and early November in the southern hemisphere spring, the mothers to be haul themselves out of holes in the ice and give birth to their pups.

The mother arrives pregnant and with enough resources of blubber and protein to double the 25kg (55lb) birth weight of a pup in 10 days. She doesn't feed for about a month after her pup is born, and goes from an extremely plump barrel shape just before she gives birth, to a skinny shadow of her former self with ribs visible while the pup reverses the process. When born, Weddell seal pups look like unstuffed pajama cases, all skin and flippers and not much content. Over the next few weeks the change in mother and pup is like one balloon deflating and filling up another.

Newly born Weddell seal pups have to be some of the worlds cutest creatures as they flop about the ice in the early days after their birth, not able to co-ordinate their over-sized flippers before they grow into them.

Isn't it difficult for the pups to survive when they're born onto the ice?

Weddell seal milk is one of the richest produced by any mammal. It contains about 60% fat (go and compare that to the label on the milk carton in the fridge) and it is this that is responsible for the rapid weight gain made by pups shortly after birth.

The pups are weaned (stop drinking milk and begin eating normal seal food, i.e. fish) at around 7 weeks when they should have reached about 110kg (242lb). When adult, they will weigh up to 450kg (990lb) and be up to 3.3m (11ft) long. Unusually for mammals the males are slightly smaller than the females.

Pups are encouraged into the water very early on by their mothers, perhaps only a week or so after birth. The water is their natural habitat and with their thick protection of blubber is a more comfortable place to be most of the time for these seals than out on the ice where the temperature can be -40° C or less with winds frequently of gale force or greater.

Underwater Life

Weddell seals live on the edge of the ice all year round and dive down beneath it to feed. When underwater there is frequently little light, particularly if there is a layer of snow over the ice which can make it very dark indeed. The seals therefore need good vision to catch their food.

The above picture is of a juvenile Weddell seal weaned from its mother about 2 or 3 months previously and already completely in control in its aquatic environment. The scene a few months previously was rather different, Weddell seal pups don't automatically realise that they can or should dive and the early attempts are amusing to watch. "Attempts" is maybe the wrong word. What actually happens is that the mother pushes the pup into the water against its will. She then pushes its head under the water - again against its will. There is much coughing, spluttering and panic before the pup realises that it can hold its breath under the water and that this in fact does help! The pups soon get the hang of it and as adults will dive to up to 600 meters (2,000ft) or more staying under for up to an hour and going as much as 12 kilometres from the breathing hole.

Weddell seals usually have their pups on sea-ice, or land very near to sea ice, getting in and out of the sea through a breathing hole. These breathing holes are guarded and kept open by the males during the time when the females give birth.

The male guarding the hole will defend a territory beneath the ice against other males for access to mates. The females are ready to breed again shortly after the birth of the pup so the males that successfully defend a breathing hole will mate with the mother seals that use this hole, typically this will be a ratio of about 10 females to one male.

A typical feeding dive takes the seal to 200-400m depth and lasts for 5-25 minutes.

Breathing holes

Weddell seals prefer to live on ice that is broken up somewhat, in this way there are often natural cracks and holes through the ice that they can use to get in and out of the sea. There are also holes and cracks around ice bergs that are trapped in sea-ice and often "tide-cracks" appear near when near land, all of these help.

These holes are fine to begin with, but when temperatures are well below freezing, they begin to freeze up again - quickly. The seals keep the holes open by rasping them with their teeth. They open their mouths wide and move their heads from side to side in a wide arc attacking the ice that is building up around the sides of the hole. This is a very fast and vigorous process that takes a lot of energy and a toll on the seals teeth.

Keeping breathing holes open like this wears away the teeth of Weddell seals and it is this that means that the Weddells only live to about 18 years old, about half the life-span of a crabeater seal for instance.

Weddells can swim great distances across what appears to be continuous sea-ice by detecting natural cracks and holes along the way where they can surface for a breath. When covering distance rather than fishing, they only dive to a shallow depth and find the next breathing hole in the gloom under the ice by sonar - they emit a series of high pitched sounds and pick up the difference in sound when the sounds reach a hole.

Weddell seals are very hardy, resourceful and quite remarkably behaviorally adapted for life in the Antarctic pack and fast-ice as this picture shows. Tthe seal has found a breathing hole through pieces of only partially consolidated pack-ice where there is a non-frozen portion that is nonetheless filled with slush. From below such a region will let considerably more light through than the thick pack-ice pieces and stand out like a beacon to a seal swimming by, even if it is solid, it will probably be thin enough for the seal to break through. Weddell seals have no land-based predators and so there is no danger to them of coming up to such breathing holes, just the odd surprise if there's a wandering scientist nearby to capture the moment on camera.

Why are the White Island Weddell seals special?

White Island is an Island in the Ross sea that has the most southerly population of Weddell seals. These seals are only 1300 kilometres from the South Pole, but this is not the only remarkable thing about them.

They are isolated from the rest of the world as the nearest open sea for them to is too far under the very thick ice of the Ross ice shelf for them to get out.

These seals are thought to have travelled to this area between 50 and 100 years ago when a large chunk of permanent ice shelf broke off. They were then trapped when it reformed behind them and have remained here ever since. They use cracks in the ice immediately beside White Island to reach the sea, they must dive about 70 meters here through cracks in the ice before they get down to the open sea below. In the summer when the sea ice has broken up, it is still at least 22 kilometres to the next breath at the edge of the ice shelf, too far for the seals to manage.

So here they remain unable to leave the area and with a deep dive past walls of ice before they can even begin fishing.

Weddell seal adaptations

How are Weddell seals adapted to survive in Antarctica?

The most southerly dwelling of all mammals they live at the edge of pack ice wherever there is a breathing hole or tide crack.

Anatomical - Structures of the body.

Behavioural - The manner in which animals move and act.

Physiological - The internal functions of the animal from biochemical, to cellular, tissue, organ and whole organism levels.

Weddell Seal Anatomical Adaptations

Fore and hind limbs developed into flippers for swimming.

Smooth, streamlined shape to pass easily through the water.

A substantial blubber layer lies under the skin acting as insulation, so allowing the seals to swim indefinitely in frigid Antarctic waters down to -2C that would incapacitate a human in 10-15 mins and cause death in 60-90 ins (the coldest that the sea gets, below this it freezes)

Large eyes to help hunting prey under water and frequently under ice where light levels are very low.

Whiskers (vibrissae) that help the seals feel their way in the dark when catching prey.

Weddell Seal Behavioural Adaptations

Weddell seals keep breathing holes in the ice open by rasping back and forth with their teeth, this allows them to live further south than any other mammal. They can swim large distances between breathing holesand cracks, finding the next hole using a form of sonar with high pitched sounds.

They avoid the "bends" when diving by exhaling first and allowing the lungs and air passages to collapse so there is no contained air that will allow nitrogen to dissolve in the blood and cause the bends.

Males compete for underwater territories around a breathing hole which gives access to females using the same breathing hole

They flush fish out that are hiding in broken up ice by blowing bubbles.

Weddell Seal Physiological Adaptations

Weddell seals can dive for over an hour,though 20 minute dives are more common, they can dive to 600m.

The metabolic "cost" of diving in terms of extra oxygen consumption is about 1.5 x the resting rate - this is much lower than other diving seals and birds and makes diving more efficient.

The blood has high haemoglobin concentrationsand can carry 1.6 times more oxygen than the same volume of human blood which allows for longer and more energetic dives.

Weddell seal milk is one of the richest produced by any mammal, containing about 60% fat so allowing rapid growth and development of the young during the short Antarctic summer so they are big and strong enough to face the winter.

The females mate shortly after giving birth, the embryo goes into a kind of hibernation for a few months before it starts to develop and can be born at the correct time of year. This happens as males and females do not come into regular contact at other times of year.

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Weddell Seals are animals of the ice, they live and breed further south than any other mammal.

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"In 2016, reports circulated with evidence that dolphin mothers sing to their babies while they are in the womb, and for a few weeks after so they can learn their names." (Gumb, chapter 3)

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(Image credit: vkilikov | Shutterstock.com)

DENVER - Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves.

New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after. Signature whistles are sounds that are made by individual dolphins, which the animals use to identify one another. Calves eventually develop their own signature whistle, but in the first few weeks of life, mothers seem focused on teaching their offspring their signature sound, the scientists said.

"It's been hypothesized that this is part of an imprinting process," Audra Ames, a doctoral student at the University of Southern Mississippi, said here on Friday (Aug. 5) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. [ Deep Divers: A Dolphin Gallery]

Dolphin chatter

Earlier studies had shown that mother dolphins start whistling their signature whistle much more in the days before birth, and then in the calf's first two weeks of life, Ames told Live Science. There are multiple theories about why, including that perhaps moms are trying to get babies to develop their own signature sound.

But no one had studied signature-whistle rates not only before and after birth, but also in the same dolphin mother, Ames said. She and her colleagues had the opportunity to do that in late 2012 and early 2014, when a baby dolphin named Mira was born to a 9-year-old mother at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California.

The researchers captured a total of 80 hours of recordings from the two months before and the two months after the dolphin's birth. They recorded the mom and the calf as well as the five dolphins housed with them. It was important to capture the noises of the mother's peers to understand whether the communication was exclusive to the mother-baby pair, Ames said.

Learning mom's name

The recordings showed that the increased signature-whistle production was, in fact, the purview of the mother dolphin. She began increasing her signature whistle two weeks before the birth, possibly starting the learning process while her calf was still in utero.

A seemingly related phenomenon has been observed during human pregnancies, according to Ames. "We actually do see that human babies develop a preference for their mother's voice in the last trimester," she said. "We don't know if that's something that's going on here, but it could be something similar." [ Photos: World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals]

The mother dolphin also produced her signature whistle at high rates until two weeks after the calf's birth, after which she tapered off. Interestingly, Ames said, the other dolphins in the group didn't produce their own signature whistle at very high rates during the first two weeks of the calf's life. But after mama stopped the repetitions of her own whistle, the other members of the group started producing their own whistle at higher rates.

"What the other dolphins might be doing here is remaining quiet so the calf does not imprint on the wrong signature whistle," Ames said.

Baby dolphins don't usually develop their own signature whistle until they're around the age of 2 months, with much variation in timing, Ames said. The baby's whistle tends not to be similar to the mother's or to the other dolphins in the group.

"You don't want to have a signature sound that is going to be similar to someone else you're around quite often," Ames said.

