And one more new bird...

This one from Africa. An international team of ornithologists found the western square-tailed drongo (Dicrurus occidentalis), a gray or black insect-eater whose range lies in Guinea and Nigeria.  
Here's the formal paper. The new species was visibly unique in its bill and the distinction was confirmed by DNA.  Specifically, by " possessing a significantly heavier bill and via substantial genetic divergence (6.7%) from its sister-species D. sharpei."  
Congratulation and keep loosking, folks! 

Blockbuster of a dinosaur

The great sauropods we think are the biggest land animals ever, like Argentinosaurus, hadn't come on the scene yet when this early Jurassic critter was stomping around South Africa. The article says that, while it was related to sauropods, "...the fossil shows that it evolved earlier, and independently, of sauropods." It weighed about 11.8 metric tons and was named Ledumahadi mafube, or "a giant thunderclap at dawn" in the local Sesotho language.  The fossil is about 200 million years old.
What is most peculiar are the legs: the bones are thicker than those on sauropods and indicate it retained a bit of a crouched, reptile-like posture instead of using the plan known sauropods' bodies did and standing directly over straighter legs.   It was an experiment that, as far as we know at this point, Nature played with for a while and then forgot.  

The latest little bird

This stunning-looking hummingbird, the blue-throated hillstar ( Oreotrochilus cyanolaemus,) was just described from the Andes Mountains in Ecuador.  It is, in a sad but not surprising development, already endangered: there might be 750 individuals at best, thanks largely to habitat loss.  

From the abstract:
"The geographic distribution of the new species seems to be restricted to cordillera Chilla-Tioloma-Fierro Urcu, in the southwestern highlands of Ecuador, an area historically poorly explored by ornithologists. Thus, based on its restricted distribution, apparently low population size, and lack of protection of its habitat, we evaluate it as critically endangered."

It survived to be found because much of its habitat (which extends only 100 square km) is on rugged ground. Ecuadorian biologist Francisco Sornoza had the first sighting and took the first photograph in 2017: he brought in more scientists and made a thorough study before formally describing the species in the journal The Auk.  I can't reproduce the photo here (copyright), but see the references: the blue-green "collar" of the male bird's throat is VERY striking. 

Nature still has her hidden treasures, if we find them in time. 

Here's the full citation:
Francisco Sornoza-Molina, Juan F. Freile, Jonas Nilsson, Niels Krabbe, and Elisa Bonaccorso (2018) A striking, critically endangered, new species of hillstar (Trochilidae: Oreotrochilus) from the southwestern Andes of Ecuador. The Auk: October 2018, Vol. 135, No. 4, pp. 1146-1171.

Book review: Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator

Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator   

by Jason M. Colby, Oxford University Press, 2018

This is a unique and very important book, one that fills in a chapter that’s been missing from the battle over captive cetaceans. It’s one thing to condemn orca-catching now, and most Americans do, but what did the men who created the industry think, and how did their actions affect the species and whales in general? Colby, whose father caught orcas, talked to the now-old men like Ted Griffin (capturer of the original Namu and the first man to swim with captive orcas) who created the industry. Some now oppose it: almost all consider it something that was acceptable in the 1960s. Most provocatively, many of the subjects, and Colby himself, discuss to the great irony in the orca story: that capture was traumatic and sometimes deadly to these intelligent, social animals, and yet played an important role in making humans consider the orca a creature worth protecting. While orca capture today may be, as Colby says, considered an unmitigated evil, it’s hard to argue with the belief that meeting orcas changed people's thinking. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, there were few documentaries, no modern media to spread information, and a lot of fear (I was born in 1959 and remember how they were portrayed as vicious man-killers).  One story included here is of a town which emplaced a heavy machine gun to exterminate orcas coming in to “steal” salmon, while fishermen shot them at every opportunity and the U.S. Navy waged an extermination campaign in Iceland.
Colby does not stint on describing the harm to the whales.  The various techniques for capturing orcas were all risky to the animals,even though the obvious goal was to bring them in unharmed. Many whales drowned in nets being used to capture them at sea or pen them into coves. Explosives were routinely used to herd them.  Orcas were often kept in tiny facilities with staff who knew little about them: accidents, illness, and death were consequences. Also, there was no understanding of family groups or differing populations (Colby recounts the beginnings of scientific awareness here): mixing and matching orcas led to more stress and harm.

