Jona and the Whale

No. That's not a typo. I'm not sure what the female version of the name 'Jonah' is so dropping the 'h' will have to do. Most of you are familiar with the bible story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale.

"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah..."
Jonah 1:17 King James Bible

Well, last week off Santa Cruz, California, a bikini clad woman on a surfboard and several kayakers came close to acting out the bible story, when two feeding Humpback Whales shot up out of the water, mouths agape, mere yards away from them. (If you haven't seen it on YouTube, go and view it). Setting aside the fact that the woman and her fellow gawkers were violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act, had the whales been any closer the consequences could have been deadly. Unlike Jonah who apparently survived his ordeal, had the woman been knocked off her surfboard and swallowed it is unlikely she would have survived.

Humpback Whales do not eat humans (no whales or dolphins do), but with an enormous mouth that can hold 500 gallons of water and 400 fingernail-like baleen plates hanging from the upper jaw that strain thousands of pounds of krill with each gulp, she would have met a terrifying death. Hopefully, she and her boating companions have learned a lesson and will stay away from whales in the future. Arguably the worst part of this story is that the whale would probably have died too, with the body of a stupid human being stuck in his throat.

Humpback Whales need your help!

The federal government is considering taking Humpback Whales off the endangered species list because the population has been gradually recovering from humankind’s efforts to exterminate the species. The global population of Humpbacks once numbered over 125,000 before commercial whaling virtually decimated the species in the mid-twentieth century. This led to the whales being added to the U.S. Endangered Species List in June 1970. Now the worldwide population is believed to be approximately 60,000, or less than half of what it was before the slaughter began. If the government does this, these magnificent creatures will lose the very protection that brought them back from the brink, and morons in motorboats will be now able to approach them again, slicing across their backs with spinning props or worse. Please do not allow this to happen. Let your voices be heard. Go to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s website (http://www.fws.gov/) and express your opposition to this plan. Please. Do it before October 13. My friends, the Humpbacks need you now.