Surely ships' wakes don't go on for that long? What would the image look like if the tracers of the ships were reduced to a quarter of their size, which would be much closer to reality?
Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#32It's sped up and edited, sure. But as (relatively) simple visualisations go, that was pretty emotional.
Maybe more emotional than it needs to be though. In real time the whale would have hours or even days to get out of the way.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#33I 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…
How do you explain the 50km wakes?
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#34I'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.
Shipping noise can travel much further underwater than through the air. If the effect being shown is real then I wouldn't be shocked if sound were the culprit.
Furthermore, vessel noise has been shown [1] to be significantly detrimental to several species of whale already.
[1] https://www.sanjuanjournal.com/news/how-vessel-noise-affects...
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#35Seems like the long trail on the ships is misleading, the whale arrived to the position of the ships long after they are gone.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#36I'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…
The size and shape of the trails is misleading. If this is caused by sound waves, then they should use circles around each ship.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#37I 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…
> ...and I feel it's disingenuous.
I think you're probably right. Unfortunately that does accurately sum up the quality of reporting in The Independent pretty well.
Every newspaper in the UK has an axe to grind but, in terms of torturing the facts to suit a particular narrative, The Independent is right up there with The Daily Mail and The Express. All of them are really shoddy publications that thoughtful human beings would do well to avoid.
I also am not a marine biologist but your explanation sounds more plausible to me, especially given the size of the area represented on that map. The whale is covering pretty large distances and it's quite clear that a bunch of those movements, and oddly a lot of those where the motion seems to speed up, may well not be triggered at all by the distant movement of ships, or could just as well be it trying to catch up to ships.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Or this was the speed things came out when converted to video.
I think attributing this to malice is really not a great move, given that we can only guess here and a lot of people without advanced video knowledge wouldn't make this a conscious choice unless it is much too slow or fast
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The size and shape of the trails is misleading. If this is caused by sound waves, then they should use circles around each ship.
Thats not the point. I’m sure whales can hear the doppler shifts just as easily—or even easier—then we. And I’m sure they can deduce the direction and speed of a vessel just as well. And I’m sure being in the line of attack of something really big and really fast moving is just as stressful for a whale as it is for us.
Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
On twitter they say it is an indicator of speed. If sound is the main culprit in deterring the whale from the natural pattern, then it makes sense for a faster moving ships to have a more dramatic visual weight. That is a whale should be just as stressed of hearing something loud come at it with a high speed as we would be at seeing something big come at us on high speed.