Colby traces the modern controversy up through the Keiko/Free Willy controversy, the film Blackfish, and other recent developments, but others have also written of those things.  Colby’s real contribution here is to record how captive orcas came to be “a thing” and how their image evolved as a result.    He is resolutely even-handed, presenting the people involved as they were and are, not judging them.  This is what the best historians do, and it took some courage: I’m sure Colby will get some passionate letters for not condemning capture and the orca-hunters more than he does.  (To reveal my own bias, I think orca captivity should be phased out everywhere as quickly as practical.)  To read a cetologist's view, here is Dr. Robin Baird's review from Science.
If I have a nitpick, it's that Colby could have gone into more depth (hah) about more recent science, such as the discovery of ecotypes, to show just how limited our knowledge was in the 1960s and how this knowledge has evolved. (as mentioned above, he touches on this, but I wanted a little more). 

This outstanding book needs to be read by everyone interested in the topics of captivity, cetacean science, and human-cetacean relations. 

Two films Colby wrote about which shaped public opinion were the 1966 family film Namu (which depicted orca behavior accurately, with Ted Griffin and the original Namu in the swimming sequences) and the 1977 Jaws ripoff Orca. 

(images: fair use claimed) 

What happens at International Whaling Commission meetings?

Conservationists regard this year's meeting of the IWC as a success, as the main agenda item - a proposal from Japan to renew commercial whaling - was defeated handily.
The IWC through the 1970s was sort of a "whaler's club," setting quotas that were too high to sustain (and sometimes too high for whalers to even fill).  But the agency formally and supposedly permanently banned commercial whaling of large whales in 1986. Here are the current rules: IWC Commercial Whaling.  This has probably saved some species, most definitely the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), from extinction. There are some exceptions for indigenous peoples with whale-hunting traditions.

When the IWC gathers, as they just did in Brazil, there's a lot of politicking. Japan has sponsored admission of several small nations that didn't whale in the first place to stem the increasing tide of anti-whaling nations.  Japan sent a delegation of 66 people, while most nations send only a few (or one). It didn't help: the number of anti-whaling nations just keeps rising, with Australia and the U.S. consistently leading an anti-whaling bloc. Note the ban does not apply to smaller cetaceans: there the IWC does more study and advising than it does regulation.  In 2016, though the IWC established a Conservation Management Plan for a the Franciscana dolphin (Pontoporia blainvillei). The plan for this inhabitant of South America's Atlantic coast was the first small cetacean to be so regulated.  
And here, courtesy of the American Cetacean Society (I'm a member) and ACS National Board Member, Sabena Siddiqui, is how those meetings unfold.  

Humpbacks (image NOAA)

Book Review: Bringing Columbia Home

Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew 

By Michael Leinbach and Johnathan Ward

With Forward by Robert Crippen and Epilogue by Eileen Collins 

Arcade Publishing, 2018 

The Columbia disaster was a horrible day in history, made worse by the knowledge it was preventable.  The authors tell that story, but they also tell the story of hope and dedication and that old-fashioned and much-maligned thing called the American spirit.  

When it became clear the Shuttle's debris - and crew - had come to Earth in East Texas and Louisiana, people responded in their thousands. Entire towns became recovery centers, giving up buildings and vehicles and and everything they had to the searchers who volunteered from the recovery area and from all over America. Astronauts, farmers, truckers, rangers, engineers, Native American fire crews, and  office workers, some paid and some unpaid, swarmed over the extremely difficult terrain, swamp, and forest to find pieces that might be smaller than a dime but still mattered.  While a few jerks tried to steal pieces, and a few bad decisions were made (NASA workers had to use their vacation time for the search - that one is inexcusable), the overwhelming message is about resilience in the face of tragedy.  The authors chronicle how the mission of Columbia became a new mission for just plain folks who cooked, cleaned, refused to take NASA employees' money in their stores, and left a legacy of selfless determination and hope. 
The authors also take us to a faraway hangar, where engineers began putting the shuttle's story together, using the pieces flowing in from the field (especially those from the critical left wing)  to reconstruct the accident, learning the cause and learning the many lessons for the Shuttle program and spaceships of the future.  You'll read a lot of compelling stories of individuals, of resilience and its limits, and even a seemingly mystical event involving a stray white dog. You'll read how many different sorts of finds were important - a cassette tape in the branches of a tree, a finger-sized piece of tile from a reservoir, a watch with accident time still showing, a control panel bent so the positions of the switches from astronauts' last efforts to save the ship were preserved. One thing I didn't realize is that the mission isn't over: bits of debris can still go to carefully-vetted researchers and university programs to study the behavior of materials under stresses that can't be duplicated in test facilities. 
If you don't cry a few times reading this book, I don't know what to say to you except "Go back and read it again." Anyone interested in the history, present, or future of the space program needs to read this book.

