Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Stellers and orcas: 'sudden, traumatic death'

We've long heard the theory that marauding killer whales might be largely responsible for the Steller sea lion's endangered status, not lack of food or some other cause.

Now comes some intriguing new science from Oregon State University to bolster the theory.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a concept, they've now just figured out the obvious, see what happens when you go to college, simple English is a confusing subject matter?

That confusing term, and what could it mean???

KILLER WHALES?

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid, they are made stupid by education." Bertrand Russel

Can we get another OSU Study, on mankinds ignorance of simple English, where the term killer could only confuse another college graduate?

Anonymous said...

The question I have, is which stock of Steller sealion's did they implant the devices into... the western stock (endangered) or the easter stock (threatened)?

It is a no-brainer that orcas hunt sealions on the rookeries & haulouts.

Did they implant sealions out on Chiswell Island? A area within the bounds of the western stock of sealions and not considered endangered but threathened. And when they did implant, did they use dna to determine if the sealion was of eastern or western stock?

Anonymous said...

Here's a link to the actual paper cited in this post:

http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/TMVpp15.pdf

Anonymous said...

Originally the whalers out of New Bedford called them "Whale Killers" for obvious reasons. Somehow this got transposed to killer whales. I have seen this term in logbooks at the N.B. Whaling Museum.