Remember when Sean Connery, playing a Russian nuclear submarine captain in The Hunt for Red October, threatened to defect to the US ? Well, a western gray whale might be doing just that. The whale, originally from a population residing in the waters off the coast of Russia, has been making a beeline for the Alaska coast since October. Oregon State's Marine Mammal Institute is tracking "Flex" the whale:
Flex departed the Kamchatka coast on 3 January. and took one week to cross most of the Bering Sea before arriving at the slope edge of the eastern Bering Sea shelf on 9 January. Since 3 January, he has covered 1,689 km in 238 hours for an average of 7.09 km/hr. Since attaining the slope edge, he has trended to the south, toward the Pribilof islands. During the last several days we have obtained individual transmissions during several orbits, so we know the tag is still attached and functioning, but not enough transmissions to obtain reliable locations. Some of this may be due to regional bad weather.This great swim is quite remarkable for a western gray - once thought to be extinct - especially considering the difficulty of crossing the Bering during the depths of winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment