Adead shark washed ashore on a beach in South Africa after a hunting spree by two infamous killer whales.
The Mossel Bay-based Ocean Research Institute said that the two orcas, who have been named Port and Starboard, were spotted hunting an 8-foot great white shark around Seal Island, near Cape Town, on June 18.
The next day, a dead great white washed up on a nearby beach. However, it was not the same shark documented in the hunt.
A picture shows the great white shark that washed ashore on a beach near Cape Town in South Africa. The shark was found after two killer whales were spotted hunting a great white around Seal Island, near Cape Town, on June 18.OCEANS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Some of their shark victims were discovered washed ashore with their livers missing.
Dr. Enrico Gennari, director of the Ocean Research Institute, told Newsweek that the shark found on June 19 was “open completely.”
“Even more so than previous times. It was almost as if they put a different kind of effort into it. Before, it almost looks like the shark was pushed gently, however, yesterday the people on the boat [who witnessed the attack] described that the shark breached out of the water almost as if to get away from the orcas, and then the orcas pushed them further. And it lasted a few minutes. And the shark was being dragged around in the mouth. So it seemed like a different type of kill.”
Port and Starboard‘s predation on sharks has been going on for years. Great white sharks are an endangered species but Gennari said that human activity is a much bigger problem for the species than killer whales.
Gennari said that shark nets in the area kill between 25 and 30 great whites a year, whereas the two orcas don’t even kill half as many over a 12-month period.
While nothing can be done about the orcas, he said humans can take action to protect sharks. For example, trophy fishing is a major threat to the species
Port and Starboard first gained attention off the Western Cape of South Africa in 2015. This is when it became clear that the pair were responsible for the deaths of several broadnose sevengill sharks discovered by scuba divers.
However, they did not stop there. Between 2017 and 2019, the orcas started turning their sights on great white sharks.
The orcas presence in local waters has even caused great white populations to disperse in certain areas.
False Bay, between Cape Point and Cape Hangklip, used to be a hotspot for the endangered species. But since 2017, great whites have all but disappeared from the area.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is updating its deer hunting regulations. The department is reinstating certain restrictions on the kinds of deer that can be harvested in the southern part of the state.
In 2018, the DNR implemented a regulation to prevent chronic wasting disease, an incurable neurological condition that affects deer.
The regulation allowed hunters in parts of the Lower Peninsula where the disease was spreading rampantly to harvest deer with any number points coming off the main part of their antlers.
But statewide deer biologist Chad Stewart says there was no impact on hunters’ behaviors and no change in the number of deer getting infected.
“I think that’s going to continue to spread either with or without antler point restrictions because in some places, it’s fairly widespread,” he…
Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries, has decided to temporarily halt the hunting of fin whales until August 31. The decision follows on the heels of a report authored by a council of specialists on animal welfare, which found that fishing methods do not comply with the Act on Animal Welfare.
MAST subsequently commissioned a council on animal welfare specialists to assess whether whaling could meet the objectives of the Act on Animal Welfare. The council’s opinion was received by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries yesterday, June 19. The report concluded that the fishing method used when hunting large whales did not comply with the Act on Animal Welfare.
Given this finding, the Minister has decided to postpone the start of the whaling season, a day before whaling was set to begin, so that there is room to investigate whether it is possible to ensure that the hunting is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Act on Animal Welfare.
“I have made the decision to temporarily stop whaling in light of the unequivocal opinion of the council of animal welfare specialists,” the Minister is quoted as saying. “The conditions of the Act on Animal Welfare are inescapable in my mind: if the government and licence holders cannot guarantee welfare requirements, this activity does not have a future.”
by: W. Larry Kenney Professor of Physiology, Kinesiology and Human Performance, Penn State, Daniel Vecellio Geographer-climatologist and Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn State, Rachel Cottle Ph.D. Candidate in Exercise Physiology, Penn Stat, S. Tony Wolf Postdoctoral Researcher in Kinesiology, Penn State, The Conversation
Posted: Jun 19, 2023 / 09:00 AM EDT
Updated: Jun 19, 2023 / 11:30 AM EDT
(The Conversation) – Heat waves are becoming supercharged as the climate changes – lasting longer, becoming more frequent and getting just plain hotter. One question a lot of people are asking is: “When will it get too hot for normal daily activity as we know it, even for young, healthy adults?”
