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Ocean

United States Pckts Offline
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#31

18 ft tiger shark caught - Austrayliah
Today, 07:48 AM

Facebook pictures emerge claiming to show a terrifying SIX METRE shark hauled on board a fishing boat off Seven Mile beach in Lennox Head - one of Australia's most popular surfing spots

-Two photographs of a dead tiger shark, which is reportedly six metres long, have started to circulate on Facebook
-Geoff Brooks said the massive apex predator was hauled out of the water off Seven Mile beach in Lennox Head
-Reports have emerged that the shark's enormous body had been handed over to authorities with the CSIRO
-However, a spokesperson revealed that no one from CSIRO have accounted for the body


By Belinda Grant Geary For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 21:30 EST, 11 August 2015 | Updated: 22:31 EST, 11 August 2015

Photos of an enormous tiger shark's corpse have started to circulate on social media, with some claiming it was pulled out of the water in northern New South Wales over the weekend.

Geoff Brooks posted two images of the six metre apex predator to Facebook on Tuesday, claiming that the tiger shark was 'caught off 7 Mile Beach' near Lennox Head, on the northern NSW coast, at some stage over the weekend.

'As far as I'm aware; It was a kill order on a shark here on the far north coast that was identified as being responsible for a local attack.'

'And yes - it's real,' he added..................



*This image is copyright of its original author


*This image is copyright of its original author

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-Head.html
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Guatemala GuateGojira Offline
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#32

Check the trailer of this new movie "In the heart of the sea" (2015):





It's say that is based in the true history of the case of the boat Essex and the giant sperm whale that destroy it; it is say that this case inspired Melville to create "Moby Dick".

The story seems interesting. What do you think?
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United States Pckts Offline
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#33

False Killer whales tiring out juvenile/small shark then killing it
https://www.facebook.com/7NewsAdelaide/v...958027024/
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United States Pckts Offline
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#34

Cool interactive site that sizes up a diver compared to different sharks
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazi...26602509=1
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United States Pckts Offline
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#35

Killer Whale sends a Sea Lion flying...
http://www.break.com/video/killer-whale-...ir-3024760
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Italy Ngala Offline
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#36

Tiger Shark attacks an Hammerhead Shark off the coast of Louisiana.




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United States Pckts Offline
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#37

Blue Whale swimming just below the surface of a small boat.


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United States Pckts Offline
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#38
( This post was last modified: 08-09-2016, 02:06 AM by Pckts )

Tiger Shark and GWS in captivity
Looks like a adolescent Male GWS and Male Tiger




The shark was said to be 11.5ft and the tiger was said to be almost as large, the GWS ended up dying though.
GWS just don't do well in captivity and hopefully never have to.
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United States Pckts Offline
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#39

Sea Lions and Elephant Seals

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India brotherbear Offline
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#40

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/g...shark-6472 
 
Greenland Shark
Imagine having to wait a century to have sex. Such is the life of the Greenland shark—a 5-meter-long predator that may live more than 400 years, according to a new study, making it the longest lived vertebrate by at least a century. So it should come as no surprise that the females are not ready to reproduce until after they hit their 156th birthday.
The longevity of these sharks is “astonishing,” says Michael Oellermann, a cold-water physiologist at Loligo Systems in Viborg, Denmark, who was not involved with the work. That’s particularly true because oceans are quite dangerous places, he notes, where predators, food scarcity, and disease can strike at any time.
Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) had been rumored to be long-lived. In the 1930s, a fisheries biologist in Greenland tagged more than 400, only to discover that the sharks grow only about 1 centimeter a year—a sure sign that they’re in it for the long haul given how large they get. Yet scientists had been unable to figure out just how many years the sharks last.
Intrigued, marine biologist John Steffensen at the University of Copenhagen collected a piece of backbone from a  Greenland shark captured in the North Atlantic, hoping it would have growth rings he could count to age the animal. He found none, so he consulted Jan Heinemeier, an expert in radiocarbon dating at Aarhus University in Denmark. Heinemeier suggested using the shark’s eye lenses instead. His aim was not to count growth rings, but instead to measure the various forms of carbon in the lenses, which can give clues to an animal’s age. 
 