Snailfish creep (swim) into view

They are called snailfish, and they almost deserve it. With hardly any more solid structure than an invertebrate (only the teeth and inner-ear bones are hard), these scavengers play an important roles in the deep biosphere.  They have to stay there: adjusting to the pressure means they have all-jelly bodies that fall apart at the surface unless captured at depth and brought up in a close container  (so the whole ecosystem in Meg is... yep, impossible. Only without it there's no story, so just wave the "needed fictional element"  wand and go on).  
These three new species add to our knowledge of this enigmatic and little-studied group.  Over 6,500m down, they go on their way, no more aware of the surface world than we are of alternate universes.  

Debunking Conspiracy Claims

9-11, a day of remembrance and honor, might also go down in history as "I Hate Conspiracies Day."
Facts are real things. 

Snopes isn't always right, but they are convincing here. The Pentagon conspiracy thing is especially annoying since I know people who were there. 

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/journal-endorses-911-conspiracy-theory/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bound-for-glory/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/911-pentagon-attack/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coincidences/

"They conceal information like that in books."

"They conceal information like that in books."
Remember that line from the movie Lake Placid, when someone asks how a crocodile could swim across the ocean? Well, that was in Maine, so no crocodile has (or would) swim there. But we now know the biggest crocodiles in the world swim long distances, and they are smart enough (ok, instinctive enough) to use the ocean currents.  
Saltwater crocs (which can be monsters: a big one may weigh a metric ton)  are spread over many islands of the southeastern (or southwestern, if you're looking from the United States and want to put it that way) Pacific ocean, plus the coasts of Australia, India, Malaysia, etc. They are, surprisingly, not great swimmers. But they have endurance: they can devote weeks to a sea voyage, according to satellite tracking,chomping fish or turtles along the way. One that ventured out to sea from Australia's Kennedy River stayed in the ocean for 25 days and traveled 590km, thanks to a boost from the currents. 
So that's how they swim across the ocean. 

A dove back from the dead

Brazil's Blue-eyed Ground Dove, Columbina cyanopis, seemingly vanished in 1941. It was a pretty olive/tawny, red, and blue bird (the blue appears in spots on the wings like a soldier's rank).  It was detected again by its unique song in 2015.  
Its rediscovery led to one of those momentous decisions that's inevitable when a species is found but has only a tiny population (about 12 in this case): what's the best thing to do? Protect its habitat and hope it survives? Capture it and hope it breeds in an aviary? There are never unlimited resources available, and there are hard choices - and a lot of finger-crossing and prayers - when the staff of organization with responsibility makes the call. In this case: the conservation organization SAVE Brasil bought the land where the bird still existed and created the Blue-eyed Ground-Dove Nature Reserve. 
Fingers crossed. 

A giant collection of whale news (and the most curious of whales)

These folks have put together a huge and ongoing compilation of news on our friends the cetaceans. 
Among other recent news is some good stuff: this item on B.C. humpbacks proves humans can get together and set rules that enable heavily whaled populations to rebound. 
And speaking of humpbacks, don't forget out Australian friend Migaloo. 
Humpbacks are something very unusual. They have a genus to themselves, Megaptera ("giant wing") after those huge, knobby pectoral fins.  The fins are the can't-miss field mark of this species: no other whale, even the giant blue, has a fin that size.  Despite their genetic separation from other whales, they can create hybrids: there is a documented hybrid with the much larger blue whale and a reported hybrid with a grey whale. So say hi to the humpbacks and cheer their comebacks, and don't forget to wave. 

