Gray Whales in Depoe Bay

Gray Whale McFlurry flukes in Depoe Bay, OR

 

This summer I got to play with whales- Gray whales to be specific. Although most of their adventures took place under water, I learned a lot about them and got to know quite a few individuals, not only by their looks, but their inner beauty as well; or at least character traits. 

Carrie Newell is a marine biologist from Depoe Bay, Oregon who was nice enough to give me an internship this summer and teach me about the whales and identifying individuals. She has been doing this for about 20 years.  I had such a great time! I definitely recommend taking a whale-watching trip with her through Carrie’s Whale Research EcoExcursions if you get a chance! 

Gray whales have two blowholes unlike toothed whales with one.

Gray whales are known for their impressive migration every year from feeding grounds in Alaska, to their breeding and calving grounds in Baja, Mexico. But not all these whales make it all the way back up to Alaska, allowing them to cut their trip (and energy resources) down considerably. You see there are some gray whales that stay around the Pacific Northwest coastline from spring until fall, feeding close to the shoreline on mysid shrimp (which Carrie discovered). These whales are what are known as resident gray whales. These are the whales I got to know this summer. Here are highlights of a few of them.

Blanco doing his best fluking behavior.

Blanco was one of my favorites, mostly because he put on a good show and was a lady’s man. He always had a new girl he was chasing around. He was very white in his coloring, which made him stand out easily. But he seemed incapable of a good fluke. Poor guy.

Lucky flukes and shows off all the white markings on the side from killer whale tooth marks.

Lucky got his name due to all the scars he has on his body from killer whale tooth marks. He is lucky to be alive. He is a younger whale, probably born this year. Transient killer whales target calves and try and separate them from their mothers. It is obvious the killer whales got a hold of Lucky, but somehow his mother was able to fight them off.  

Flipper demonstrates "skarking", a feeding behavior.

Flipper is a whale that showed up later in the summer and has stayed around for a while. He gets his name from distinctive marks on both sides of his body that looks like a dolphin head. He tends to be fairly active and was recently seen courting a female whale named Comet.

Aurora swims by.  You can see the witch face marking right before her dorsal hump.

Aurora was the first whale that I had the honor to name. I found her to be a really beautiful whale and wanted her to have a nice name. She has a lot of unique marking on her body, including one that looks like a witch face. But her name comes from marking on her sides that reminded me of the aurora borealis. 

Fishbone swims by and you can clearly see on his dorsal hump where he gets his name.

Fishbone appeared for a few days and was even seen courting with Aurora one day. I felt so honored for the two whales I named to be crushing on each other. His name was an obvious one. The best experience on the water I had was watching him play in the seaweed. I got to see his little flipper and he even opened his mouth above water, allow us all on the boat to see his baleen filled mouth. What a treat!

Fishbone plays in some seaweeds.  You can see his flipper sticking out to the left.

You may be wondering why I share all this with you, besides the fact that whales are so cool! I think it is important to learn about the creatures of the world so we can gain better respect for them; understand the ecosystems that surround us; allow us to protect them in the future. Gray whales were once hunted to near extinction. Luckily their numbers have been increasing to healthy population levels (but not other whales species), however, they will never be fully safe in the industrial world we have created. Over-fishing is occurring right now. Ecosystems the gray whale relies on for food is being disturbed. Plastic bags are being found in stranded whale stomachs. Noise is polluting the oceans. We have a lot to overcome in protecting whales and the oceans, but I do believe the first step is education and respect.

News and Opinions- a long overdue update

I just realized it is now March and this is my first blog post of the year. What?! To be honest, I haven't been creatively cooking as much and when I do, I forget to write anything down. My life has been filled with school, applying for graduate school and doing an amazing internship with the Marine Mammal Stranding Network for the northern Oregon coast.


I've also had sad news to deal with. My cat Roy was diagnosed with abdominal cancer. I thought he wasn't going to be around much longer, but luckily the steroids he was prescribed are working miracles with him and he is doing great! So, we focus on that. Yesterday I found him on the neighbor's roof, and today we were playing chase with crumpled up paper I threw outside to distract him from attacking my other cat, Loki. I should probably go outside and pick that paper up soon. He hasn't learned fetch yet.

Anyway, I have been busy. I've been contemplating switching my blogging over to my AnimalKind blog and just write about whatever, and include recipes when I have time, post my favorite nature photos that I took, talk about animal rights, share my path to becoming a marine biologist and other wildlife adventures. What do people think?

In other news, this summer I was honored by being asked to write a guest blog post for "Stop Chasing Skinny". The response was very supportive. Today I was alerted to an obnoxious comment posted by someone who obviously just wanted to feel powerful, or whatever they get from it. So I wanted to share the link so people have a chance to read my story, and respond to the negative comment if they would like to. It is titled, "Fat Acceptance Saved My Life".

Once again it is all about whales and cafeteria food

It is hard to balance criticism and appreciation sometimes. I really appreciate how hard the cafeteria at Friday Harbor Labs works to provide for all the different dietary needs of the students and staff. I am however, tired of no thinking outside the box. No tofu scramble or even a potato veggie medley. Everything is so carb heavy and I have only seen whole grains for lunch or dinner maybe twice. They were not kidding that I would want to supplement my protein since there is vegan protein available in meals less than 25% of the time. And 90% of those times it is garbanzo beans. Variety please!

Sadly, I don’t always trust what they make for me. Majority of the cafeteria staff has been super nice. One woman, however, gives all cafeteria a bad name. She once grabbed a bowl of strawberries I had for dessert from my tray to give to a gluten free person, and told me I could have the angel food cake. I had to argue to convince her it was not vegan and so she then told me gluten free people never get dessert so I should still relinquish my strawberries. I only get dessert if they have sorbet and can tell me the ingredients. That has happened twice. Gluten free people can have ice cream and they even have special gluten free cookies for them. Just saying.

One gripe I have with the cafeteria actually has nothing to do with me. I believe that if someone has a deathly allergy to an ingredient (such a one student's peanut allergy) they should not cook with that ingredient while the person is needing the dining services. The student doesn't feel comfortable eating there for the entire day due to cross contact concerns alone, which is completely understandable.

I am sure you can tell that I am getting tired of over 3 weeks of just cafeteria food. I miss my cooking! And choice! I hope to borrow my TA’s kitchen this weekend to make a tofu scramble, and am looking forward to it.

In other news, San Juan Island is still awesome! I am doing a behavioral project of orcas and their breaching behavior, so that means driving out to the west side every day and look for them. The beginning of August they headed west and left town for almost a week, but suddenly they are back and I have had extreme luck in seeing them for a few days in a row now, while sitting out in the beautiful (but not too hot) sunshine. The other day a cool thing happened. A very small pod of orcas (about 4 of them) headed south and they seemed to have different behavior than I am use to seeing and a male orca has a super large curved dorsal fin. A classmate suggested these were transients, and she was right. After watching them for about 15 minutes, suddenly a large pod of resident orcas headed north into our view. The transients were kinda boring, but the resident orcas put on a show right away. There were breaches all over the place and then they started to forage for fish and did more breaches, and tail slaps and spy hops. It was great!!!

Oh PETA, how you annoy me!

PETA is sexist and fatphobic. They degrade anyone they can in order to further their message of animal rights. I could go on for days (or pages) about how PETA hurts the animal rights community (and message) with their use of women to “sell” animal rights, or how degrading fat people with their hate hurts their chances of people listening, and how as a fat vegan I am completely disgusted with their treatment of people.

I have heard the arguments about how so many people got involved in animal issues due to PETA, and how the fact they are so accessible allows animal rights to reach more people. There are organizations that can do all the good things PETA does, without all the bullshit. Whenever discrimination and hate is used in a campaign to support animals- it is not effective and harms the movement.

But this isn’t even what I want to discuss today. I read an article about how vegan food is being provided in San Francisco prisons- that is great! Regardless of where a person is on earth, they should be given the option of eating vegan. However, PETA was given credit for this change due to a large protest in the 90s that resulted in mass arrests. PETA had nothing to do with this action, which was a sit-in at Neiman Marcus because they sell fur.

I was arrested that day along with individuals from a large community of smaller animal rights organizations wanting to see the end of the fur trade and made their way to San Francisco for support. We did not have funding from a large organization and we were coming together as a collective to make a difference. PETA was not involved in any way, and them getting credit for this action corrupts what we were doing. PETA is not a community player. If you try to talk with them about the hateful message they perpetrate through campaigns, they will respond by ignoring you, sending form letters or attack.

I felt I had to say something because so often in the media (or assumptions by prison officials), those with the money get the credit. This happens in the corporate world all the time, and happens with PETA way too often. There are so many hard working individuals (and smaller groups) who really care about animal rights and want to make a difference for the world. To me, individuals make a larger impact than non-profits who spend half their revenue on fund-raising. You don’t need to put up a billboard with naked women and controversy to get a message across.

The presence of all the smaller organizations that day, coming together from all over the west coast to form such a strong community was amazing! I miss those days where a united effort drew people in from all over to take a stand and make a difference. There are still lots of organizations out there, so please find one that resonates with you and not let PETA represent what animal rights is all about.

Vegan Celebrity Smackdown

Natalie Portman recently told the world that she is no longer vegan, sighting her pregnancy and the difficulty to curb cravings with sweets and getting proper nutrition as the reasoning. While Natalie admits that people do have successful pregnancies as a vegan, I guess she doesn’t care enough to give it a go. Getting proper nutrition, regardless of diet, can be difficult in a world of processed foods, and even more so for a pregnant woman. However, eating a vegan diet is a great way to eat a healthy diet and just a little bit of planning will allow you to get all your needed nutrients.

It appears to me that Natalie is sidelining her morals for pure laziness. Celebrities have the money and resources to be successfully vegan, no matter the circumstances. Vegan indulgences such as cake, cookies and ice cream would be easy for her to obtain as well. She has the privilege to make a conscious decision to continue following her previous decision to not contribute to animal suffering.

I think the reason this makes me so mad (besides the fact she is contributing to the suffering of animals and knows better) is that fact she is saying to the world that veganism is difficult, that having morals is not enough to be successfully vegan and that it is okay to harm animals with your choices. Maintaining a vegan diet may be hard in some circumstances, but being pregnant in Hollywood definitely does not count.

Natalie is the second celebrity within the last six months to admit to cheating or going off a vegan diet. Late last year, Al icia Silverstone admitted to cheating on a vegan diet by eating cheese while drinking at parties. Al icia has claimed herself as a spokesperson for veganism and profits from talking and writing about a vegan diet. While some people argue that she is human and her cheese-eating just shows people that mistakes can happen and that is okay, I think she is demonstrating that veganism isn’t that significant. She is downplaying the important decision of choosing a vegan diet for the animals, the planet and our own bodies.

No one is perfect. We are all human. Al l we can do is the best we are capable of. I would rather someone be mostly vegan than not vegan at all. But I do think celebrities who stamp themselves vegan have a responsibility to not give veganism a bad name. Or dismiss it by cheating when they feel like it. These individuals are turning their back on a decision to treat animals with respect by not eating them or contribute to their suffering. This gives a message that you don’t need to take veganism seriously, which is not true at all. Hopefully the public can recognize the faults in these people, not a vegan lifestyle.