So far, this has been a bad summer for whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Indeed, scientists say nine North Atlantic right whales have died there in the past two months, making this the deadliest year for the endangered mammal since the 1980s. “This is catastrophic,” Tonya Wimmer, director of the Marine Animal Response Society in Halifax, told Reuters. Only 500 North Atlantic right whales remain in the world, and more have been sighted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, above Nova Scotia and between Newfoundland and New Brunswick, than ever before. Scientists speculate this may be because their…

You don’t see this very often – if ever. Here’s an incredible video of a 40-ton humpback whale leaping entirely out of the water in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mbotyi, South Africa. The video was taken by Craig Capehart, a scuba diver who was sitting on his inflatable when the whale appeared nearby. Given that the average adult humpback whale weighs in at about 40-tons (the same as 24 grown hippos), it’s hard to imagine the strength required to take the leaps shown in the video. Above all, through all the acrobatics, the whale simply seems to…

What’s killing so many humpback whales? In an average year, eight humpback whales are stranded somewhere along the Atlantic Coast from Virginia to Maine. But in the past 15 months, 41 whales have died from North Carolina to Maine. Scientists at NOAA are baffled by such a large increase, calling it an “unusual mortality event.” We do know that ten of the 41 humpbacks were killed by ship collisions; they suffered from blunt force trauma or large propeller cuts. But the scientists also are puzzled about this increase, since there has not been a proportional increase in ship traffic in…