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Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

independent.co.uk

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Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#61

Post by learnstats2 »

atoav wrote: post #4
joncrane wrote: post #2

I 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 result here is that the whale's motion looks frantic, whether it is or not. We can't even tell whether the whale is really interacting with the ships, or interacting with their wake, whether it is really avoiding, or giving chase.

A better solution would be to fast forward (faster) through the uninteresting parts and play the interesting parts close to real-time.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#62

Post by learnstats2 »

matt-attack wrote: post #45

I think to properly interpret this, you’d need to see a control case where the same whale is the same or similar area with zero ships. Do they normally just swim in that pattern? Perhaps that’s the normal manner in which they troll for krill.

I don't need a control case to observe that the whale's movement pattern at least identifies the drawn wakes.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#63

Post by chrismcb »

darkerside wrote: post #12
atoav wrote: post #4

Earlier 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?

Sure playing it at half speed works be closer to real life. But playing a week sped up to 90s isn't going to be much different.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#64

Post by darkerside »

chmod775 wrote: post #54
darkerside wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I say "seems" instead of "was". I don't want to assume it's on purpose. But I'm sure they had control over the speed of the animation. If they didn't make it look frenetic on purpose, they were incompetent in their attempt to make it describe reality. If they didn't mean it to seem that way, the responsibility is on them to fix it. This is only my opinion, but I'm sure I'm not alone.

What's your opinion on weather map/satellite images then? You are aware they're not real time and the storms/wind isn't actually moving that fast? Are the people who make them incompetent? Or would they simply be useless if played back in real time - since you would hardly be able to see any movement at all.

Wow, not sure if I'm being unclear, but I'll try again. This specific animation is issued at a speed that I think is faster than is useful. I think it is more useful and interesting to see the detailed interaction between the whale and an individual boat at a granular level. As played, you see the whale ping pong around between ships, but it's hard to get much of a sense for what is going on. I can't think of another reason for the video being that speed except that they want to imply that the whale is panicked (also the subtext of the study, so not exactly a complete stretch), or that it was an actual oversight that just so happened to make a covert emotional argument that favors their conclusion, which I consider a scientific faux pas.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#65

Post by darkerside »

chrismcb wrote: post #63
darkerside wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure playing it at half speed works be closer to real life. But playing a week sped up to 90s isn't going to be much different.

I'd much rather see focus on the whale and its interaction with individual ships. This doesn't show any of that nuance at all, and I don't know why. (But I have ideas)

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#66

Post by darkerside »

dan-robertson wrote: post #47
atoav wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Another simple hypothesis: a frantic-looking animation is more likely to get upvoted on Reddit so if 5 people posted animations at different speeds, a frantic-looking one might have a better chance at surviving

I often default to arguments like this. But I make an exception when the mistake is both inaccurate and seems to favor the conclusion chosen by the author. They should have realized this and slowed the video to avoid even the appearance of attempting to create a false implication. In my opinion.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#67

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ben509 wrote: post #59
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks in this thread are real quick to dismiss any concern for the animal and it’s habitat and that’s pretty sad. Is it so hard to believe human activity is harming these animals?

It's not an inability to believe it's true. It's more being burnt out by ritualized concern. It comes from seeing something awful that we're all supposed to be concerned about, listening to people beat their chest about it, and then the next day it's something else and those people have moved on to that and forgotten about yesterday's crisis.

If some people are responding to this study inappropriately that’s their problem. But when presented with this information I find it unhelpful for people to dismiss it and say things are fine. Things are not fine for the animals of this planet and I don’t think that should be dismissed, even if some types of people’s response to the information is annoying.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#68

Post by TaylorAlexander »

imtringued wrote: post #57
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks in this thread are real quick to dismiss any concern for the animal and it’s habitat and that’s pretty sad. Is it so hard to believe human activity is harming these animals?

It's very easy to believe and it has absolutely nothing to do with the speed and motion of ships and instead with the presence of sonar and engine and propeller noises.

What struck me about the data was how congested the area seems. We know about noise problems but I found the data very helpful in visualizing the size of the whales habitat compared to the quantity of boat traffic.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#69

Post by pvaldes »

joncrane wrote: post #2

I 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…

Whales can talk with other whales at several km. I'm unsure about what I'm seeing in the small scaled video, but there is not necessarily a physical collision here. A "Sonic wave collision" is much more probable.

Also the ocean is a 3D mass of water. A sperm whale crossing the path of a ship could be perfectly at 800m of distance while doing it. (Probably not this particular case, I assume that the antenna can only work at surface, but we should take a look to the article methodology before to conclude that the whale is moving to avoid to crash with the ship).

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#70

Post by dynamite-ready »

ben509 wrote: post #59
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks in this thread are real quick to dismiss any concern for the animal and it’s habitat and that’s pretty sad. Is it so hard to believe human activity is harming these animals?

It's not an inability to believe it's true. It's more being burnt out by ritualized concern. It comes from seeing something awful that we're all supposed to be concerned about, listening to people beat their chest about it, and then the next day it's something else and those people have moved on to that and forgotten about yesterday's crisis.

That's overtly cynical. The truth is, in many cases, we won't know what we should possibly be concerned about, unless we are offered the right information.

We all have our blind-spots, and we all have our partialities.

If 'ritualized concern' actually means, to you, that people aren't as concerned about your beliefs, as you think they should be, then that's quite different to a discussion about whether the whale in the visualisation, really feels the way I suspect it might.

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