Scientists and other observers have become alarmed about the increasing frequency of extreme heat paired with high humidity, measured as “wet-bulb temperature.” During the heat waves that overtook South Asia in May and June 2022, Jacobabad, Pakistan, recorded a maximum wet-bulb temperature of 33.6 C (92.5 F) and Delhi topped that – close to the theorized upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat.
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People often point to a study published in 2010 that estimated that a wet-bulb temperature of 35 C – equal to 95 F at 100% humidity, or 115 F at 50% humidity – would be the upper limit of safety, beyond which the human body can no longer cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to maintain a stable body core temperature.
It was not until recently that this limit was tested on humans in laboratory settings. The results of these tests show an even greater cause for concern.
The PSU H.E.A.T. Project
To answer the question of “how hot is too hot?” we brought young, healthy men and women into the Noll Laboratory at Penn State University to experience heat stress in a controlled environment.
These experiments provide insight into which combinations of temperature and humidity begin to become harmful for even the healthiest humans.
S. Tony Wolf, a postdoctoral researcher in kinesiology at Penn State and co-author of this article, conducts a heat test in the Noll Laboratory as part of the PSU Human Environmental Age Thresholds project. Patrick Mansell / Penn State, CC BY-NC-ND
Each participant swallowed a small telemetry pill, which monitored their deep body or core temperature. They then sat in an environmental chamber, moving just enough to simulate the minimal activities of daily living, such as cooking and eating. Researchers slowly increased either the temperature in the chamber or the humidity and monitored when the subject’s core temperature started to rise.
That combination of temperature and humidity whereby the person’s core temperature starts to rise is called the “critical environmental limit.” Below those limits, the body is able to maintain a relatively stable core temperature over time. Above those limits, core temperature rises continuously and risk of heat-related illnesses with prolonged exposures is increased.‘Daddy to the rescue!’: Dad climbs up waterslide to help daughter who got stuck
When the body overheats, the heart has to work harder to pump blood flow to the skin to dissipate the heat, and when you’re also sweating, that decreases body fluids. In the direst case, prolonged exposure can result in heat stroke, a life-threatening problem that requires immediate and rapid cooling and medical treatment.
Our studies on young healthy men and women show that this upper environmental limit is even lower than the theorized 35 C. It’s more like a wet-bulb temperature of 31 C (88 F). That would equal 31 C at 100% humidity or 38 C (100 F) at 60% humidity.
Similar to the
Dry vs. humid environments
Current heat waves around the globe are approaching, if not exceeding, these limits.
In hot, dry environments the critical environmental limits aren’t defined by wet-bulb temperatures, because almost all the sweat the body produces evaporates, which cools the body. However, the amount humans can sweat is limited, and we also gain more heat from the higher air temperatures.
Keep in mind that these cutoffs are based solely on keeping your body temperature from rising excessively. Even lower temperatures and humidity can place stress on the heart and other body systems. And while eclipsing these limits does not necessarily present a worst-case scenario, prolonged exposure may become dire for vulnerable populations such as the elderly and those with chronic diseases.
Our experimental focus has now turned to testing older men and women, since even healthy aging makes people less heat tolerant. Adding on the increased prevalence of heart disease, respiratory problems and other health problems, as well as certain medications, can put them at even higher risk of harm. People over the age of 65 comprise some 80%-90% of heat wave casualties.
How to stay safe
Staying well hydrated and seeking areas in which to cool down – even for short periods – are important in high heat.
While more cities in the United States are expanding cooling centers to help people escape the heat, there will still be many people who will experience these dangerous conditions with no way to cool themselves.The lead author of this article, W. Larry Kenney, discusses the impact of heat stress on human health with PBS NewsHour.
Even those with access to air conditioning might not turn it on because of the high cost of energy – a common occurrence in Phoenix, Arizona – or because of large-scale power outages during heat waves or wildfires, as is becoming more common in the western U.S.
A recent study focusing on heat stress in Africa found that future climates will not be conducive to the use of even low-cost cooling systems such as “swamp coolers” as the tropical and coastal parts of Africa become more humid. These devices, which require far less energy than air conditioners, use a fan to recirculate the air across a cool, wet pad to lower the air temperature, but they become ineffective at high wet-bulb temperatures above 21 C (70 F).
All told, the evidence continues to mount that climate change is not just a problem for the future. It is one that humanity is currently facing and must tackle head-on.
Canada is on fire from coast to coast to coast. Thousands have been evacuated, millions exposed to air pollution, New York a doom orange and even the titans of Wall Street choking.
Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, back-to-back cyclones in the Pacific islands and droughts in Africa haven’t been enough to create a tipping point for action. Now that climate impacts have hit the economic capital of western power, will it spur governments in the global north to get serious?
A lack of scientific knowledge about climate change is not the barrier. Nor is a lack of cleaner, safer, cheaper energy alternatives. The IPCC said as much last year – the barrier is vested fossil fuel interests putting their profit above our safety.
We know exactly which fossil fuel companies are robbing us of clean air and a secure future. We can now measure which oil companies are responsible for wildfires (13 operate in Canada), but oil executives are still calling the shots.
Internationally, big oil has been flooding the climate talks for decades. The result? The Paris agreement doesn’t even include the words fossil fuels, oil, gas or coal. And today we are on track to produce 110% more oil, gas and coal by 2030 than the world can ever burn, or it will burn us. If we are going to manage the decline of fossil-fuel production in an equitable and fair way we need our governments to stand up to big oil and start negotiating a new international agreement on fossil fuels to complement the Paris agreement.
Back at home, as the smoke rolled in, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, promised to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. But Ottawa just backed another loan guarantee for the Trans Mountain Pipeline. “Whatever it takes” – except tackling the industries stoking the flames.
Trudeau is not alone in refusing to acknowledge the need to stop expansion of oil and gas. That same attitude – “we must act on climate change but my expansion of fossil fuels is OK” – is alive and well south of our border where Biden has recently approved the Willow project and more.
These are scary times. Global leaders declare a climate emergency while approving projects to expand oil and gas. In Canada and around the world, fossil fuel proponents are still being elected. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, used her victory speech to rally her constituents against the federal government’s plan to clean the grid as her province burns.
For more than five decades, oil and gas companies have muddled the truth and blocked progress. They’ve spent millions on PR campaigns to convince the public that expanding fossil fuels is safe, reasonable and unavoidable and that the alternatives are problematic and unreliable. It’s working. Canadians are alarmed about climate change yet are largely unaware that most of Canada’s carbon pollution comes from fossil fuels like oil and gas. Half of the public say they’re unsure whether “solar panels emit more greenhouse gases during manufacturing than they end up saving”.
These messages and those who peddle them have an impact on politics. Canada subsidises oil and gas more than any other G20 nation, averaging $14bn annually between 2018 and 2020. Now big oil is getting tax breaks for carbon capture and storage – an unproven technology that won’t change the fact that Canada needs to phase out fossil fuels. Funding the industry to continue is like giving arsonists a tinderbox to play with.
Fossil fuel companies and their executives don’t need our money. In fact, they use it against us. Take the Koch brothers, who have funded anti-climate and anti-clean energy campaigns. Or the fossil fuel industry’s Pathway Alliance in Canada that is running “Let’s Clear the Air” misinformation ads to an audience coughing and choking on their product.
Fossil fuel companies’ net-zero pledges are meaningless and we need to stop pretending we can negotiate with them. We need to start regulating them.
John Valliant, homing in on the recent Alberta election, puts it more provocatively: “Alberta politics is still a largely and wholly owned subsidiary of the petroleum industry.” And: “The petroleum industry is a wholly owned subsidiary of fire.”
Governments need to represent us, not fossil-fuel profiteers. We need plans to phase out fossil fuel production and emissions. Plans that include protections and support for communities and workers dependent on oil, gas and coal.
But that’s not enough. Wealthy fossil-fuel producing countries like Canada must support countries in the global south to be part of the transition to clean energy so it can happen in a fast and fair way.
Oil, gas and coal are burning us. Politically and now literally. That’s why 101 Nobel laureates and over 3,000 scientists are calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Six countries and 84 subnational governments have already endorsed it. It’s time for yours to get on board, too.
Researchers are making discoveries that show that horses persisted in North America well beyond the end of the Ice Age, the period long thought to be when horses became extinct on the continent.
The horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park had their origins in “Indian ponies” and early ranch stock that strayed in the Little Missouri Badlands. During the 1980s, the park targeted wild stallions for removal and introduced domestic studs, altering the herd’s bloodlines.
MEDORA, N.D. — The wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park have a mark against them in the eyes of the National Park Service: Park officials don’t consider them a native wildlife species.
Native species status is given to the bison, elk, pronghorn, white-tail and mule deer as well as prairie dogs among species of grazing mammals. Park officials say their mission is to conserve native species and their natural habitat.
Therefore, “invasive” species not recognized as native are given a lower status and priority — and, in the case of the wild horse herd and longhorn steers, both now categorized as “livestock,” have been proposed for gradual elimination from the park.