Humpback whale (NOAA) 

Tree Kangaroo rediscovered by tourist

Cheers for the rediscovered kangaroo and for this reminder of the still-important role of observant amateurs in science. 

The Meg movie: Soggy science, decent fun

Review: The Meg

As a lover of monster movies and creature movies and anything involving marine life, I have finally watched the Meg. It’s not great, but I feared worse. It’s a good summer popcorn flick. 

SPOILERS AHEAD

The differences between the film and Steve Alten’s novel are so huge they make for two very different stories, but for the purposes of a film, the decision to shrink the timeline down to about three days and keep all the action in one patch of the Pacific works well. The pacing is very good and the visuals are terrific throughout.

Having said I enjoy the film, I will now put on my science writer hat and grumble about it.

First, the shark(s).  The shark looks a little odd, with the longitudinal strakes of a whale shark and pronounced caudal keels, but it basically works.  The CGI beast is good while it’s in the water, but never looks right when the animal is jumping (why does a shark from a deep trench cruise the surface so much, anyway)? Its appearance in the ridiculous final Jonas-v-shark shot is terribly cartoony (as is the whole shot, but the book’s way-out ending was probably unfilmable). They have, of course, opted for the largest possible version of Meg, about 75 feet: most experts make it shorter these days, but, again, it’s not enough of a problem to sink the film.

The underwater technology all looks cool as heck, but except for one scene the aquanauts seem to operate submersibles in and out of the Mariana Trench as though they are in much shallower waters. The idea the Meg can destroy a nuclear missile submarine is pretty silly, and the idea the crew is still alive at depths many times such a submarine’s crush depth really requires you to turn off your brain.  Nor can I figure out why crushed submarines explode like they were filled with nitroglycerin: you could say the big sub had torpedoes, but the entire length of the thing explodes.  The premise about the chemical layer giving the Trench a false bottom isn’t workable, but IS necessary for the story, so I’ll give that a pass.  

The reason the ecosystem below 11,000 meters has schools of fish that look just like those in near-surface waters is… what?  

The actors all look like they are having fun in their roles, which is what you want in a monster movie.   Jason Statham strikes the only false note: when he tries to be amused, his face looks like it will break. I think he was trying to convey what Jonas Taylor had been through, and how real mirth (as opposed to drunken banter) was a thing he was just starting to rediscover, but Statham overdoes underacting, if that’s possible.  The cast all works except the insanely precocious/cute child, whose presence feels forced in EVERY scene she’s in – it’s not the actress’ fault, but few of the emotions or actions in her scenes ring true for such a young child.   The rest of the cast works, though, and there’s fun to be had in the ensemble playing as egos and opinions bounce around. 

There’s no attempt to work in real science so the audience goes away with some new knowledge. Granted, that’s not the purpose of the film, but they could have done it.  For example, someone could have offered a theory of why and how a shallow-water shark switched to living under tremendous pressure how it survived the abrupt change to very slight pressure.  The one attempt at an environmental point (the evil of shark finning) is another thing that feels forced in, and nowhere is it explained why the shark is attacking random boats, which it doesn’t know have any food, and in practice the food return is very limited for a predator this size (I commented on the trailer saying the shark didn’t look the same size in all shots, but I stayed away from reading reviews and didn’t realize I was looking at two sharks.)   

The dialogue has some quippy one-liners: my favorite exchange comes when someone says, “We should seek out non-lethal options” and the reply is something like “For it or for us?” Taylor’s Finding Nemo joke is hilarious. But there are also endless cliché lines about man and nature and some real clunkers: actor Page Kennedy is saddled with stock “big black guy” lines that just HURT.

The tone is about right, but the horror moments are undercut by the PG-13 minimization of the damage done to humans, sharks, and other creatures.  There’s a reason the greatest shark movie ever (nodded to several times in this film) was an R.  If you want to scare an adult audience with sharks, they need to create the carnage real monster sharks would. 

Now, you may be saying: “Wait, I thought you LIKED this film!”  I did. It’s fun to watch, the cast is pretty good, the direction is good, and the shark has some great moments.  Just don’t use it in a marine biology class and expect an A.