Ames and her colleagues are now studying other sounds in the mother-calf repertoire of communication, and they're studying other marine mammals such as beluga whales as well as dolphins.
Original article on Live Science.

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Mama Dolphins Sing Their Name to Babies in the Womb

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(Image credit: vkilikov | Shutterstock.com) DENVER - Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves. New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after.

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The Bowhead whale lives for centuries and could possibly grow forever.

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Team SCA visit a local dolphin school in the Indian Ocean, where they train on their jumping techniques and have lots of fun gliding near their boat.

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0:00 / 0:30•Watch full video

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Dolphin School | Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15

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Humans are hunting walruses for their skin, tusks, and bones. Their conservation status is marked as data deficient.

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Geographic Range

Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) are found in Arctic regions of the world. There are three subspecies. Pacific walruses (Odobenus roasmarus divergens) live primarily in the Bering Sea. In warm summer months it could travel as far the Beaufort Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) resides in the eastern and western Atlantic Ocean. Laptev walruses (Odobenus rosmarus laptevi) are found in the Laptev Sea. Laptev walruses are the smallest subspecies of walrus with only a few thousand living currently in the Laptev Sea and the least is known about them. ("Walrus", 2011; Kastelein, 2008)

Habitat

Physical Description

Range mass

600 to 1500 kg

1321.59 to 3303.96 lb

Average mass

1000 kg

2202.64 lb

Range length

270 to 320 cm

106.30 to 125.98 in

Average length

300 cm

118.11 in

Reproduction

Average number of offspring

1

AnAge

Average gestation period

331 days

AnAge

Female walruses care for their pups until the pups reach three years of age. Male walruses have no part in raising their young. ( Kastelein, 2008)

Lifespan/Longevity

Range lifespan
Status: wild

30 to 40 years

Range lifespan
Status: captivity

30 (high) years

Typical lifespan
Status: wild

30 to 40 years

Behavior

Home Range

Home ranges have not been reported for walruses. ( Kastelein, 2008)

Communication and Perception

Food Habits

birds

mammals

mollusks

aquatic crustaceans

other marine invertebrates

Predation

Walruses predators include killer whales and polar bears. Adults use their giant tusks as a weapon to defend themselves. The young walruses are more susceptible to predation. Humans are the main predator of walruses.

Ecosystem Roles

Walruses forage mainly on molluks and other benthic organisms. Sometimes the parasite Trichinella spiralis can get inside their intestines and the intestinal lining. In extreme cases this can cause death but usually it just causes pain, sickness, and organ damage. The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, is found in walruses and is acquired when eating bivalves. This parasite can cause Toxoplasmosis and results in death. Brucellosis causing parasites (Brucella) result in reproductive problems for walruses. This can lead to stillbirths and can result in death to the parent, as well.

Commensal/Parasitic Species

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive

Walruses are extremely important to humans. Humans hunt them and use them for oil, ivory, and their hides. Many centuries ago, the natives of Alaska, Canada, and Russia hunted them for their meat and bones, which were used to make tools. Population sizes of walruses decreased greatly in the 18th century due to overhunting. Through the years, governments from various countries have put restrictions on walrus hunting. This has allowed the populations to rebound but they have never fully recovered. ("Walrus", 2011; Kastelein, 2008)

food

body parts are source of valuable material

Economic Importance for Humans: Negative

There are no known adverse effects of walruses on humans.

Conservation Status

According to IUCN Redlist of threatened species, walrus conservation status is currently listed as data deficient. Walruses are threatened by hunters who use them for their bones, skin, and tusks. According to IUCN redlist, there are regulations on walrus hunting in Canada, Greenland, and in the Russian Federation. In Alaska, most natives use walruses in a non-wasteful way. Walruses are fully protected in Svalbard and the Russian Atlantic under the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission. Another threat to this species is global warming. There is a decrease of floating ice further out at sea, which reduces their feeding areas. CITES lists walruses in appendix III. This appendix includes general information on the walrus as well as information on the walrus population and conservation. Species are listed in Appendix III not because they are globally threatened, but because countries requested help in trade control and permitting for the species' import or export. ( Chivers, 2004; Jay, et al., 2011)

Contributors

Hillary Baker (author), Radford University, Karen Powers (editor), Radford University, Kiersten Newtoff (editor), Radford University, Melissa Whistleman (editor), Radford University.

Glossary

Atlantic Ocean

the body of water between Africa, Europe, the southern ocean (above 60 degrees south latitude), and the western hemisphere. It is the second largest ocean in the world after the Pacific Ocean.

Pacific Ocean

body of water between the southern ocean (above 60 degrees south latitude), Australia, Asia, and the western hemisphere. This is the world's largest ocean, covering about 28% of the world's surface.

References

2011. Walrus. Pp. 1 in Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Vol. 1, Sixth edition Edition. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Berta, A., J. Sumich, K. Kovacs. 2006. Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology. San Diego, California: Academic Press.

Born, E., S. Rysgaard, G. Ehlme, M. Acquarone, N. Levermann. 2003. Underwater observations of foraging free-living Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) and estimates of their food consumption. Polar Biology, 26/5: 348-357.

Charrier, I., T. Aubin, N. Mathevon. 2010. Mother-calf vocal communication in Atlantic walrus: a first field experimental study. Animal Cognition, 13/3: 471-482.

Charrier, I., A. Burlet, T. Aubin. 2011. Social vocal communication in captive Pacific walruses Odobenus rosmarus divergens. Mammalian Biology, 76/5: 622-627.

Chivers, C. 2004. The Evolution of the Hunt. Wildlife Conservation, 107/6: 36-41.

Dehn, L., G. Sheffield, E. Follmann, L. Duffy, D. Thomas, T. O'Hara. 2007. Feeding ecology of phocid seals and some walrus in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic as determined by stomach contents and stable isotope analysis. Polar Biology, 30/2: 167-181.

Dubey, J., J. Mergl, E. Gehring, N. Sundar, G. Velmurugan, O. Kwok, M. Grigg, C. Su, D. Martineau. 2009. Toxoplasmosis in captive dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and walrus (Odobenus rosmarus). Journal of Parasitology, 95: 82-85.

Feldhamer, G., B. Thompson, J. Chapman. 2003. Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management, and Conservation. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fishbach, A., C. Jay, J. Jackson, L. Andersen, G. Sage, S. Talbot. 2008. Molecular method for determining sex of walruses. Journal of Wildlife Management, 72/8: 1808-1812.

Garcia, L. 1999. Practical Guide to Diagnostic Parasitology. Washington, DC: American Society for Microbiology.

Jay, C., B. Marcot, D. Douglas. 2011. Projected status of the Pacific walrus ( Odobenus rosmarus divergens) in the twenty-first century. Polar Biology, 34/7: 1065-1084.

Kastelein, R. 2008. Walrus. Pp. 1212 in W Perrin, B Würsig, J Thewissen, eds. Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, Second Edition Edition. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Mukhametov, L., J. Siegel, O. Lyamin, J. Pryaslova. 2009. Behavioral sleep in the walrus. Behavioural Brain Research, 201/1: 80-87.

Nielsen, K., O. Nielsen, R. Stewart. 1996. Serologie evidence of Bruceila spp. exposure in Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) and ringed seals (Phoca hispida) of Arctic Canada. Arctic, 49/4: 383-386.

Reijnders, P., S. Brasseur, J. van der Toorn, P. van der Wolf, I. Boyd, J. Harwood, D. Lavigne, L. Lowry. 1993. Seals, Fur Seals, Sea Lions and Walrus. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.

Skoglund, E., C. Lydersen, O. Grahl-Nielsen, T. Haug, K. Kovacs. 2010. Fatty acid composition of the blubber and dermis of adult male Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) in Svalbard, and their potential prey. Marine Biology Research, 6/3: 239-250.

Udevitz, M., C. Jay, A. Fischbach, J. Garlich-Miller. 2009. Modeling haul-out behavior of walruses in Bering Sea ice. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 87/12: 1111-1128.

de Magalhaes, J., J. Costa. 2009. A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 22/8: 1770-1774.

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Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) are found in Arctic regions of the world. There are three subspecies. Pacific walruses (Odobenus roasmarus divergens) live primarily in the Bering Sea. In warm summer months it could travel as far the Beaufort Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) resides in the eastern and western Atlantic Ocean.

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"Alexis De Veaux teaches of reflection and Black feminist solidarity. Of how the self is not an individual unit for success within the system that exists, but a collective Black interface seeking something else." (Gumb, chapter 7)

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Writer

Alexis De Veaux has written in multiple genres-poetry, fiction, memoir, journalism, biography, children's literature and plays. Writing is a way she reimagines the inequities of race, gender, sexuality and class in black diasporic lives.

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Alexis De Veaux has written in multiple genres-poetry, fiction, memoir, journalism, biography, children's literature and plays. Writing is a way she reimagines the inequities of race, gender, sexuality and class in black diasporic lives.

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"Her new and sacred name is Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, a name that refers to a native village near the range in which she would live if she had never been captured." (Gumb, chapter 8)

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MIAMI - The new owners of the Miami Seaquarium will no longer stage shows with its aging orca Lolita under an agreement with federal regulators.

MS Leisure, a subsidiary of The Dolphin Company, said as it announced the completion of its Seaquarium acquisition that Lolita and a companion white-sided dolphin Lii will no longer be exhibited under its new license with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Today marks a new day for the Miami Seaquarium and all of the creatures within its care," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a statement.

The 56-year-old orca was initially named Tokitae or Toki when it was captured five decades ago in the Puget Sound near Seattle. Animal rights activists including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals say she's the oldest orca in captivity and should live her final years back home in a controlled setting.

"PETA is calling for this to be the first step toward releasing Lolita (and Lii) to a seaside sanctuary, before this long-suffering orca ends up dying in the same cramped tank she's been confined to for over half a century," said Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law.

For now, Lolita will remain at the Seaquarium, where officials said she's healthy and eating well despite her advanced age.

"As with any animal who has exceeded their anticipated life span, we will continue to monitor and care for her closely," the Seaquarium statement said.

The Dolphin Company operates 27 other parks and habitats in Mexico, Argentina, the Caribbean, Italy and Florida, a company news release said.

Company CEO Eduardo Albor said it wants Seaquarium to become "an educational opportunity for new generations, educating our community about the value of aquatic species and the sustainability of oceans."

The Seaquarium first opened in 1955 on Virginia Key east of downtown Miami. It features a variety of sea creatures including dolphins, sea lions, manatees, reef fish, sharks, and was the location for filming of 88 episodes of the "Flipper" TV series as well as movies in the 1960s.