For years, the scientific consensus has been that horses became extinct in North America more than 10,000 years ago, and that horses were reintroduced to the continent about 500 years ago by Spanish explorers.
But that long-held belief is coming under increasing scrutiny, and in light of recent findings some scientists are challenging the widely accepted view that horses aren’t a native species.
Horses indisputably originated in North America, with the species today emerging 1.5 million years ago. Their equid predecessors date back much earlier — 55 million years, making them one of the earliest mammals to roam the continent.
Although scientists widely agree that the horse became extinct in North America around the time of the last Ice Age, evidence shows they migrated across the Bering Land Bridge to Europe and Asia.
Descendants of those migrant horses then were reintroduced to North America, where the species originated.
Advances in techniques for examining ancient DNA from permafrost samples reveal that horses were in the Yukon several thousand years after they were believed to have gone extinct in North America.
That evidence — just one of a string of recent discoveries — shows the lasting connection horses had to the continent, said Ross MacPhee, curator emeritus of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“Horses were present in that area right up to about 6,000 years ago,” he said.
Descendants of wild horses roam the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora, N.D. Many agree that the horses, which number about 125, are much tamer now than they were in the past.
That means that, given the current knowledge of the fossil record, there is a gap of only 5,500 years where the horse was absent from North America, a blink of an eye in the biological time scale, MacPhee said.
In fact, more recent discoveries indicate the gap in the fossil record between the presumed extinction of horses in North America and their introduction is even narrower.
The bone samples from Mexico, however, might not be for Equus caballus, the species of modern horses, but related Equus mexicanus or Equus giganteus, a giant horse breed in North America. Taxonomic work to classify the specimens continues.
Researchers have noted that dental patterns, often used to identify ancient horse species, are variably and not always reliable in determining a specimen’s species.
Equus caballus, the species that survives today, probably was the most common large land mammal in North America during the Ice Age, and their fossils have been discovered from southern Mexico to Alaska.
The team of researchers that analyzed the Mexican horse specimens noted that there is “ongoing confusion” in identifying closely related Ice Age horse species. They concluded that “horses may have persisted” in the region of Mexico they studied “well after” the late Ice Age extinction period.
The authors of the study noted that a “small contingent of researchers” has held the opinion that horses survived “well beyond” the end of the Ice Age. The researchers also noted that “more and more evidence seems to imply” that certain mammals “persisted through the presumed extinction event.”
‘Mind-boggling’ disparity
In public comments in support of keeping horses in the park, people have cited the growing body of research calling into question the extinction of horses in North America, or noting the decreasing gap in the fossil record between the time horses became extinct and were reintroduced.
Modern horses share a common general inheritance with ancestral horses that lived in North America, making the claim that horses are not a native species tenuous and not meaningful, MacPhee said.
“Why not say they’re in the same lineage?” he said. “For most people, that should be enough.”
Equus caballus — all surviving species of the horse family tree — originated in North America about 5 million years ago and lived on the continent until about 5,500 years ago — a period that far predates the migration from Eurasia of the ancestors of the modern bison about 180,000 years ago, considered the national mammal, he said.
A group that was part of an American Bison herd moves through the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park on Monday, June 9, 2014.
“I’m just flabbergasted that we can consider the buffalo as our native species,” MacPhee said.
He added: “Horses have been part of the landscape, or at least equids have been part of the landscape, for millions and millions of years.”
Many other species have disappeared since then, making the horse’s long tenure significant, he said.
MacPhee was quick to add, however, that he isn’t bothered by the bison, which has been declared the United States’ national mammal, but is troubled by the “disparity,” which he finds “mind-boggling.”
As for Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s determination that horses are not a native species, and shouldn’t be kept in the park, MacPhee has a question: “What is it that you don’t want about horses on the landscape? They’re ours.”
The horses in the park, which descended from ranch stock and stray Indian ponies, with part of the herd’s lineage traced to horses surrendered by Sitting Bull and his followers, also have historical value, MacPhee said.
“Why are you suppressing this particular species?” MacPhee asked. “What’s the point of doing that?”
Park officials have declined to answer The Forum’s questions, but have said they have “no basis” to allow horses in the park because they consider them livestock — a designation horse advocates have said is baseless.
Removing the horses, park officials have said, would allow grazing species they consider to be native, including elk, pronghorns and deer, to be more resilient with less competition for grass.
