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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

#81

Post by kortilla »

scubazealous wrote: post #55
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…

Disclaimer: Not a marine biologist by trade but took several classes and have close friends in the profession. What people do not realize is that these whales communicate by sound and have very sensitive hearing. Boats, especially the larger ones you see being used for fishing/shipping generate a lot of noise due to powerful engines and underwater cavitation caused by their propeller spinning. This can drown out whal…

> Boats, especially the larger ones you see being used for fishing/shipping generate a lot of noise due to powerful engines and underwater cavitation caused by their propeller spinning.

A couple of things. First, that video shows you how relatively quiet the ships are unless you are right underneath the back. You can’t even hear the engine noise towards the front of the ship (which is likely why a ship the size of a city block snuck up on a scuba diver).

Second, propellers on those ships don’t cavitate unless they are misconfigured. Cavitation is inefficient and causes vibration the shipping companies are absolutely incentivized to eliminate.

There are many problems with commercial shipping (the pollution, etc), but the noise is not realistically one of them.

The much bigger noise problem is sonar.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#82

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kortilla wrote: post #80
ajnin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I witnessed an interesting phenomenon : invariably when information is presented from some article that hints at either animal intelligence or harmful influence of humans on animals, some armchair commentator will come forward with an alternate explanations that reduces the observed behaviour to a basic mechanistic instinct related to feeding or reproduction or survival. That comment will also be the most upvoted one…

> The commentator does not present additional information The commentator pointed out that the video is literally sped up which changes the entire meaning. Have you considered this has nothing to do with hating animals and entirely to do with hating articles written to create drama and/or crisis where there is none?

The commenter has unsubstabtiated opinion, no expertiese and has brought no extra factual information to support his point the discussion. Its literwlly just soreading FUD

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#83

Post by runarberg »

kortilla wrote: post #81
scubazealous wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Not a marine biologist by trade but took several classes and have close friends in the profession. What people do not realize is that these whales communicate by sound and have very sensitive hearing. Boats, especially the larger ones you see being used for fishing/shipping generate a lot of noise due to powerful engines and underwater cavitation caused by their propeller spinning. This can drown out whal…

> Boats, especially the larger ones you see being used for fishing/shipping generate a lot of noise due to powerful engines and underwater cavitation caused by their propeller spinning. A couple of things. First, that video shows you how relatively quiet the ships are unless you are right underneath the back. You can’t even hear the engine noise towards the front of the ship (which is likely why a ship the size of a…

Sound travels differently underwater. A diver senses every sound as if the source is from their own head and all sound sort of blends into one. A whale has a much easier time distinguishing different auditory signals underwater then a diver does. Furthermore, a whale can probably sense the direction the sound comes from and how fast it is moving. A diver failing to notice a giant ship is no evidence that a whale will.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#84

Post by atoav »

soheil wrote: post #71
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…

You seem to be missing the point of the OP wittingly. It's inconsequential that playing the animation at its normal speed would be a bad idea, what is also important is the effect it will have on an average reader of the Independence, the most obvious impression is that the whale is running for its life, which makes this disingenuous.

I don't know enough about how whales perceive time, distance and the unnatural disturbances coming in with the speed of sound in water to know whether the playback speed is misleading in reflecting the whales feelings or not.

The "obvious impression" you are talking about might not be as obvious as you think it is. For me at least it helped in seeing two interesting patterns: whale roams around and seems to change direction when a ship drives into it's path. Sometimes though it seems to go specifically into the area where a ship "just" drove through.

What was clear to me is that that dot would move differently without ships around it.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#85

Post by ajnin »

kortilla wrote: post #80
ajnin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I witnessed an interesting phenomenon : invariably when information is presented from some article that hints at either animal intelligence or harmful influence of humans on animals, some armchair commentator will come forward with an alternate explanations that reduces the observed behaviour to a basic mechanistic instinct related to feeding or reproduction or survival. That comment will also be the most upvoted one…

> The commentator does not present additional information The commentator pointed out that the video is literally sped up which changes the entire meaning. Have you considered this has nothing to do with hating animals and entirely to do with hating articles written to create drama and/or crisis where there is none?

The fact that the video is sped up is not new information. It is immediately known when you watch it, it says that the video shows a week in the life of a whale yet the video lasts only 45s. You can only pretend in bad faith that it is not immediately obvious that whales and boats don't travel at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour across the ocean.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#86

Post by bartread »

partingshots wrote: post #51
bartread wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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 bein…

Are there any reputable news publications you read? Subscription required is fine.

Unfortunately I can't answer that with a strong "yes". I've been considering the FT, based on a couple of recommendations (one of which was on here), but you have to go in with your eyes open: it does lean right. Newsweek isn't too bad, and the fact that it's a weekly does give it at least the sense of a bit more distance and objectivity.

The BBC is supposed to be balanced and unopinionated but they implement it in the most passive-aggressive way imaginable. What I mean by that is that sometimes their coverage simply has massive holes in it, which makes it very hard to keep abreast of unfolding events (bear in mind I don't watch the TV channels, only look at the news website). I presume that's because they won't report on something if it would give them impression of bias, but it can be pretty frustrating.

A recent example is the attack on the US Capitol: the BBC's coverage was constantly out of date, missing tons of key information. CNN, The Guardian, plenty of other news sites across the political spectrum, and even Twitter (!) were better sources of information.

Basically the BBC, at present, implements the letter of its charter whilst completely ignoring its spirit. Super-annoying.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#87

Post by runarberg »

IshKebab wrote: post #33
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…

How do you explain the 50km wakes?

They are not wakes, but speed indicators. I guess there was a choice to represent speed with length bars, as opposed to with color or numbers. Although I would expect length bars to be a natural choice made by a data scientists who is used to think of vectors as a bar with a length and a direction.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#88

Post by IshKebab »

runarberg wrote: post #87
IshKebab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you explain the 50km wakes?

They are not wakes, but speed indicators. I guess there was a choice to represent speed with length bars, as opposed to with color or numbers. Although I would expect length bars to be a natural choice made by a data scientists who is used to think of vectors as a bar with a length and a direction.

They aren't speed indicators, like how you would represent a vector field (e.g. in a quiver plot). If they were they would always be straight lines, and probably be arrows that point in the direction of travel.

The look like wakes. People will assume they are wakes.

Re: Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships

#90

Post by runarberg »

IshKebab wrote: post #88
runarberg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not wakes, but speed indicators. I guess there was a choice to represent speed with length bars, as opposed to with color or numbers. Although I would expect length bars to be a natural choice made by a data scientists who is used to think of vectors as a bar with a length and a direction.

They aren't speed indicators, like how you would represent a vector field (e.g. in a quiver plot). If they were they would always be straight lines, and probably be arrows that point in the direction of travel. The look like wakes. People will assume they are wakes.

This was explained in the Twitter thread[1].

https://twitter.com/NiklasAstrand/status/1358321916369592321

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