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The Miami Seaquarium is ending shows with Lolita, its 56-year-old orca

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MIAMI - The new owners of the Miami Seaquarium will no longer stage shows with its aging orca Lolita under an agreement with federal regulators. MS Leisure, a subsidiary of The Dolphin Company, said as it announced the completion of its Seaquarium acquisition that Lolita and a companion white-sided dolphin Lii will no longer be exhibited under its new license with the U.S.

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"Some sea lions only fight for fifteen seconds but some suffering from disease outbreaks have begun to eat their own young." (Gumb, chapter 9)

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Shawn Johnson knew it was coming.

"Last fall, we saw a few cases," he said. "And that was a warning signal, so we were prepared-well, we weren't prepared for this level of an outbreak."

Over the past month, Johnson, director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center, just north of San Francisco, and his team have been getting an average of five sick California sea lions a day. The animals have leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that affects their kidneys, causing fatigue, abdominal pain and, more often than not, death.

As of October 16, Johnson's team had seen 220 sea lions with the disease, which made it the center's second largest outbreak. Since then, the center reported 29 more sea lions have been rescued and 10 of those died due to leptospirosis. More than a dozen animals are still awaiting diagnosis. The number of cases has started to slow, but if historical trends hold up, Johnson expects this outbreak to eventually surpass 2004's record of 304 cases of sea lion leptospirosis.

All told, about 70 percent of the sea lions the team tried to save have died.

Leptospirosis outbreaks among sea lions occur at fairly regular intervals, but changing ocean conditions-warmer waters and relocating fish-are affecting how the disease strikes populations along the Pacific Coast. The threats aren't new, but they're threatening in slightly new ways. Changes in marine conditions appear to be affecting the population's resiliency to this disease and others. While researchers scramble to save sick sea lions today, they are also studying what this year's outbreak can tell us about how sea lions will fare down the line.

The good news is that sea lions are fairly mobile and resilient animals. And until recently, their populations were booming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in January that California sea lions had reached carrying capacity-the number of individuals their environment can sustainably support-in 2008.

Since then, though, their numbers have fluctuated. A "blob" of unusually warm and long-lasting water moved in along the West Coast from 2013 to 2015, causing widespread algal blooms that spread a neurotoxin called domoic acid throughout the marine food chain. Sea lions with elevated levels of the toxin suffered brain damage, resulting in strokes and an impaired ability to navigate, ultimately killing most of the afflicted individuals.

The warm water also sent fish and smaller marine life out to search for cooler environments, meaning the sea lions had to travel farther to find food. The combination of more distant hunting and impaired navigation led to record numbers of stranded pups-many taken in by the Marine Mammal Center-as well as a dip in the sea lion population during those years.

But the warm water conditions also led, ironically, to a decline in cases of leptospirosis during that time. Over the past decade, scientists have determined that the disease, which spreads via a parasite, is endemic to the population. Some animals carry the disease and don't get sick, but they do excrete the parasites in their urine, which is how it spreads to other individuals. When sea lions haul out on a pier or beach, they freely roll around in each other's pee.

When the blob of warm water appeared, sea lions had to swim farther to find food and had less time to haul out and be social, Johnson says, meaning less time sitting around in each other's pee and parasites-and fewer cases of leptospirosis. But the lack of the disease a few years ago led to consequences today. Sea lions that get leptospirosis and survive develop antibodies that fend off the parasite in the future, says Katie Prager, a veterinarian researcher at UCLA's Lloyd-Smith Laboratory who collaborates with the Marine Mammal Center. These antibodies, however, cannot be inherited by offspring.

"It's not something that can be passed on," Prager says. "Antibodies are something that the pup has to develop on its own."

The warm waters meant fewer sick sea lions, but it left the population very vulnerable. Now the disease is back with a vengeance.

"A lot of the animals are now naive to that bacteria and their immune systems haven't been exposed to that," says Alissa Deming, a veterinarian researcher at Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama who previously studied sea lion diseases at the Marine Mammal Research Center. "There is a group of animals that haven't seen this before."

The risk, according to the researchers, is that continued domoic acid outbreaks could result in a vicious cycle-fewer cases of leptospirosis produce unexposed populations, and then major outbreaks flare up like we are seeing this year.

"This is a great example of how environmental change has so much impact on a wild species-all the way from where they eat, where they migrate and how their diseases change over time, just based on a few degrees' increase," Johnson says.

The first documented case of a marine mammal suffering from the domoic acid toxin was in 1998, and the events are now increasing in frequency-so much so that the spread of domoic acid has become a yearly sign of the changing seasons around San Francisco Bay. "The days are getting shorter, pumpkin spice lattes are here and once again, it's time for that other Bay Area rite of fall: worrying about the levels of toxins in local Dungeness crabs," begins a recent San Francisco Chronicle article on the influence of the toxin on the start of crabbing season.

Sea lions don't wait for permission from the Department of Public Health before they start eating crabs, though.

To exacerbate the issue even more, an El Nino event is predicted over the coming months, meaning warmer ocean waters off the West Coast and possibly more algal blooms and toxins. Already, Southern California waters-where researchers have found some of the highest concentrations of diatoms that produce domoic acid-have had record high temperatures this year.

NOAA has even deemed the recent warm-water years a "climate change stress test" for West Coast oceans. The agency said the conditions "may offer previews of anthropogenic climate change impacts projected for the latter part of the 21st century."

If this has been a test, sea lions might not have passed, says Robert DeLong, a scientist with NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center. DeLong has been studying California sea lions for decades at their breeding grounds, Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. He says the species should be pretty resilient in the face of climate change, but the rate of warming waters is proving a major challenge.

The center of the West Coast sea lion population is around Baja California, so the species has adapted to warmer water than is currently being seen farther north up the coast. "They have that capability to live in warmer water," DeLong says. And unlike, say, coral reefs, sea lions are very mobile, able to swim long distances to find suitable habitats.

But while males can chase food far up north, during the breeding season females are tied to a small radius around the rookery. If there is less food available there because fish have moved to cooler waters, it could present a major problem for sea lion mothers and their pups.

"So if this is what climate change looks like, and this period is an adequate proxy, if that's really the case, then sea lions may not do as well as we would think," DeLong says.

There are still signs of hope. Sea lions are increasingly moving north to new breeding grounds off the San Francisco Bay, for instance. The limiting factor is time.

"If the environmental changes are slow enough to adapt, they'll be able to move and will probably move farther up the coast," Johnson said. "If changes are slow enough, I could see them being able to adapt."

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Major Disease Outbreak Strikes California Sea Lions

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Shawn Johnson knew it was coming. "Last fall, we saw a few cases," he said. "And that was a warning signal, so we were prepared-well, we weren't prepared for this level of an outbreak."

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"Tracy K. Smith said on her daily poetry podcast The Slowdown, “All animals allowed to live free and wild protect something holy in the world.”31 I agree. All animals. Including us." (Gumb, chapter 10)

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Tracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. She studied at Harvard University, where she joined the Dark Room Collective, a reading series for writers of color. She went on to receive her MFA from Columbia University.

Smith is the author of four poetry collections, including Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and shortlisted for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her debut collection, The Body's Question (Graywolf Press, 2003), won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2002. Her second book, Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her collection Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011) won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She also edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf Press, 2018). Her fifth collection, Such Color: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in October 2021.

A starred review of Smith's work in Publisher's Weekly noted her "lyric brilliance and political impulses." A review of Duende in The New York Times Book Review stated, "The most persuasively haunted poems here are those where [Smith] casts herself not simply as a dutiful curator of personal history but a canny medium of fellow feeling and the stirrings of the collective unconscious...it's this charged air of rapt apprehension that gives her spare, fluid lines their coolly incantatory tenor."

Smith is the recipient of the 2014 Academy of American Poets Fellowship. About Smith, Academy of American Poets Chancellor Toi Derricotte said: "The surfaces of a Tracy K. Smith poem are beautiful and serene, but underneath, there is always a sense of an unknown vastness. Her poems take the risk of inviting us to imagine, as the poet does, what it is to travel in another person's shoes. The Academy is fortunate to be able to confer this fitting recognition on one of the most important poets of our time."

In 2017, Smith was appointed poet laureate of the United States. Her other awards and honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, a 2008 Essence Literary Award, a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, a fellowship from the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, and a 2005 Whiting Award. She was the Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for April 2019 and 2018, and the director of Princeton University's creative writing program. In 2021, Smith was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in New Jersey.

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Tracy K. Smith was the poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 2014 and the James Laughlin Award in 2006 for her second book, Duende. She is the Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for April 2019 and 2018.

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"The most geographically dispersed subspecies is called Pusa hispida hispida. So her hair is, in the words of the National Audubon Society, “stiffer” than that of other seals." (Gumb, chapter 12)

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Ringed seals are the smallest and most common Arctic seal. They get their name from the small, light-colored circles, or rings, that are scattered throughout the darker hair on their backs.

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"Let me be clear: the actual suffering and endangerment of marine mammals on the planet right now is caused by the extractive, destructive processes and consequences of capitalism." (Gumb, chapter 12)

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The 10 Biggest Threats Marine Mammals Face Today

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It’s a harsh world out there. And this applies to the life of marine mammals too. Here are the many problems, many human-caused, that they currently face.

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Sadiya illuminates stories that have long gone untold

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The scholar's provocative writing illuminates stories that have long gone untold.

On a clear night earlier this year, the writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman was fidgeting in a cab on the way to MOMA PS1, the contemporary-art center in Queens. The museum was holding an event to celebrate Hartman's latest book, " Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments," an account, set in New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century, that blends history and fiction to chronicle the sexual and gender rebellions of young Black women. Several artists planned to present work that illustrated Hartman's influence on them. She was nervous just thinking about it. "I'm crying on the inside," she said. "I'm this shy person, and this feels so weird."

Hartman, who is fifty-nine, wore a blue batik tunic over slim black pants and plum-shaded ankle boots. A professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, she occupies a singular position in contemporary culture: she is an academic, influenced by Michel Foucault, who has both received a MacArthur "genius" grant and appeared in a Jay-Z video. Hartman has a serene, patient demeanor, which the cultural theorist Judith Butler described as "withheld and shy, self-protective." She speaks at what seems like precisely three-quarters speed, to allow her to inspect her thoughts before releasing them. "She definitely has a bit of that holding-your-tongue thing as a power mode," the artist Arthur Jafa, a friend and collaborator of hers, told me. "She carries the universe in her head, and you can feel it in her presence." But her best friend, Tina Campt, a professor of visual culture at Brown, called her endearingly "goofy and awkward." On a recent trip to London, Campt told me, Hartman got lost returning to her hotel from a restaurant. The hotel was a block away.