Then came the hard part. Steffensen and his graduate student Julius Nielsen spent several years collecting dead Greenland sharks, most of them accidently ensnared in trawling nets used to catch other types of fish. After that, they employed an unusual technique: They looked for high amounts of carbon-14, a heavy isotope left behind by nuclear bomb testing in the mid-1950s. Extra carbon from the resulting “bomb pulse” had infiltrated ocean ecosystems by the early 1960s, meaning that inert body parts formed during this time—in particular eye lenses—also have more of the heavy element. Using this technique, the researchers concluded that two of their sharks—both less than 2.2 meters long—were born after the 1960s. One other small shark was born right around 1963.

The team used these well-dated sharks as starting points for a growth curve that could estimate the ages of the other sharks based on their sizes. To do this, they started with the fact that newborn Greenland sharks are 42 centimeters long. They also relied on a technique researchers have long used to calculate the ages of sediments—say in an archaeological dig—based on both their radiocarbon dates and how far below the surface they happen to be. In this case, researchers correlated radiocarbon dates with shark length to calculate the age of their sharks. The oldest was 392 plus or minus 120 years, they report today in Science. That makes Greenland sharks the longest lived vertebrates on record by a huge margin; the next oldest is the bowhead whale, at 211 years old. And given the size of most pregnant females—close to 4 meters—they are at least 150 years old before they have young, the group estimates.
Oellermann is impressed not only with how old the sharks are, but also how Nielsen and his colleagues figured out their ages. “Who would have expected that nuclear bombs [one day] could help to determine the life span of marine sharks?” he asks. 
 
He and others think cold water helps lengthen the animals’ lives by slowing down their growth and biochemical activity. “Lower metabolic rate plays a big role," agrees Shawn Xu, a geneticist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “But that’s not the whole story.” Three years ago, his work in nematodes showed that cold can also activate antiaging genes that help an animal better fold proteins, get rid of DNA-damaging molecules, and even fight off infections more effectively, extending life span. The cold-activated molecules “are evolutionarily conserved” across the animal kingdom, and thus these pathways very likely exist in these sharks, too, he predicts.

Paul Butler isn’t surprised that frigid waters host such old creatures. In 2013, the sclerochronologist (a scientist who studies the growth of hard tissues in invertebrates) at Bangor University in the United Kingdom and his colleagues described a 500-year-old ocean quahog (Arctica islandica), a chowder clam found in the North Atlantic. Still, even though two multicentenarian species have turned up in the North Atlantic in just a few years, Butler is skeptical that there are many more out there awaiting discovery. “It won't be that we won't have more surprises,” he says, “but I regard these [two] as exceptions.” 
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United States Pckts Offline
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#41

Humpback whales rescue seals from orca attacks

The photo is extraordinary. In waters near the Antarctic peninsula, an enormous humpback whale floats on its back, cradling a Weddell seal on its chest and elevating it above the ocean surface. Only moments earlier, the seal was perilously close to becoming dinner for a group of hungry killer whales.
Biologist Robert Pitman snapped the image while on a research expedition in 2009 -- but it wasn't the first time he had observed this unusual protective behavior.
Just one week earlier, Pitman, a researcher with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in the NOAA Fisheries Service in California, saw a pair of humpbacks aggressively confronting killer whales that were circling a lone seal on an isolated ice floe. The humpbacks plowed between the killer whales and the trapped seal, vocalizing and churning the water with their flippers, and shielding the seal until the orcas gave up and swam away. [Daring Duos: Unlikely Animal Friends]

*This image is copyright of its original author

23 Photos

Killer whales

Pitman wrote about both encounters in an article published in the November 2009 issue of the magazine Natural History, but that was only the beginning of a much longer and more in-depth investigation. In a new study, Pitman explores dozens of examples presenting humpback whales as unlikely marine vigilantes, ganging up on predatory killer whales that try to attack other species.
His research analyzed 115 interactions that took place between humpbacks and killer whales, observed by more than 54 individuals -- scientists and non-scientists -- in ocean locations around the world and spanning 62 years, from 1951 through 2012.
The study found that large and powerful humpback whales, the only whales known to attack orcas, will band together and sometimes travel great distances to interrupt and terminate a killer whale attack, regardless of what type of animal the orca is attacking.
Humpbacks to the rescue
Adult humpbacks usually don't have much to fear from killer whales. Observers' accounts suggested that when killer whales approached humpbacks, they were targeting the more vulnerable calves or juveniles as prey, the study authors wrote.
But humpbacks frequently turned the tables on their would-be attackers. Observers also described numerous reports of humpbacks -- alone and in groups -- making the first move, approaching killer whales that were already pursuing other prey. Sometimes the orcas' victims were humpback mothers with young calves. But belligerent humpbacks also appeared when orcas pursued other whale species, or even seals and sea lions. The humpbacks would slap their tail flukes and flippers in the water, and make loud "bellowing" sounds to drive the orcas away.
Humpbacks' whale-deterring moves typically lasted for at least one hour and could extend for as long as seven hours, the authors wrote. And according to observers, the whales' intervention often allowed the orcas' prey to escape.

