It's sped up and edited, sure. But as (relatively) simple visualisations go, that was pretty emotional.
Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#12I believe I saw this on reddit last week and I feel it's disingenuous. It's sped up and meant to make it look like the whale is frantically trying to escape while being hemmed in by ships, but a more plausible explanation is that the whale is attracted to the wakes of the passing ships. This speaks to some kind of phenomenon that creates a feeding opportunity for the whale. Perhaps a marine biologist can speak more i…
I am not a marine biologist, but worked in VFX: Of course this is sped up, watching those ships travel their routes in realtime would be a bit like watching paint dry. Certain aspects/patterns of movement will only become visible when the playback speed is changed (early 20th century theorist Walter Benjamin called this the Optical-Unconscious ). So e.g. it is easier to judge patterns in the traffic flow of vehicles…
The choice of speed seems consciously intended to make it seem more frantic than it is. It's too fast to make out what's going on. If they played it half speed, it would be closer to reality and also easier to see and understand, so why is it this fast?
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#13I'm open to an explanation. But, I think a lot of the effect of the animation is created by the dots representing the whale and ships being huge. In reality the dots would be tiny and almost never come into visible range of each other.
And the massive trails on the ships! What purpose does that serve other than to mislead?
I thought it was wake indicator or intended as a tracer
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#14I believe I saw this on reddit last week and I feel it's disingenuous. It's sped up and meant to make it look like the whale is frantically trying to escape while being hemmed in by ships, but a more plausible explanation is that the whale is attracted to the wakes of the passing ships. This speaks to some kind of phenomenon that creates a feeding opportunity for the whale. Perhaps a marine biologist can speak more i…
I saw it too there. Another commented suggested that it actually might be following to these points/paths as the ship stirs krill or used as distance markers or something. I don't really know if I believe that and haven't had a chance to read the associated study. To be fair, the ocean is a big place so I am a bit skeptical overall. I do know though, anything from the independent.co.uk URL is almost guarenteed to be…
The ocean is a big place but the animation is a congested area near Chile about 35x35 miles.
I've never sailed the golf of Ancud but in the summer on Long Island Sound in a sailboat you might have to change course 5-10 times a day or more due to traffic, and there not a lot of it.
If you don't see the informal lanes and you're trying to keep away from boats, you could spend the day taking evasive action.
My location relative to other boats is the top thing on my mind out there.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#15Amp built in without the normal way to remove it from the url and get a normal page!? No thank you, not worth viewing then. When did the independent start doing that?
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#16Didn’t watch, took too long to load. Let this be a lesson to web developers.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#17Didn’t watch, took too long to load. Let this be a lesson to web developers.
I couldn't even figure out where the animation was among all the ads.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#18I'm open to an explanation. But, I think a lot of the effect of the animation is created by the dots representing the whale and ships being huge. In reality the dots would be tiny and almost never come into visible range of each other.
I don't think the animation type influences the information in a misleading way and I think that the suggested effect is real. Whales use sound to gather information about their surroundings rather than sight. So it isn't about visibility range, but rather about auditory range. In addition, sound travels at a different speed under water (I don't know how it affects the range). The movie 'The last Giants' [1] is a doc…
In addition to the diesel engine noise most of these ships are running sonar systems which affect marine mammals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar#Effect_on_marine_mammals
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#19I'm not actually able to find the animation in the article. Not a good source.