At the museum, a tent had been set up in a courtyard, and a line of attendees snaked around it: artists, fashion people, writers, students, cool kids with their hair in topknots. Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, greeted Hartman with a hug and warned, "Prepare for fan-girling."

The event's curator, Thomas Lax, was waiting inside the tent to show Hartman around. (Hartman's partner, Samuel Miller, a civil-rights attorney, had stayed home in Manhattan to help their teen-age daughter study for finals.) Lax had been a graduate student of Hartman's at Columbia, and they remain in touch. "Once you're in the circle, you don't want to leave," Lax said. Jafa, wearing a brocaded coat and gold-heeled boots, surveyed the crowd, which included the artists Glenn Ligon and Lorraine O'Grady. " Everybody's here," he said.

In three books and a series of essays, Hartman has explored the interior lives of enslaved people and their descendants, employing a method that she says "troubles the line between history and imagination." Her iconoclastic thinking on the legacy of slavery in American life has prefigured the current cultural moment. In 2008, five years before Black Lives Matter was founded, she wrote of "a past that has yet to be done, and the ongoing state of emergency in which black life remains in peril." Her writing has become a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy.

At the museum, Jafa screened footage that showed how Hartman's ideas had "infiltrated" his art-making. The choreographer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili sang a piece inspired by characters in her book: domestic workers, chorus girls, juvenile delinquents, and wanderers. The artist Cameron Rowland read from a letter written by a South Carolina planter, detailing disobedience on his plantation-a litany of impudent acts that the planter seemed not to realize constituted a campaign of sly subversion. Rowland said that the letter evoked the "legacies of Black antagonism that are part of what Saidiya calls 'acts of everyday resistance.' " As Rowland read, the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers.

When the presentations were over, Hartman sat at a table at the back of the tent, where a line of people held copies of her book for her to sign. One woman said that she was having a "small crisis" and was about to change her name.

Hartman, whose given name is Valarie, responded soothingly. "That's O.K.," she said. "Which name do you want it signed to?" Another asked for advice on graduate programs; Hartman invited the woman to come see her at Columbia.

After the signing, a group of celebrants headed out to an Italian restaurant nearby. Hartman sat in the middle of a long table, the reluctant center of gravity. "She's royalty for us," Jafa said. "We're celebrating her, but we're also celebrating ourselves. It's a victory dance for the marginal, edgy, weirdo Black nerds."

Hartman grew up in Brooklyn, but her people on her mother's side are from Alabama. According to family lore, their forebears were enslaved first in Mississippi, but a slaveowner sold one of them to an Alabama plantation, to pay a debt. As a girl, Hartman occasionally visited Alabama during the summer, and remembers long Baptist services and cold bottles of Coca-Cola; her great-grandfather took her on country drives, pointing out farms that had once been owned by Black folks. The drives "deeply marked me," Hartman told me. But she also felt out of place in the conservative circles that her family occupied. "That Black social world was defined by a class and color hierarchy that was so extreme," she said.

Her mother, Beryle, grew up in Montgomery, among churchgoing activists; she and her parents took part in the bus boycott of the nineteen-fifties. During segregation, the family was proudly middle-class: one relative was among the first Black doctors in Selma, and another was a Tuskegee Airman. Beryle went to Tuskegee University and then to Tennessee State, where she studied social work. She was also schooled in propriety, encouraged to wear white gloves and forbidden to have male visitors in her dorm.

During college, Beryle met Virgilio Hartman, a private stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base. Her parents did not approve; Virgilio hadn't attended college, and he didn't come from the right kind of people. His family, immigrants to New York from Curaçao, were hardworking strivers, but, Hartman recalled, "there was less keeping up with the Joneses."

In Brooklyn, Hartman's parents' closest friends were a Jewish lesbian couple; her own friends were the children of immigrants from Panama and Haiti. Her mother took her and the neighborhood kids to the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art, and to see shows like " For Colored Girls. . . . " Her father, a policeman, encouraged her to attend the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School.

Hartman, surrounded by people of varied ethnicities, considered herself a New Yorker first. Audre Lorde's daughter was a schoolmate; she also hung out with "privileged, disaffected white kids." She wrote poetry, played classical guitar, joined a physics club for a month. She wore overalls, flannel shirts, and a "wild Afro," to fit in with her leftist crew and also to reject the "Black American princess" image that her mother wanted her to present.

Hartman's early experience of politics was "simple and direct and radical," she said. She joined socialist organizations and reproductive-rights groups. While in high school, she interviewed the radical writer Amiri Baraka, and asked if there was a more effective way than poetry to bring about societal change. "Yes," he told her. "The gun." But her own inclinations were less combative. A few years before, her parents had sent her to a Black-nationalist summer camp in Crown Heights. On a camp trip to Pennsylvania, she accidentally stepped on the foot of a white boy and apologized. A counsellor told her that she should never apologize to a white person, and to go step on his foot again. Hartman made her way back to the boy and brushed his foot with hers. She vowed never to return to the camp.

Hartman was "questing," she said. After high school, she spent a year at Wesleyan, and then a year in a film program at New York University-an unhappy experience at what she describes as "vocational school for white guys from Long Island." Returning to Wesleyan, she sat in on a course on feminism, taught by Judith Butler. "She was so smart that I thought the windows were gonna blow out," Butler, who now teaches Hartman's books, said. "The quickness of her mind and the sharpness of her critique were breathtaking."

Hartman's mentors were working to erode the dominance of European perspectives. Hazel Carby gave Hartman a Marxist view of African-American, Caribbean, and African histories; Gayatri Spivak introduced her to post-structuralism, which holds that the truth of events is inextricably tied to the language used to describe them. Hartman began thinking about the invisible framework that governed her (relatively charmed) life as a young Black woman. "I wanted to understand the inequality that was structuring the world-even as I was feeling that it had not made anything impossible for me," she said. She changed her name from Valarie to Saidiya, which is derived from the Swahili word for "to help." The change, she wrote later, "extirpated all evidence of upstanding Negroes and their striving bastard heirs, and confirmed my place in the company of poor Black girls-Tamikas, Roqueshas, and Shanequas." (Her family called her by the new name reluctantly.)

Hartman was still marked by the experiences of her youth: following the rules down South, roaming free in New York. "I'm both a pessimist and a wild dreamer," she told me. She imagined getting involved in radical politics, going to Grenada to join Maurice Bishop's Black-liberation movement. Instead, she went to graduate school at Yale, and studied voraciously. The playwright Lynn Nottage, who met her there, recalled, "At parties, I'd be rocking to the music, and she'd be standing back trying to interrogate what was happening. I'd say, 'Just come into the party,' and she would be analyzing the lyrics to the song, how people are dancing, the gender and racial dynamics."

For her doctoral thesis, Hartman planned to write about the blues. But when she read Foucault's work on the ways that people are subjected to power, she saw a chance to do something new. Foucault, she realized, was "not thinking about Black people or slavery in the Americas." Her thesis would examine how totalizing, violent domination had shaped the status and agency of enslaved people.

The result was " Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America," which argued, in dense and provocative detail, that Emancipation constituted another phase of enslavement for Black Americans, as they moved from the plantations to the punitive controls of the Black Codes and Jim Crow. Hartman was illuminating what she calls the "afterlife of slavery": limited access to health care and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment-the "skewed life chances" that Black people still face, and the furious desire for freedom that comes with them. As Butler put it, "The question she returns to again and again is: 'Did slavery ever really end?' "

That question had been the subject of earlier scholarship; Hartman's book, with its compelling portrayal of lives caught between cruelty and resistance, helped move it toward the mainstream. Frank B. Wilderson III, a former student of Hartman's who now chairs the department of African-American studies at the University of California, Irvine, described her as quietly persuasive. "She's not an 'angry Black woman,' " he told me. "She's not Assata Shakur. But what they don't know is that, where Assata Shakur will blow your head off, Saidiya has just put a stiletto between your ribs."

Wilderson interviewed Hartman in 2002 for an article called "The Position of the Unthought." In it, he criticized scholars of African-American history for underplaying the "terror of their evidence in order to propose some kind of coherent, hopeful solution"; he praised "Scenes of Subjection" for exposing the unrelenting violence of slavery. Hartman agreed that turning that legacy into a narrative of uplift was "obscene." But she has always been interested in portraying the agency of Black people. In "Scenes of Subjection," her subjects endure vicious circumstances through acts of imagination, making a way out of no way; they evaded work on plantations and, after Emancipation, refused to enter into contracts with their former masters. Hartman told me that her goal was to shift Black lives from the "object of scholarly analysis" to the basis for an "argument that challenged the assumptions of history." Once, while she was discussing "Scenes of Subjection" with her class at Columbia, a student expressed surprise that she gave the words of a slave the same weight as those of Foucault. "Yeah," she responded. "Exactly."

One rainy evening, I visited Hartman at the apartment that she shares with her family, in a stately building on the Upper West Side. Her labradoodle was barking excitedly, and Miller pulled him into the kitchen so that Hartman and I could talk in the living room. Behind her was a book-crammed study, with two handsome desks. Academic work has given Hartman a comfortable life-the apartment, provided by Columbia, is spacious, with hardwood floors, West African-cloth table runners, and a view of Riverside Park. But it has also, at times, been at odds with her creative instincts. She told me that she went to graduate school with no intention of becoming a professor: "I didn't have a trust fund, and I wanted to continue to study." That initial ambivalence has never really gone away.

Hartman's first teaching job was at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received early tenure on the strength of her draft of "Scenes of Subjection." The chair of the English department told her that, since she now had tenure, there was no need to finish the book. Hartman was taken aback, but ultimately she found freedom in her colleagues' low expectations. "As a Black woman intellectual, I am at the bottom of the food chain," she said during a talk at the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles. But "within that space of no one taking me seriously, there was also all this space to work."

At Berkeley, Hartman wanted to reckon with the ways in which violence had been used to enforce social order. She also wanted to write with a resonance that was uncommon in scholarly literature. "I wanted to be a Wailer," she said-a member of Bob Marley's band. "What does it mean to describe Trench Town, in Jamaica, but be describing the world? What does it mean to have that kind of power articulating a condition, with poetry and beauty?"

