Why are we giving the AI guns? Seriously. This seems like a very bad idea. theguardian.com/us-news/2023/j…

Happy #WorldOceansDay people. In Cape Town the ocean is being delivered to your door. But I'm heading to Walvis Bay where it should be dryer. Going to deploy a hydrophone for #wopam world passive acoustic monitoring day..hoping to pick up some whale song there :)

We ran the first The African Bioacoustics Community conference with full vegetarian catering and I think it took most people at least 3 days to even notice. Great way to introduce people to vegetarian options and also reduce the various impacts of conferences

Wow ok. Bonkers indeed. But key here is that in the case of two human navies versus some glorifiedfish stealjng battle dolphins.. the humans *did not win*

Crazy crazy weather extremes kicking in globally.. honestly, it doesn't feel like personal choices are going to make much difference here, so I might as well take the private jet. This really needs a global covid style response.

Pro tip. You're not allowed to fly with a large bag of cable ties or pliers or duct tape.. looks a bit too kidnappy apparently

Am old enough to remember when whales were rare things. Did a fast run today to drop a hydrophone off the East coast of SA today...logged whales in "passing mode"..every 3mins or so for a first section.. nuts

Interesting sighting of 'twin' humpback whales recently. As Trevor Branch (moved to Bluesky) points out, only known twins (so far) as as fetuses. Several cases of 'adoption' however including these cases we described a few years ago in right whales (RG link here) bitly.ws/N9Jb

I'm still of the opinion that this is killer whales evolving from a hunter gatherer society to one using agriculture and this is just the beginning of their foray into farmed dolphin.

Nice to see our local celebrities getting immortalized internationally! Port and Starboard stickers available from Emma Luck Dr. Alison Kock Alison Towner Simon's Town Boat Co

All things killer whale tonight (and on the 21st)

This is why we are trying to learn more about killer whales and their behavior in SA. A small group of KWs if Eur are causing enough damage to boats that it's requiring whole groups of scientists to try find solutions. Here it's shark eaters and fish stealers..lots to learn still

It's been really cool having the opportunity to work on this with SAERI an the NNF_Namibia over the last year. A little out of my normal whaley box but great to expand my skills and knowledge base into this important area. Report available already. Paper submission soon

Hah thats funny. Never before knew that Marion Island is a suburb of Cape Town!

More random killer whale facts: As our killer whales around SA are unpredictable, most of our encounters are 'response driven' (i.e. rushing out the door in response to a sighting). It ALWAYS a bad time. So being a scientist I checked. Is it mostly Sunday mornings? Oddly No.

Only 5 days left to submit abstracts - African Bioacoustics Conference in Cape Town - Oct 2024. (Other continents welcome but a strong focus on building links in Africa)! Always a great conference!

On route to the #DCLDE acoustics conference in Rotterdam with Sasha Dines . A week of catching up with the latest science on detecting and classifying animal sounds Sea Search Research & Conservation

Lots of learning this week. And networking :) interesting seeing that many of the detection and classifier methods seem to be plateauing in what they can achieve. Also "the humpback problem" too many noisy variable hbw songs making it hard to find other rarer whales!