Posted on 07/16/2024 10:49:29 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Whale watchers were treated to a rare sight on Sunday afternoon.
After a trip to Monterey Bay to see humpback whales, the captain aboard a Discovery Whale Watch boat noticed a spout and saw it belonged to a sperm whale.
Sperm whales spend between 30 and 60 minutes underwater at a time and can be hard to predict, but the company's drone was able to catch a video of the whale surfacing, per a spokesperson from Discovery Whale Watch.
When it dove underwater, they could hear it on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute hydrophone, an underwater microphone that can pick up the sounds of marine life.
A representative from Discovery Whale Watch says sperm whales are only seen once or twice a year and sometimes not at all.
This particular whale is named Papaya and is known to frequent Southern California.
Maybe he came for the golf?!
Pacific Grove does have a public course that people say is about as good as Pebble Beach, but much, much cheaper.
choot it Jacob- they aint supposed to be heer
Lots of seamen have seen sperm whales. “BJ! Cum! Look at the Sperm Whale!”
Global warming.
If you can’t get to the OP’s link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzhAn9PUiaM
Sperm whale have John D Rockefeller to thank that they aren’t extinct. In the late 19th century they were the chief source of lamp oil, and the advent of steam-powered whaling ships armed with harpoon guns led to industrialized slaughter of an animal that breeds slowly. They’d have been wiped out except Rockefeller’s Standard Oil began producing consistently high-quality (standardized) kerosene that was cheaper than whale oil.
It’s called “sperm” whale because there’s a reservoir in its head filled a white-ish oil that’s unique to its species. The reason they almost were hunted to extinction was because this “sperm oil” was superior in every respect to the oil made from the rendered blubber of other whales. A single whale could yield as much as 40 barrels of it.
Sperm oil is an extraordinarily good lubricant, doesn’t dry out, is very pressure-resistant, has a high smoke point and a low freezing point. It was once used extensively in the manufacture of steam engines, sewing machines and watches. Because it doesn’t thicken in the cold of space, it has seen use in aerospace, including Voyager, Hubble, and the ROVs sent to the moon and Mars. It’s also believed they used it to lubricate the shutters in the early spy satellites that used optical cameras, but the truth is classified, but that application certainly fits the profile.
The sperm whale also has the largest brain of any known mammal, extant or extinct, averaging about 17 lbs.
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