From the Conference on Small Satellites

The annual Conference on Small Satellites, my favorite event next to Denver ComiCon, is history. 
I got a great reception for the paper on smallsat-enabled whale tracking. A lot of people just liked that it was different from the parade of engineers discussing the specifications of their multispectral sensors or whatever.  The topic and the Booz Allen Hamilton OceanLens(TM) visualization software embedded in the presentation woke people up a bit even after the long lunch break.  I asked for partnerships in making a better system worldwide, and a lot of people had ideas. We will see where it goes. Thanks to the great staff at Utah State University and the Space Dynamics Lab. 

Here's the paper (this version has a couple editing mistakes I missed when uploading). 
Here's the full program.

There were a lot of good presentations from government, military and civilian, all emphasizing how serious people are getting about making the most of the ever-increasing capabilities of small satellites.  NASA is dedicating $100M in investment, DARPA has a $10M small-launcher challenge on, and everyone is talking (I hope seriously) about changing old cultures to emphasize speed and flexibility. (One of the things smallsats offer is that agencies can afford to refly a mission is the launcher or spacecraft fails.)   There were plenty of industry participants, from large companies and small (or smaller companies bought by larger ones. The highly innovative Orbital Sciences is now part of Northrop Grumman.
The NG presenter on the state of the small launcher industry stunned even me by counting up over 100 launchers in development or proposed. Only a fraction of these will become operational, but for a while (after NASA retired the Scout and SpaceX moved on from the Falcon 1)  there were only a few very expensive small launchers on the market. That's clearly in the past.
A record 2,800 people attended some part of the conference.  The vibe is still there, though: the experimental, what-the-hell spirit that still exists alongside the corporate interest in hard numbers.
I can't wait for next year.

Cetacean hybrid a bit mixed up

It's an animal produced by parents, not only of different species, but different genera, but Dr. Robin Baird cautions the popular word "wholfin" for a hybrid cetacean spotted in the Pacific is not accurate. The animal, a cross between a  melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin, is still a dolphin, because the "melon-headed whale" is also a dolphin, technically.  "Calling it something like a wholphin doesn't make any sense."  Also incorrect are articles calling this one animal (male, BTW), a new species: as Baird says, "There's no evidence to suggest it's leading toward anything like species formation."
This article says it's only the third confirmed hybrid between species in the family Delphinidae in the wild. That surprised me, but I looked up my own work on this, and it may be right, as I see this:

Robin Baird wrote in 1998 that a fetus recovered from the corpse of a Dall’s porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli) proved to have an unusual father: a harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena).   Baird found this particularly intriguing because there are several other reports of unusually pigmented cetaceans with the general size and form of Dall’s porpoises.  Although Dall’s porpoises are notably variable in their pigmentation, Baird suggests  some of these cases are due to ongoing hybridization with harbor porpoises. Another intergeneric hybrid, this one between the long-beaked dolphin (Delphinus capensis) and the dusky dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obscurus) was nabbed off Peru.

In 2001, an apparent hybrid between a dusky dolphin and a southern right whale dolphin, Lissodeplhis peronii, was photographed among a school of duskies.  This very unusual-looking animal was about seven feet long, larger than normal for a dusky.  It sported a solid black upper body and was completely white underneath, lacking the intermediate shades normally present on a dusky’s body.  On the other hand (or flipper), it had black pectoral fins, whereas the right whale dolphin’s are white, and it had a small triangular dorsal fin.  Right whale dolphins have no dorsal fin at all. 

Finally, three odd-looking dolphins which washed up on an Irish beach in 1933 were identified by one expert as hybrids between the bottlenosed dolphin and Risso's dolphin.  While the match between these two species was proven viable by the incident from captivity described above, not all cetologists accept the hybrid interpretation in this case.

A few of the sources I used:

Baird, Robin, et. al., 1998.  “An intergeneric hybrid in the family Phocoenidae,” Abstract, posted to  MARMAM@UVM.UVIC.CA mailing list, March 12.   Baird, Robin.  1997.  Personal communication, March 28.   Carwardine, Mark.  1995.  Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises.  London: Dorling Kindersley.