MacPhee rejects arguments that horses are tougher on grass than other browsers. Unlike bison, horses can’t digest seeds, which pass through their digestive tracts whole and are deposited on the soil, where they can grow, he said.
“They’re gardeners in a way cattle will never be,” he said.
Native status a ‘gray area’
Gus Cothran, an equine geneticist at Texas A&M University who has studied the ancestry of the horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, agreed that horses originated in North America and said “all evidence points to their extinction about 10,000 years ago.”
He added: “There is no evidence that the horse did not go extinct in North America. Trying to prove a negative is a very difficult thing.” Before going extinct in North America, horses crossed the Bering Land Bridge and made their way to Asia, Cothran said.
“All modern horses derive from the horses that were domesticated in western Asia about 4,000 years ago,” he said. “However, there is evidence that other wild horses contributed to the population, probably to a very limited extent.”
Cothran said there is no direct, unbroken link between the horses that originated in North America and modern horses.
“We have no evidence of North American horses after 10,000 years existing and contributing to the modern horse,” he said. “There are no bone discoveries that I’m aware of that are absolutely certain to be after extinction but before Columbus.”
Tourists take photos of wild horses in the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist who is executive director of the Idaho-based West Watershed Project, said the question of whether horses can be considered a species native to North America isn’t clearcut.
“Horses are in kind of a gray area with regard to this,” with differing views of whether they went extinct on the continent, he said.
In his view, given the current state of scientific knowledge, it’s not possible to say whether horses are a native or non-native species.
They are an indigenous species. “They are from here, they evolved here to this species,” Movar said.
It’s important to note, he added, that there is not an agreed-upon scientific definition of native species. “Native is not a rigorous scientific term,” he said. “It’s loose. It means what people want it to mean.”
Still, Molvar said, it’s important to acknowledge that horses and their ancient ancestors have a deep history in North America — they’re known to have been present for 53.995 million years, with an apparent absence of 0.005 million years, he said.
But new paleontological evidence keeps surfacing. “They’re making new discoveries all the time,” he said. “What you don’t know is what hasn’t been discovered so far.”
GREENWOOD CO., Kan. (WIBW) – One man was arrested after officials found he had been illegally hunting and fishing and now stands accused of identity theft as well.
TheGreenwood County Sheriff’s Officesays that on Wednesday, June 14, officials were called to a fishing pond in a rural area of the county after the owner of the property found trespassers fishing it.
When officials arrived, the Sheriff’s Office said the Greenwood Co. Game Warden found one of the trespassers, later identified as Angel Garcia, 50, had been fishing without a license.
Officials noted that the Game Warden then arrested Garcia. He was booked into the Greenwood Co. Jail on:
A map shows the sea surface temperature anomaly on Sunday, June 18. Temperatures off the coast of the UK and Ireland are several degrees higher than usual.Climate Change Institute/University of MaineCNN—
Temperatures in parts of the North Atlantic Oceanare soaringoff the charts, with an “exceptional” marine heat wave happening off the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, sparking concerns about impacts on marine life.
Parts of the North Sea are experiencing acategory 4 marine heat wave– defined as “extreme” – according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In some areas, water temperatures are up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) hotter than usual.
Global oceans have been exceptionally warm for months. April and May saw thehighest ocean surface temperaturesfor those two months since records began in 1850.
A judge has sentenced a Chisago City, Minn., man to more than 32 years after he was convicted of murder in a shooting that he claimed was a hunting accident.
John T. Quitter,37, was sentenced Tuesday in Pine County District Court after jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder and fleeing police in connection with the shooting on Sept. 6 near Hinckley that killed Colton J. Abbott, 33, of Sandstone.
Quitter’s sentence from Judge Heather Wynn of 32 years and seven months was at the top of the range recommended by state guidelines. With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Quitter is expected to serve nearly…
(Reuters) – Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that Moscow had information that Ukraine was planning to strike Russian-controlled Crimea with longer-range U.S. and British missiles and warned Russia would retaliate if that happened.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but considers it to be outside the scope of what it calls its “special military operation” which is focused in eastern and southern Ukraine where Ukraine is fighting to retake territory.
Kyiv, which says it is battling for its survival in a war of colonial conquest, says it wants to reclaim all of its territory however, including the Crimean peninsula which hosts Russia’s Black Sea naval base.
Shoigu told a meeting of military officials that Moscow had information that Ukraine planned to strike Crimea with U.S.-supplied HIMARS long-range rocket…
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Exposing the Big Game 