*This image is copyright of its original author

In Antarctica, a killer whale was attacking a crabeater seal when a pair of humpback whales (one is pictured in the background) arrived and began to harass it.

Robert L. Pitman

One account in the study described a killer whale attacking a gray whale mother and calf, when "out of nowhere, a humpback whale came trumpeting in." Four more humpbacks shortly followed, which the observer found odd because no humpbacks had been sighted in the area before then. Their timely arrival allowed both calf and mother to flee to safety, the researchers said. [Real-Life 'Zootopia': Mongooses and Warthogs Are Unlikely Pals]
Heeding distress calls
The sounds made by attacking orcas may be what draw humpbacks to the scene -- even when they're nearly a mile away, the authors suggested. Killer whales are silent and stealthy when stalking their prey, but become highly vocal once they attack. Humpbacks could recognize this sound from orca attacks on their own young, and respond even when they don't know what species the killer whale is targeting.
But why would humpbacks put themselves at risk to protect animals that aren't even their close relatives? They aren't known to mingle with seals and other whales under normal circumstances, Pitman told Live Science in an email.
"Sometimes different species will collect in an area of abundant prey," he said. "But usually there are no direct interactions."
The protection the humpbacks' behavior offers to other species is probably very welcome -- but is likely unintended, the study authors said.
"A simple behavioral rule like 'interfere with attacking killer whales' may prevent a related calf from being killed," Pitman explained, "and it may also help out other species at times."
Since the risk to a healthy adult humpback from a killer whale is low, the benefit of possibly saving a humpback calf could outweigh the high-energy cost of putting themselves in harm's way -- even if the animal they're saving isn't always a humpback, Pitman said. [Whale Album: Giants of the Deep]
Friends and allies?
There is indeed a great deal yet to be learned about the motivations of these hero humpbacks, but is the idea of animal altruism really so unusual? Animals of the same species that live in groups are known to band together to drive off a threat, to collaborate in complex construction projects, to hunt for food or to attack rivals.
And even different species that would typically never interact can form close bonds when introduced at a young age -- such as a leopard and golden retriever that were raised together in South Africa.
But do animals in the wild experience compassion or concern for other species that go beyond the need to protect themselves and their young? Animals can't tell scientists about their intentions. And while it may be tempting to interpret their behavior through a human lens, there is still much that eludes easy explanation, according to the researchers.
"I think we need to consider the possibility that altruism can be unintentional and arise out of self-interest, as we suggest for the humpbacks," Pitman said.
He said that current understanding of whale behavior is also hampered simply because whales are scarce. Whaling throughout the 20th century drastically reduced their numbers, and many populations that were nearly eliminated are only recently beginning to rebound.
"As their populations continue to recover, and we learn more about how they interact with each other and their environment, we could be in for some surprises," he added.
The findings were published online July 20 in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/humpback-wha...ca-attack/
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Italy Ngala Offline
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#42

Sizing Up Sharks, the Lords of the Sea

Good comparisons between "Homo" and several species of shark, with interesting information. Recommended.
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India sanjay Offline
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#43

Well this is awesome series of images where Killer whale take on Green turtle
Orca killing green turtle
*This image is copyright of its original author


Killer whale killing a green turtle in sea
*This image is copyright of its original author
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India Bronco Offline
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#44

Giant Sperm whales, when they are sleeping


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India parvez Offline
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#45
( This post was last modified: 11-05-2016, 03:39 PM by parvez )

(10-30-2016, 11:20 AM)Bronco Wrote: Giant Sperm whales, when they are sleeping


*This image is copyright of its original author
how do they breathe while sleeping? They seem to sleep at less than 2hours at one stretch.
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