Hartman is well versed in academic discourse; she sometimes describes her work as an effort to "topple the hierarchy of discourse" and to "jeopardize the status of the event." But she can also write with striking intimacy, evoking the feelings and the conditions of Black life. In her second book, a kind of anti-memoir called " Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route," she described a pervasive sense of dispossession:

Two people meeting on the avenue will ask, 'Is this where you stay?' Not, 'Is this your house?' 'I stayed here all my life' is the reply. Staying is living in a country without exercising any claims on its resources. It is the perilous condition of existing in a world in which you have no investments. It is having never resided in a place that you can say is yours.

The book grew out of a trip that Hartman took to Ghana, inspired by her great-great-grandmother Polly, who had been a slave in Alabama. As a girl, Hartman had been frustrated with the gaps in Polly's story: what she looked like, how her life had been. She wanted to investigate the rupture between Africa and the United States-the oceanic graveyard that transformed free people into slaves and, she believes, shaped the identity of the Black diaspora. "The routes traveled by strangers were as close to a mother country as I would come," she writes. In Ghana, she retraced the paths of captives, from ancestral villages to holding cells. But, instead of the words of enslaved Africans, she found only silence. Hartman wandered Accra and the Gold Coast for a year, disappointed that the Ghanaians she met saw her as an outsider, and upset that they refused to talk about African culpability in the slave trade.

The historical archive was little help. Hartman pored over records that often amounted to commercial transactions of enslaved bodies: slaver manifests, trade ledgers, food inventories, captains' logs, bills of sale. "In every line item, I saw a grave," she writes. "To read the archive is to enter a mortuary; it permits one final viewing and allows for a last glimpse of persons about to disappear into the slave hold."

The detailed narratives that did exist had been left by people like Thomas Thistlewood, a British plantation overseer in Jamaica. In his diaries, he described punishing a slave: "Gave him a moderate whipping, pickled him well, made Hector shit in his mouth, immediately put a gag in it whilst his mouth was full & made him wear it 4 or 5 hours." How could Hartman describe an enslaved life using such a passage, whose "annihilating force" revealed a great deal about Thistlewood but nothing about the slave?

Through those years, Hartman told me, "I was wrestling with what it means to have the colonial archive, the archive of the Western bourgeoisie, dictate what it is we can know about these lives." Even later, more earnest attempts at historical memory were misleading; the Works Progress Administration's slave narratives, which often had white Southerners ask formerly enslaved people about their lives, made honest responses unthinkable. Hartman had been trying to overcome the silences about Black life, but she found herself reproducing them. As she once wrote, "The loss of stories sharpens the hunger for them."

For Hartman, reckoning with history means returning again and again to old events and ideas. The writer Maggie Nelson told me that "Scenes of Subjection" is one of her favorite books, because it "uses historical record and trenchant argument to upend truisms." Nelson praised Hartman's ability to reframe events: "As a writer, she's continuing to shift the kaleidoscope and keep offering something different, like 'Now how about this? How about this?' "

In "Lose Your Mother," she wrote of a girl who was tortured to death on a British slave ship, possibly because she had refused to dance naked for the captain. The girl's death intensified a debate in England over the abolition of the slave trade. Hartman's account, re-creating the brutal killing and the trials that followed, briefly mentions another captive on the ship, a young girl who is referred to in legal documents only as Venus. After the book came out, Hartman said, "I was really haunted by that second girl."

A year later, in the essay "Venus in Two Acts," Hartman returns to the girl, criticizing herself for abandoning her. She admits to being tired of trying to tell stories based on "empty rooms, and silence, and lives reduced to waste," and wonders how to wring more from the archive. "What else is there to know?" she writes. "Hers is the same fate as every other Black Venus: no one remembered her name or recorded the things she said, or observed that she refused to say anything at all."

Hartman began exploring "what might have been," starting with a single invented detail, of a sailor testifying that the two girls seemed like friends. In a process that she calls "critical fabulation," she imagined a narrative: two doomed children passing days together, finding solace and joy in each other's company; Venus holding her friend as she died, whispering that everything would be all right.

Hartman knew that such a counter-history would be seen as less legitimate. "History pledges to be faithful to the limits of fact, evidence, and archive," she wrote. "I wanted to write a romance that exceeded the fictions of history." But a conventional history of the girls' experience was impossible. As she noted, "There is not one extant autobiographical narrative of a female captive who survived the Middle Passage."

Still, she spends much of the essay describing her own uncertainty about what she's doing. Can stories fill in the archive? They might provide comfort, but to whom? For the dead, it is too late. In the end, Hartman decides that the goal is not to "recover" or "redeem" the dead girls but to create a fuller picture of their lives. Campt, her friend and colleague, said, "She gave us a way of seeing them, not on the terms that society wanted to see them but on their own terms."

In 2017, Arthur Jafa directed a video for the Jay-Z single "4:44," an apology for the rapper's romantic failings. Two and a half minutes in, a woman walks down a New York street, wearing a pensive, purposeful expression: Hartman. "I was totally awkward and stiff," she said, laughing as she recalled the filming. "She had a certain primness, properness," Jafa acknowledged. "But it's an image of a person thinking in motion." When Jay-Z saw a cut of the video, he asked who Hartman was. Jafa explained that she is "the archangel of Black precarity." Her presence, he said, "may not register to ninety-five per cent of his audience now, but five years down the line, ten years down the line, twenty years down the line, that's going to be one of the most powerful moments of the video."

These days, Hartman is regularly referred to by activists, social-media influencers, and woke celebrities like Jeremy O. Harris, the author of "Slave Play." Her latest book, "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments," might be her most daring; it is certainly her most popular. "After 'Scenes of Subjection' and 'Lose Your Mother,' I thought, I just can't write another book about slavery," Hartman told an interviewer at the London Review Bookshop last October. But Hartman, who describes her work as "a lot of sitting at my desk and staring off into space," has spent much of her writing life thinking about how Black people have resisted subjugation by means of "productive, creative, life-saving deviations from the norm." As she worked on the book, she began reimagining a scene from the life of W. E. B. Du Bois.

On an August day toward the end of the nineteenth century, Du Bois was on South Street in Philadelphia, amid day laborers and new migrants, pretty boys and brazen girls. Twenty-eight years old, Harvard-educated, and dressed in a gray three-piece suit, Du Bois was then a novice sociologist, hired to conduct a study of the Seventh Ward, the city's oldest Black neighborhood. Du Bois was scandalized by the slum's naked display of brawling, pleasure-seeking, and hustling; he blamed slavery's destruction of the Black family, but also the loose morals of the recent arrivals from the South. On South Street, he saw two young Black women window-shopping at a shoe store, and heard one tell the other, "That's the kind of shoes I'd buy my fellow." In Du Bois's view, "the remark fixed their life history." They must have been prostitutes, from one of the slums "where each woman supports some man from the results of her gains."

Hartman admires Du Bois, whom she sees as a model for innovative readings of the archive. In " Black Reconstruction," he narrates the lives of slaves who refused to work and who fled plantations; by describing these activities not as criminality but as a "general strike," he changed the way historians treated enslaved people.

But his telling of the encounter with the two young women felt incomplete to Hartman. "There was drama in that moment," she told me. "There's Du Bois's framing of it-but how did he look in their eyes? Why was female desire so scandalous that they could only be prostitutes?"

In "Wayward Lives," Hartman retells the scene from the women's point of view, as if she were a filmmaker, pulling back the lens to reveal characters at the margins of the frame. "They looked long and hard at all the objects on display in the shop window, expectant and dreaming of a way out," she writes. Stopping to admire a pair of boots, the color of oxblood and ivory, they imagine them worn by a "beautiful, dangerous" man, and fantasize about the adventures they might have with him. They pay no mind to Du Bois; he is just part of the hectic cityscape, an afterthought.

The young Black women in "Wayward Lives" arrived in New York and Philadelphia in the early days of the Great Migration, a generation or two removed from slavery. They were hoping for something more than what they'd left behind. What they found was decrepit slums, domestic work that felt akin to slavery, and social reformers and policemen who patrolled their most intimate activities. Laws to discourage "wayward minors" criminalized dancing, dating, and even walking in some streets. Under the guise of housing reform, young Black women were routinely arrested on "suspicion of prostitution," and sent to reformatories and workhouses. Hartman writes that they were arrested "on the threshold of their homes and inside their apartments, while exiting taxicabs, flirting at dance halls, waiting for their husbands, walking home from the cabaret with friends, enjoying an intimate act with a lover, being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Many of the city's young Black women lived in a kind of "everyday anarchy," anyway; they took lovers, had lesbian relationships, dressed and behaved as they pleased. (Black women, Hartman notes, were flappers before the term existed.) She writes of Harriet Powell, a seventeen-year-old who, despite being arrested for her "nocturnal wanderings," danced past midnight in Harlem clubs, went to movies, and rented a room where she met her lover. Powell and other Black girls in the city's sexual revolution had a freedom that their grandmothers could only dream of.

The archival material that Hartman draws on was mostly left by people who saw Black women as a "problem": journals of rent collectors, surveys of sociologists, trial transcripts and slum photographs, prison case files, interviews with psychiatrists and psychologists. To balance the portrait, Hartman does her most speculative work, exploring her subjects' shared horizon of desire and yearning. In one exchange, she writes about a white reform worker, Helen Parrish, fretting over her tenant Mamie Sharp, who saw other men besides her partner:

There was no easy way to lead into the matter of adultery, so Helen broached the issue directly. "Mamie, have you been going around town with other men? Have you?" The question was as much an accusation as inquiry. Mamie's reply was no less direct: "Yes, I like to go about as I please." Mamie didn't apologize or offer any excuses for not being able to hold steady; she did not try to temper Helen's judgment by admitting that she had been lonely.

As Hartman worked on the book, she thought of her maternal grandmother, Berdie. She had gone to college to be a teacher, but became pregnant with Beryle, and her parents threw her out of the house, raising the child themselves.

Families like Beryle's, striving for respectability in a racist world, would have been embarrassed to acknowledge women who had children out of wedlock-let alone those who did sex work or had female lovers. "There is a certain kind of uplift and progress narrative that was saying, 'Oh, no, no, don't waste any time thinking about the past. Move on. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,' " Hartman said. In "Wayward Lives," though, women like these are "sexual modernists, free lovers, radicals, and anarchists." They are visionaries, imagining a different way of life.

