Talk:The Marine Mammal Center

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An entry from The Marine Mammal Center appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 28 May 2006.

	This article is part of WikiProject California, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

	This article is within the scope of the San Francisco Bay Area WikiProject, a collaborative effort to build a more detailed guide on Wikipedia's coverage of San Francisco and the Bay Area. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Acknowledgement

the creator of this article wishes to thank Dr. Tracey Goldstein, Mr. Jim Oswald, Ms. Denise Greig and Ms. Elizabeth Morgan Held of The Marine Mammal Center for valuable input to this article and review of the draft text. Their attention to detail and responses to my endless questions is much appreciated. Anlace 20:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Marine Mammal Center

yes, this is the full correct name of the Center, including the "The". cheers Anlace 20:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Success Stories

Hi Anlace: I wasn't sure you would see this if I posted it on my talk page, so I put it here as well,

I read the reference you cited. You've omitted the word "presumably" (page 7) from the wikipedia article. I'm curious about whether readers of the article should take the presumption as a fact, and whether it's encyclopedic to include such a presumption. The writers of the Annual Report don't know where that particular whale went, so I'm wondering why we should trust their presumption.

As far as the migratory paths of whales being well-documented, that's a little vague. They're certainly not as well-documented as terrestrial migrations. They're also not as well-documented as grey whale migrations, which hug the coast, making them easily observable. I'd say whale migrations are poorly documented beyond grey whales, but it's six of one, half-a-dozen of the other, really.

Fundamentally, I don't think it's scientifically accurate to claim this particular whale was going to Baja California, when the evidence indicates that there are higher match rates between Calfornia humpbacks and mainland Mexico wintering sites over Baja California sites, and the rate of humpbacks wintering near Costa Rica but feeding off California has not been established.

"Migrations between winter regions and feeding areas did not follow a simple pattern, although highest match rates were found for whales that moved between Hawaii and southeastern Alaska and between mainland and Baja Mexico and California." <snip>... "Humpback whales also winter at scattered locations along the Mexican mainland south of the subareas that have been sampled (Urban and Aguayo 1987). One known wintering region not included in our sample is the coastal waters of Central America, especially Costa Rica and Panama (Steiger et al. 1991, Calambokidis et al. 2000). This is a region where humpback whales from the North Pacific mate and give birth to calves, although no photographs were available from 1991 to 1993 for this analysis. This region appears to be used by humpback whales that migrate almost exclusively from feeding areas off California, with limited evidence of interchange with whales wintering off mainland Mexico (Calambokidis et a/. 2000)."

From: Movements and population structure of humpback whales in the North Pacific.

Also check out Table 8 in the above reference. The match rate for CA-WA feeding humpbacks was 0.51 for mainland Mexico but only 0.18 for Baja.

It seems to me that a good way to word the article would be to say "probably headed for wintering grounds near Mexico" if you have to say where the whale is going at all. Wevets 17:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)