Posted by Juliet Linderman
Hey there Dicksters and welcome to everyone’s favorite oceanographically relevant link list. You guys ready to cast away? I thought so. Let’s go!
1. First up, in absurdly-obvious-headline news we bring you this article, entitled “Dead Whale Difficult to Move.” There really isn’t much more to say. It’s a whale and it’s dead, and it’s very heavy. And there you have it. Moving along!
2. In this season of giving, the Japanese fisheries agency would like to remind everyone not to accept whale meat gifts. For one, if you’re an elected official it’s a conflict of interest and a breach of ethics. But also: It’s not kosher, and it’s not cool. According to AP, “The agency reprimanded five officials for accepting whale meat from a fisheries company that operates the government-funded whaling programs from 1999 to 2008… The whale meat gifts totaled some 25 kilograms (55 pounds), worth more than 270,000 yen ($3,260) at market value. Don’t get your loved ones whale meat. Buy them a book or something.
3. Oops: The whale shark is featured on the new P100 Philippines currency and some people are pretty upset because whale sharks only pass through their waters, in addition to most other tropical seas. From an angry editorial that I find amusing: “We cannot impose proprietary rights to something which is merely passing through our turf or territory, only during certain times of the year, declare that to be an endemic Philippine species and then appropriate it as a national symbol. The annual migration of whale sharks each spring to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia is well-documented, coinciding as it does with the spawning of the corals of the area’s Ningaloo Reef. Going by the same reasoning, Australia has just as much right as the Philippines to adopt the whale shark as its national symbol!”
4. Instead of a “whale meat gift,” you guys should probably just buy me this.
5. Three former google dudes are starting their own social networking company, where users can dispatch information to specific “pods.” The thing is called Beluga, an homage to the family dynamic of the little sea creatures. A-dorable, even though it may or may not flop.
6. You guys: The Moby Dick Read-a-Thon approaches! Who’s coming with me?!