Hartman's rethinking of the archive has enormous appeal for readers hungry to see their identity-feminist, queer, gender-nonconforming-mirrored in the past. Part of the book's argument is that Black women originated a set of social arrangements that were once considered deviant and are now commonplace: expansive notions of family, generous intimacy and sociality, fluid romantic relationships. Black women, Hartman says, have often operated outside of gender norms, whether they wanted to or not. During slavery, they had little control over their children or their reproduction. Afterward, poverty and discrimination forced them to do things that few white women did: work for wages, lead households, and enter and leave marriages freely. If they could not meet expectations set by white men, that allowed them to conduct experiments in living. The poet and theorist Fred Moten told me, "Saidiya does the very crucial work of expanding our understanding of the Black radical tradition," revealing that it is "fundamentally the work of working-class Black women and young Black girls."

But the historian Annette Gordon-Reed, writing recently in the New York Review of Books, wondered if Hartman was projecting political aims onto people driven by necessity. She considered the case of Mattie Nelson, who, on the way to a sexual awakening, lost a baby in a teen-age pregnancy and was painfully abandoned by several male lovers. "If Nelson were given the choice between living a precarious life, depending upon men whom society prevented from realizing their potential, and being a wife and mother under circumstances available to white middle- and upper-class women, there is no reason to assume she would not have opted for the latter," Gordon-Reed wrote. "We live after a sustained critique of bourgeois values and lifestyles, decades in the making. Nelson did not." For Hartman, though, rebels don't need to be motivated by ideology, or even to consider themselves revolutionaries. "Many of the people who have produced radical thought have not been imagined to be involved in the task of thinking at all," she said.

In March, "Wayward Lives" won the National Book Critics Circle Award-for criticism, rather than for nonfiction or fiction. No one seemed sure how to categorize it. "The book has had a very complex reception," Hartman told me. "I've been exploring the same set of critical questions since the beginning. But some people in the university world are, like, ' "Scenes of Subjection" is the real thing. What are these other two books?' " Her publisher, W. W. Norton, had hoped for higher sales, and Hartman wondered if the book's marketing was partly to blame. The U.S. edition was published with extensive endnotes, and the interplay of factual and speculative sections may have confused readers new to her work. Her British publisher, Profile Books, classified "Wayward Lives" as both literature and history; it cut the endnotes and put them online, allowing the book to be read as creative nonfiction rather than as scholarship. "Some people told me, 'Oh, I like that novel,' " Hartman said, laughing. "I'm so unfaithful to genre, so it was fine."

But Hartman rejects the idea that her books should be understood as historical fiction. Instead, she calls her work a "history of the present"-writing that examines the past to show how it haunts our time. Many of her peers were engaged in the same project, she said; she points to the Canadian writer M. NourbeSe Philip's " Zong," a book of poems, extrapolated from legal documents, about a hundred and fifty Africans who were drowned on a British slave ship, so that the owners could collect an insurance payment.

For several decades, Black female scholars like Hortense Spillers, Sarah Haley, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Tera Hunter, Farah Griffin, and Deborah Gray White have been creatively reading the archive, reconstructing the experiences of Black women using such alternative sources as cleaning manuals, Black newspapers, musical productions, and buried correspondence. Hartman sees her work as "enabled" by these women. But, she says, "the people who I really felt provoked and solicited by have been creative writers, the novelists and poets who are making other kinds of stories." Her inspirations include Caryl Phillips, Jamaica Kincaid, and, especially, Toni Morrison, whose novel " Beloved," inspired by a single newspaper clipping, was a painstaking effort to deepen the archive.

In 1987, the year that "Beloved" was published, Morrison wrote of a process of "emotional memory" that aimed to find truth in the gaps of verifiable fact. "They straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places," she wrote. "It is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that."

In "Wayward Lives," a chorus girl at a Harlem night club finds herself in the luxurious apartment of A'Lelia Walker, the daughter of the Black hair-care entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker. The girl, Mabel Hampton, sees men and women-"voyeurs, exhibitionists, the merely curious, queers, the polyamorous, and the catholic"-stretched out on silk pillows. They are drinking champagne, eating caviar, and smoking marijuana; to Hampton's surprise, they are also having sex out in the open.

Walker-who, Hartman writes, "drank excessively, played cards with her intimates, gorged on rich food"-arrives late but makes an impression:

She conversed with her guests, wearing a little silk short set, but it might as well have been an ermine coat; she had the bearing of a queen, and wore the flimsy little outfit with a stately air. Even without her infamous riding crop, there remained something forbidding and dangerous about her.

The scene is rooted in archival fact; historians agree that Walker had queer friends, threw decadent parties, and hosted salons during the Harlem Renaissance. In an interview in 1983, Hampton recalled attending a sex party in the early twenties. "There was men and women, women and women, and men and men," she said. "And everyone did whatever they wanted to do." But the vivid specificity of Hartman's portrayal drew criticism.

"I'm uncomfortable with people making claims and drawing conclusions," A'Lelia Bundles, a journalist who is Walker's great-granddaughter, told me, "just because they want to project something onto her." Bundles, who has published several books about Walker and is working on a new biography, said that Hartman had not consulted her or examined Walker's letters. She disputed the detail of the riding crop, which suggested that Walker was interested in S & M; in Bundles's photographic archive of Walker, she never carried a crop. A private sex party "would have not been impossible," Bundles said. But her research made it seem unlikely that Walker would have led such a visibly queer life.

Hartman said that she never interviews her subjects' relatives, and pointed out that the crop appeared in earlier historians' work. She believes that the pushback revealed "an anxiety around queerness." Her goal, she said, is "not about trying to pin down an identity, but thinking about the queer networks of love and friendship, and depending on the ephemera and rumors when the archive refuses to document these lives. So much of queer life could only survive without being detected."

The historian and artist Nell Painter saw value in Hartman's interrogation of the archive: "She can raise questions for historians to do historical work that they might not have thought of." But, she told me, "her work is not history-it's literature. She has a lot to say to history, but historians do something that's somewhat different. We can't make up an archive that doesn't exist or read into the archive what we want to find." Painter believes that there is still more evidence to be found about the history of Black life. "The past changes according to what questions we ask," she said. "The archive is a living, moving thing. The sources we can put our eyes on are changing as we speak."

All historians make imaginative leaps, but filling in blanks with precise details makes some uneasy. A fellow-academic and admirer of Hartman told me, "When it comes to specific people who lived real lives, I think fiction is the only place where we should speculate."

Hartman tends to be less interested in honoring the archive than in considering "the way in which language and narrative and plot are entangled in the mechanisms of power." She argues that much of what the archive contains about enslaved people was left by people whose views were so compromised as to be effectively made-up. "Fact is simply fiction endorsed with state power . . . to maintain a fidelity to a certain set of archival limits," she said, at the Hammer Museum. "Are we going to be consigned forever to tell the same kinds of stories? Given the violence and power that has engendered this limit, why should I be faithful to that limit? Why should I respect that?"

As the coronavirus forced New York into lockdown, I visited Hartman's corner office at Columbia, where she had begun teaching a seminar remotely. A framed print of Lorna Simpson 's photograph "Two Sisters and Two Tongues" leaned against a bookcase; outside, students in graduation gowns posed for distanced photos on the steps.

The university sprawls along the southern edge of Harlem, where Hartman once lived, in a housing project with her film-school boyfriend. ("My family was mortified," she recalled.) I asked if she ever felt nostalgic when she went uptown. Looking out the window, she said, "It feels like a museum. All I see on the streets is private capital and rapaciousness, moving people of color out of New York."

A few days later, Hartman and her family left for Massachusetts, where they have a home. When I spoke to her recently, she had been at her desk, working on a project that she prefers to keep secret. "I'm very superstitious about that," she said, laughing. She would say only that it has to do with chronicling the history of the world from the perspective of Black women. She had also been gardening, rereading Morrison and Claudia Rankine, and watching "Greenleaf," a TV melodrama about a Southern Black church, with her daughter.

The news from the city had been on her mind. "Witnessing so many Black and brown people die, it was really emotionally devastating," Hartman said. As the lockdown intensified, New York assigned police to enforce social-distancing and mask-wearing rules. In six weeks, Brooklyn officers arrested forty people for violations; thirty-five were Black. Reports emerged of officers breaking up an evening cookout, swinging batons and knocking out someone's tooth.

In "Wayward Lives," Hartman lingers on the incongruous beauty of dark hallways where lovers could meet. For residents of Black neighborhoods, the halls, staircases, fire escapes, stoops, and courtyards became an extension of living spaces; if your apartment was too small or too uncomfortable, you could go a few feet outside and still feel at home. But that practice of escape has become fraught and, during the lockdown, criminalized. "You're not permitted to take up space in the public sphere," Hartman said. "We see this in gentrifying neighborhoods in New York. The new homeowners will try to pass ordinances like 'No barbecues in the front yard.' "

During the pandemic, the tense relationship between Black residents and the police worsened. Mass protests against the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, swept through the city, and video footage captured incidents of violence from officers. Black New Yorkers were not only dying from the coronavirus at twice the rate of their white neighbors; they remained disproportionately vulnerable to police brutality. But Hartman saw reason for hope. "Millions of people are involved in the critique of anti-Black racism and state violence," she said. "They're not settling for a tinkering with this order, but saying that the foundation of this order is slavery and settler colonialism, and that we have to build something new." They were imagining a different way of life. ♦

This article has been updated to reflect Thomas Lax's pronoun usage.

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How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life

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The scholar's provocative writing illuminates stories that have long gone untold, Alexis Okeowo writes.

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Behold, the sperm whale that eats on other whales.

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Update: This animal has been renamed! It used to be Leviathan until someone pointed out to the authors that the name had already been taken!

In today's oceans, killer whales hunt other species of whales, working in packs to take down their much bigger prey. But living whales have it easy. Those that swam off the coast of Peru around 12 million years ago were hunted by a far bigger predator, a recently discovered animal with a very appropriate name: Livyatan.

Livyatan melvillei, named after the Biblical sea monster and the author of Moby Dick author of Moby Dick, was a giant sperm whale that has just been discovered by Belgian scientist Olivier Lambert. At between 13.5 and 18.5 metres in length, it was no bigger than the modern sperm whale, but it was clearly far more formidable.

Today's sperm whale has no functional teeth in its upper jaw and only small ones in its lower jaw (which are mostly used in fights). It feeds through suction, relying on a rush of water to carry its prey into its open mouth. But Livyatan's mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long and around 4 inches wide. This was no suction feeder! Livyatan clearly grabbed its prey with a powerful bite, inflicting deep wounds and tearing off flesh as killer whales do, but with a skull three times bigger.