Ellis, Richard.  2000.  Personal communication, March 10.   Ellis, Richard.  1989.  Dolphins and Porpoises.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

Naish, Darren.  2001.  Personal communication, September 28

Coming up on the Conference on Small Satellites

I've been to several space-related conferences, but Smallsat (August 6-9 for the main conference this year) is my first and favorite, my home base. While it's grown about 10-fold over the last 20 years, this is still a conference with a unifying theme - all the experts in the world, practically, on smallsats, microsatellites, and nanosatellites are in one place to talk about one thing, and that one thing has changed the world. From being looked at as toys or test vehicles, smallsats are now blanketing the planet with new capabilities in imaging, communications, weather monitoring, etc., etc.  Since the introduction of the CubeSat, a standardized 10-cm cube that allows organizations and schools all over the world to have access to space at a launch cost as low as $100K, we are growing the biggest-ever generation of young minds with space experience.  
This is the conference where you hear really amazing ideas, most of which are actually practical because smallsats have brought the cost and technology of space within reach and enabled affordable experimentation, including the ability to refly failed missions (try THAT with the Hubble Telescope). Because it's a single-track conference, everyone hears all the ideas, and the people at Utah State and its Space Dynamics Lab who put this on are amazing.
When I first went in the mid-90s, smallsats were a small pond.   For a few years there, I knew everyone in the business.  Little startup firms like the now-giant SpaceX and the now-absorbed Spectrum Astro showed up alongside the big outfits. This is still the place students and space nerds can go and ask questions of the best minds in the field, and where new ideas can be tested by presenting them to all those minds and seeing what feedback you get.  
I'll be back this year after a lamentable absence, presenting innovative thinking on the tracking of whales and dolphins using small satellites. That's another nice thing about this meeting.  Not every idea has to be worth a billion dollars. Some just make people think "We didn't know about this problem," or "That's innovative, could we help?"
So I hope you all make it, and don't miss the presentation on "Microsats and Moby Dick" on Tuesday afternoon.  See you there. 

A cool mini-doc on the placoderms

While we are on Placoderm Week (more fun than Shark Week!) here's a great episode from PBS' Eon series, exploring the development of life over, well, eons.  This interesting program posits that placoderm armor was not just for defense, but provided a reservoir for calcium the body needed by the cartilage skeleton couldn't store.  I'm not sure about this, given that sharks get along just fine without any bone, but it's an intriguing idea, and the whole show is very cool.  

My article on Dunkleosteus is out

Here it is, folks! I just received my first copy of the Prehistoric Times with my Dunkleosteus article in it. Somehow I made an editing mistake swapping out mentions of the upper and lower tail lobes in placoderms (embarrassing! the upper was almost certainly the larger) but Mike Fredericks and company did a great job of fitting all my text in along with thanks and sources. I tried to work in all the latest science on this fascinating, fearsome predator.  

(Get your very own at www.prehistorictimes.com)

Sleek little shark species named for pioneer Eugenie Clark

Eugenie Clark, the Shark Lady, was a pioneer, not only for women in marine biology, but in her many discoveries concerning sharks.  (she was, among other things, the first scientist to puncture the myth that all sharks need to keep swimming or they'll suffocate.)  Now Clark (who died a few years ago at 92) has her name on a shark, a new dogfish with a sleek silver body and startlingly large eyes.  I think the founder of the famous Mote Marine Laboratory would like that.  

A couple of blogs (Safina and Dino Toy: different but worthy!)

It's not true that this blog is so wonderful you don't need to read any others, especially since I'm not the best at posting frequent updates. But between the brilliant posts here, there are some other things to read.
For conservation, the Safina Center blog is one of the more authoritative spots ton which to alight. Dr. Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words, a book I absolutely loved, is one of the most important scientists on the planet when it comes to telling us all about the health of said planet.  (Read my review here.) 
For something completely different... the Dinosaur Toy Blog is a unique resource for all of us who love dinosaurs and their representations in models, toys, etc.  It will bring out the kid in you even as it informs.  The authors keep up on the science and critique the newest offerings of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, fish, invertebrates, etc. with an expert eye. 
Enjoy!




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