Livyatan was at the very top of the food chain and it must have needed a lot of food. While modern sperm whales mainly eat squid, Lambert thinks that Livyatan used its fearsome teeth to kill its own kind - the giant baleen whales. At the same point in prehistory, baleen whales started becoming much bigger and they were certainly the most common large animals in the area that Leviathan lived in. Lambert thinks that the giant predator evolved to take advantage of this rich source of energy. He says, "We think that medium-size baleen whales, rich in fat, would have been very convenient prey for Livyatan ."

It's perhaps no coincidence that the biggest shark in history - the mighty Megalodon - also appeared at the same time in the same part of the world. It too was thought to have hunted whales and many of its teeth have also been found at Cerro Colorado. For the moment, it's hard to say if the two predators were direct competitors, since they may have swum in different parts of the Peruvian seas. Lambert speculates that the adults of either species could have eaten the young of the other but there's no evidence for this yet.

In the last few years, other smaller prehistoric sperm whales have been found in Peru and Italy. Their powerful teeth told us that these predators bit their prey in the manner of killer whales. The teeth were generally quite small but, as early as 1877, fossil hunters have found much larger teeth that looked very much like those of a sperm whale. The teeth provided tantalising hints of a much bigger animal but they were never accompanied by an actual skull. Their owner remained an enigma.

Lambert set out to find that skull in 2006, leading several expeditions into Peru's Pisco-Ica desert. The digs weren't fruitful but the team's luck took a turn for the amazing at the very end. "In November 2008, on the last day of the field trip, my Dutch colleague Klaas Post discovered a very large cetacean skull," says Lambert. "Usually large skulls belong to baleen whales, but Klaas immediately noted enormous teeth, both on the upper and lower jaw." They had found Livyatan.

The skull is beautifully adapted to capture large, powerful prey. The snout was short and wide, allowing it to bite more strongly with its front teeth and resist the struggles of its prey. Its temporal fossa - the shallow depression on the side of the skull - was enormous and could old huge jaw-closing muscles. The bite would have been the largest of any tetrapod (the animal group that includes mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians). And the teeth were deeply embedded in the jaw bones for each support, and interlocked to give the animal a shearing, meat-carving bite. They were also angled forwards, giving Livyatan a better grip on prey with curved bodies.

The skull also creates a mystery. Sperm whales have a unique organ in their heads called the spermaceti, and Livyatan's was particularly large. The spermaceti is full of a waxy substance that was originally thought to be the animal's sperm (hence the name). Its purpose isn't clear although there are many theories, all of which must now be considered in the light of Livyatan 's very different lifestyle.

The sperm whale might use it to control its buoyancy during a dive by pumping in cold water, solidifying the wax and increasing the density of its head. At the depths, the energy expended during a hunt heats up the wax and melts it again. But Livyatan probably didn't hunt for squid and probably wasn't a deep-diver like the modern sperm whale. In light of this, other explanations become more intriguing. The case containing the spermaceti could be used as a battering ram during fights. It could also boost the sperm whale's echolocation, allowing it to stun its prey with sound, or woo females (the male's organ is particularly big).

Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09067

More on ancient whales:

If the citation link isn't working, read why here

Livyatan

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Behold Livyatan: the sperm whale that killed other whales

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Update: This animal has been renamed! It used to be Leviathan until someone pointed out to the authors that the name had already been taken! In today's oceans, killer whales hunt other species of whales, working in packs to take down their much bigger prey. But living whales have it easy.

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How do whales go deep without needing to take a breath so fast?

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Whales have unique adaptations that allow them to go on long dives. They are capable of collapsing their lungs during dives to prevent damage from the increasing pressure. To further protect their collapsing lung, they have a jointed rib cage that allows their thoracic cavity to collapse with their lungs.

Not only that, whales and seals have evolved to have high quantities of non-stick version of myoglobin - an oxygen-binding protein found in the muscles of mammals. This lets them store oxygen in their muscles in addition to that in the blood. This adaptation also allows them to maintain low levels of aerobic metabolism during their dives.

Deep-diving marine mammals limit the gas exchange from lungs to blood during dives. They do so to prevent excess nitrogen bubble accumulation, which could otherwise result in decompression sickness.

When diving, whales use their limited supply of oxygen strategically. They slow their heart rate down, which results in minimal flow of oxygen. To top it all off, several organs undergo anaerobic metabolism resulting in a redirection of available oxygen to organs, such as the heart and the brain. Unfortunately, anaerobic metabolism results in production of lactate because of which longer diving marine mammals have to spend more time at the surface to get back to the pre-dive lactic acid levels before going on another dive.

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How do whales go on long dives? - Baleines en direct

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Whales have unique adaptations that allow them to go on long dives. They are capable of collapsing their lungs during dives to prevent damage from the increasing pressure. To further protect their collapsing lung, they have a jointed rib cage that allows their thoracic cavity to collapse with their lungs.

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"She is sharp as she needs to be and determined to breathe even in frozen places. Not every Black unicorn is showing you her horn. But some of us are here reorganizing your daydreams. You are welcome." (Gumb, chapter 16)

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A surprise nursery of one of the world's most elusive whales has been spotted in photographs taken from planes.

Narwhals, the single-tusked whales of the Arctic that have been dubbed the "unicorns of the sea", are classified as "near-threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But protecting these animals is hard, partly because we don't know how many there are.

The animals spend about 80 per cent of their time under the water's surface, and more than half the year in deep offshore waters below dense pack ice during the dark Arctic winter.

But in summer, the narwhals move to coastal inlets, where they give birth, giving us a chance to count them. About every five years, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) uses aerial photographs taken from planes to assess the numbers of narwhals living in the Canadian Arctic - about three quarters of their global population.

By studying these photos, Bertrand Charry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues have managed to systematically count the number of baby narwhals there for the first time, a crucial step towards understanding how stable this population is.

Aerial count

Charry worked with photographs from a 2013 DFO aerial survey of narwhals taken 300 metres above Eclipse Sound and Admiralty Inlet off the northern part of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Zooming in, he used factors such as size, colour and proximity to their presumed mothers to discern which individuals were newborns.

Colour was a clue because newborns are white or a lighter grey than adults. Babies also typically stick within two body lengths of their mother, Charry says.

He found a surprising difference in their distribution. Of an estimated 35,000 narwhals in Admiralty Inlet, Charry found that less than 0.05 per cent were newborns, whereas in a smaller population of around 10,000 narwhals in Eclipse Sound, newborns made up nearly 5 per cent of group.

This suggests Eclipse Sound could be an important narwhal calving and nursery habitat. Charry presented his results at the ArcticNet conference in Vancouver last month.

Noise pollution

The finding may help the DFO and Nunavut Wildlife Management Board to create effective catch limits for narwhals. The summer catch limit for 2015-16 is 217 narwhals for Eclipse Sound, and 216 for Admiralty Inlet. For the sake of sustaining the narwhal population, it may be a good idea to reduce the numbers caught in the nursery population at Eclipse Sound, to avoid affecting nursing mothers or their young.

Eclipse Sound happens to be on the shipping route of a new Baffinland iron-ore mine, and this shipping activity might also affect the newly identified nursery. The company shipped its first load from Milne Port on Eclipse Sound in August 2015, and is in the process of ramping up production.

The increased shipping traffic may increase the noise pollution in these relatively pristine waters.

This could be a problem because, like all whales, "narwhals are a sound-centred species", says Valeria Vergara, who researches marine mammals at Vancouver Aquarium. "Mothers and calves are a critical sector of the population, and shipping noise could affect the ability of mothers to hear their calves," she says.

Read more: " The world's weirdest whale: Hunt for the sea unicorn "
Image credits: Top: Paul Nicklen/National Geographic/Getty; second and third images: Bertrand Charry/Bruce Head Narwhal Study/Courtesy of Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation

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Elusive narwhal babies spotted gathering at Canadian nursery

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A surprise nursery of one of the world's most elusive whales has been spotted in photographs taken from planes. Narwhals, the single-tusked whales of the Arctic that have been dubbed the "unicorns of the sea", are classified as "near-threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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"When she is underwater, the oxygen she needs is the oxygen she has. Her blood breathes for her through her muscles as she descends as deep as 1,500 feet. Deep enough for what she needs to do." (Gumb, chapter 17)

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Harbor seals are one of the most common marine mammals along the U.S. West and East Coasts. They are commonly seen resting on rocks and beaches along the coast and on floating ice in glacial fjords with their head and rear flippers elevated in a "banana-like" position.

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Elephant seals snuggle for a whole month among family and friends like it is a full-time job.

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Elephant Seal Pictures

View all of our Elephant Seal pictures in the gallery.

Brocken Inaglory / Creative Commons
View all of the Elephant Seal images! Elephant seals can dive more than 5,000 feet into the ocean and can hold their breath for two hours.
The trunk-like nose of this seal makes it easy to see how it got its name. The average lifespan of a northern elephant seal is nine years while an elephant seal living in the Antarctic region can live from 20 to 22 years. Male seals can weigh up to 4.5 tons. They are carnivores living on a diet of squid, fish, rays, penguins, and some small species of sharks.

5 Elephant Seal Facts

* These seals spend approximately nine months of the year in the water.

* They are excellent swimmers but move awkwardly while on land.

* Male elephant seals are called bulls.

* These seals were hunted in the 19th century until they were almost extinct.

* An elephant seal becomes an adult at three years of age.

Elephant Seal Scientific Name

The scientific name for these seals is Mirounga. Mirounga, or 'miouroung,' is an Australian aboriginal word meaning seal. The elephant seal belongs to the Phocidae family and the class Mammalia.

There are two species of elephant seal: northern ( Mirounga angustirostris) and southern ( Mirounga leonina).

Elephant Seal Appearance and Behavior

These seals are covered in a layer of light or dark tan or grayish fur. While male seals have a large trunk-like nose, also called a proboscis, female seals have a nose that's normal in size. These seals have a large, round face, dark eyes, and whiskers.

Its two short front flippers have nails on the ends that look like long, dark fingernails. Its back flippers are webbed, making this creature one of the most expert swimmers in the ocean!

Male seals are much larger than females. A male northern elephant seal can weigh as much as 4,400 pounds and grow to over 13 feet in length. A female weighs around 1,300 pounds and grows to be about 10 feet long. Alternatively, a male southern elephant seal weighs around 11,000 pounds and grows to be about 16 feet in length! A female seal of this species weighs around 2,000 pounds and grows to be about 10 feet long.

For reference, a male seal weighing 4,400 pounds weighs about the same as a rhinoceros, while a female that weighs 2,000 pounds is equal in weight to two grand pianos. It's no wonder why most animals steer clear of these seals!

Looking at the length of these seals, a ten-foot elephant seal is equal in size to half of an adult giraffe. A 16-foot long seal is equal in length to two full-sized Christmas trees. A giant male elephant seal holds the record as the longest - measuring almost 22 feet!

The short front flippers and hind flippers of this seal all have a specific purpose. Its front flippers help these seals to change direction when swimming while their webbed hind flippers move them forward through the ocean. When on land, these seals use its front flippers to rock itself forward while dragging its hind flippers. It's not hard to see why this seal prefers to be in the water!

Elephant seals are both solitary and social. When they are swimming in the ocean they are solitary. But, when they return to the land and join the rookery during breeding season they become social. A group of seals has many names including a herd, a bob, a colony, or a harem (females only).

Elephant seals are extremely territorial and can be very aggressive when defending their area of shore. A male seal gathers together 40 to 50 female seals, or a harem, to stay within his territory. If one male tries to invade another's territory, it can result in a bloody, violent fight as the territory is defended. It's also very noisy. Male seals make deep, echoing sounds similar to drum beats as they fight with another male.

Elephant Seal Habitat

Northern elephant seals live in the North Pacific near Baja California, Mexico to the Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska. Southern elephant seals live in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic waters.

These seals migrate to the ocean spending several months hunting for food. Marine biologists have found male seals follow a similar path as they migrate while female seals choose different routes to travel in the ocean. In mid-December, these seals return to land to breed, heading back out to the ocean at the end of March.

The thick layers of fat on these seals keep them warm as they swim through the frigid waters of the ocean. Plus, they have specially developed lungs that deflate as they dive deeply into the ocean for food and refill with air when they resurface.

Elephant Seal Diet

What do elephant seals eat? Squid, rays, penguins, small shark, crabs, and fish are all on the menu of these carnivores. During their nine months or so spent in the ocean, they are rarely seen at the surface of the water. They are either swimming just beneath the surface or diving into the depths in search of food. These seals add a lot of fat to their bodies during these months. Once mating season begins, they begin a fasting period (they don't eat).

Elephant Seal Predators and Threats

Great white sharks and killer whales are two predators of these seals. They are so large, they have very few predators in the ocean.

However, the fishing activities of humans can be a threat to these seals. They sometimes become tangled in large commercial fishing nets leading to great injury or death. Also, these seals are sometimes hit by large ships and other ocean vessels that can result in their death.

Environmental events, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, can reduce the population of elephant seals. Seal pups that are not yet strong swimmers can be swept up and killed in these weather events.

At one time, these seals were hunted by poachers for the oil in their blubber. Now, they have legal protection against poaching activities. The conservation status of elephant seals, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is least concern.

Elephant Seal Reproduction, Babies, and Lifespan

Mating season begins in December for elephant seals. They come out of the ocean and settle onshore. The male seal elephants also called bulls, arrive at the rookery before the females. Male seals fight with one another for territory and dominance. A male seal raises the top half of its body, sometimes allowing it to stand six feet tall. Two male seals hit each other with their elephant-like noses, bite, and push each other until one gives up or is so injured it can't continue. This is a noisy, dangerous encounter!

Once the dominant male seals establish their territory, the female seals arrive from the ocean. A male seal has 40 to 50 females in his territory. A group of females is called a harem. The male mates with most of the females in the harem.

The gestation period of a female elephant seal is 11 months. Once a female seal becomes pregnant, she returns to the ocean. She'll later come back to shore and give live birth to one baby, also called a pup. A newborn seal pup weighs around 75 pounds and is covered in black fur. The pup is able to see, hear, and move right from birth.

A mother seal nurses her pup for one month, then it begins to eat solid food. The mother leaves its pup after just one month and breeds with a male before leaving the rookery to return to the ocean. A month-old elephant seal pup must learn and practice its swimming and hunting skills on its own.

The average lifespan of a northern elephant seal is nine years, while the lifespan of a southern elephant seal ranges from 20 to 22 years. Female seals usually live longer than male seals because male seals must fight for territory and sometimes receive life-shortening injuries. These seals are also vulnerable to a variety of skin diseases.

Elephant Seal Population

The population of northern elephant seals is believed to be around 127,000. There are 26,000 living near the Mexican coast, while the remainder lives off the coast of California. There are approximately 650,000 southern elephant seals in existence.

The population of these seals is either stable or increasing. That's good news, considering they almost became extinct in the 19th century due to poaching activity. Today, the conservation status of both species is least concern.

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Elephant Seal FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
How big is an elephant seal?
A male elephant seal from the north can be as large as 13 feet long and weigh 4,400 pounds. A male southern elephant seal grows to about 16 feet and can weigh up to 11,000 pounds.

A female elephant seal living in the north is about 10 feet long and weighs around 1,300 pounds. A female elephant seal living in the Antarctic region can be as long as 10 feet and weigh around 2,000 pounds.
What do elephant seals eat - are they carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores?
Elephant seals are carnivores - eating crabs, rays, small sharks, octopus, fish, and squid. An elephant seal pup that's just learning to hunt eats smaller fish and crabs to start.
What is the difference between an elephant seal and a walrus? Which is bigger?
If you've put photos of an elephant seal and a walrus side by side, you know they are similar in appearance. The main obvious difference is that a walrus has tusks, however, they also differ in size. Elephant seals are bigger than even the largest male walrus. A male Pacific walrus weighs around 1,700 pounds while a male Atlantic walrus weighs around 2,000 pounds. While male elephant seals are often at least double that.

The differences between a walrus and an elephant seal include size, habitat, and reproductive differences. Elephant seals far outweigh walruses, and walruses spend more time taking care of their young.
Where do elephant seals live?
The two species of elephant seal live in different places. The northern elephant seal lives near Baja California, toward Mexico and the Aleutian Islands as well as in the Gulf of Alaska. Southern elephant seals live in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. They are in the ocean for nine months a year and on land in a rookery for about three months.
Are elephant seals dangerous?
Elephant seals are not aggressive unless they are defending their territory or young. They would rather not encounter humans.

If you ever see an elephant seal, especially if it's on land, it's best to remain far away from it so it doesn't consider you a threat.
What Kingdom do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the Kingdom Animalia.
What phylum do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the phylum Chordata.
What class do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the class Mammalia.
What family do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the family Phocidae.
What order do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the order Carnivora.
What genus do Elephant Seals belong to?
Elephant Seals belong to the genus Mirounga.
What type of covering do Elephant Seals have?
Elephant Seals are covered in Fur.
What are some distinguishing features of Elephant Seals?
Elephant Seals have long trunk-like noses and large bodies.
What are some predators of Elephant Seals?
Predators of Elephant Seals include human, sharks, and killer whales.
What is the average litter size for a Elephant Seal?
The average litter size for a Elephant Seal is 1.
What is an interesting fact about Elephant Seals?
Elephant Seals are the largest species of seal in the world!
What is the scientific name for the Elephant Seal?
The scientific name for the Elephant Seal is Mirounga.
What is the lifespan of an Elephant Seal?
Elephant Seals can live for 18 to 22 years.

Sources

1. David Burnie, Dorling Kindersley (2011) Animal, The Definitive Visual Guide To The World's Wildlife

2. Tom Jackson, Lorenz Books (2007) The World Encyclopedia Of Animals

3. David Burnie, Kingfisher (2011) The Kingfisher Animal Encyclopedia

4. Richard Mackay, University of California Press (2009) The Atlas Of Endangered Species

5. David Burnie, Dorling Kindersley (2008) Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Animals

6. Dorling Kindersley (2006) Dorling Kindersley Encyclopedia Of Animals

7. David W. Macdonald, Oxford University Press (2010) The Encyclopedia Of Mammals

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This post may contain affiliate links to our partners like Chewy, Amazon, and others. Purchasing through these helps us further the A-Z Animals mission to educate about the world's species.. View all of our Elephant Seal pictures in the gallery. Brocken Inaglory / Creative Commons View all of the Elephant Seal images!

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A civil rights activist, writer, teacher, and filmmaker.

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Originally named Miltona Mirkin Cade at birth, Toni Cade Bambara was a civil rights activist, writer, teacher, and filmmaker. She was born in 1939 in Harlem, New York. At the age of six, she changed her name to Toni, and in 1970 she added the surname Bambara after finding it among her great-grandmother's belongings.

Bambara earned her BA in theater arts/ English at Queens College in 1959, the same year she published "Sweet Town," her first short story. She was a social investigator from 1959 to 1961, and then worked in the psychiatry department of New York City's Metropolitan Hospital. During that time she studied in Florence as well as Paris, and earned an MA degree from City College of New York in 1964. In 1965, she was hired to teach English at the City University of New York's fledgling SEEK program for economically-disadvantaged students. While there, she published short stories and became interested in film production. From 1969 to 1974 she was an associate professor of English at Livingston College.

Bambara's influence for her writings came from the streets of New York, where she experienced the teachings of Garveyites, Muslims, Pan-Africanists and Communists against the backdrop and the culture of jazz music. Along with her own work, Bambara edited a collection of short stories, poems and articles titled The Black Women (1970) and Tales and Stories for Black Folks (1971). During that time she also wrote her first screenplay, "Zora," which was produced by WGBH in Boston. A year later she published her own collection of short stories in Gorilla, My Love, edited by Toni Morrison and featuring fifteen stories on black women's relationships and self-love.

In the early 1970s, she risked travel to Communist Cuba and Viet Nam to research women, and then took a series of academic appointments at a number of universities. She published another collection of her short stories in 1977, The Sea Birds are Still Alive. In 1980, Bambara published her first novel, The Salt Eaters, which earned the American Book Award. The following year she won the Langston Hughes Society Award, another prestigious writing honor. As the decade progressed, Bambara concentrated more on script writing and television production, often with political and social messages.

Toni Cade Bambara died from colon cancer in 1995. The following year Toni Morrison posthumously published Bambara's Deep Sightings and Rescue Mission (1996).

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Originally named Miltona Mirkin Cade at birth, Toni Cade Bambara was a civil rights activist, writer, teacher, and filmmaker. She was born in 1939 in Harlem, New York. At the age of six, she changed her name to Toni, and in 1970 she added the ...