🐋🐳🐬

Massive thanks to the locals for offering their bangkas and their time to help out, PH National Museum of Bohol, and the municipality of Getafe for offering their unused isolation facility for our accommodations, and the amazing food. What a way to end 2024 and start 2025. 🙌🏼

Managed to gather 40+ strong locals to help with the flensing and defleshing and disposal. Incredible teamwork. This is our reality as we operate in difficult conditions with limited access to equipment and funds.

Before making a plan to move the carcass to a shallower area on the 2nd day. See the local community watch from shore as we passed by. We finished the 2nd day at night. This effort was led by Balyena.org PI and founder Jom Acebes and myself.

What an epic 2024. lots of ups and downs. Ended the year with a 13.6m sperm whale necropsy. An extremely difficult and challenging work on a remote mangrove island with limited access. Had to work in waist deep waters

Oh it’s absolutely fine. Haha just haven’t checked on here in a while 💪🏼🧪🇵🇭

I was wondering why i had a sudden influx of followers bigla 😅

Viva prep Viva prep: .Value-added and originality · What are the most original (or value-added) parts of your thesis? · Which propositions or findings would you say are distinctively your own? · How ...

I know a lot of UK #phdchat have recently submitted - here's a doc I put together for my own student, based on advice I received 10 yrs ago (!) for my own Viva. I thought I'd share it for anyone else that might find it helpful. (1/3) docs.google.com/document/d/1...
#vivaprep #skystorians

Sound advice. Thanks for this! I will definitely keep my options open

So i just submitted my application and i know acceptance is still not guaranteed, so should i still keep my options open? I currently have offers that would overlap with the start of the PhD. I will only find out if i get accepted for the PhD in November… #PhDsky

I had a preselection interview last week for a PhD post. Just found out the PI chose me to mentor through the application process. Their reason was so they don’t waste applicant’s time and effort to go through the app process and eventually not get in.
never heard of this. Is this common?
#phdsky

New North Atlantic right whale calf seen off coast of Virginia Researchers have discovered a recently born North Atlantic right whale calf off the coast of Virginia not previously seen by anyone.

Some happy news for #rightwhales

Another calf found.
🐳🌍🦑

Screenshot of article entitled ‘First record of twin fetuses in a stranded Cuvier’s beaked whale’ in the journal Current Zoology

Image of decomposing Cuvier’s beaked whale fetuses.

Early view available:

academic.oup.com/cz/advance-a...

MSc done. Now on to keep applying for a PhD and get accepted! Record so far from the beginning of this year, applied: 10, accepted: 0 🤣😭 don’t know whether to laugh or cry

A wild thought:

Interview your potential PhD advisor

Make sure you understand:

1. Track record of graduation
2. Communication style
3. Authorship patterns
4. Funding procedures
5. Advisor availability

Super important to know before you start.
#academicsky #phdsky

Cool paper

Seeing killer whales attack a gray just south of this site spurred Richard Connor's ideas on predation and migration.

Back when we raised that the idea that killer whale predation was important for baleen whales' movement ecology we were seen as bonkers.
🐳🦑

Hey Storytellers! Did you know We have #WhaleTales about over 45 species of cetacean?! Which species is your favourite to read about?!
🎨 Ryan Chadwick

Some cool interspecies interactions 🐬

Figure 1 from the paper. Individual calving probability in available years over the study period (a), length of reproductive females at reproductive opportunities (b) and estimated cubic effect on the asymptote of calving probability (c). In (a,b), each thin grey line corresponds to the time series for one female, while the thick coloured line and ribbon indicate the posterior mean and 95% credible interval across females. In (c), the green line and ribbon represent the posterior mean and 95% credible interval.

Great paper

Right whale calving is a third-power problem

"The effects of decreasing mean body size on reproductive performance are another concerning indication of the worsening prospects for this species"
🐳🌍

After I wrote a eulogy for science twitter, American Scientist asked me what’s next for online public science engagement. Here’s my piece on the science community on Bluesky

Quotes @jay.bsky.team @danirabaiotti.bsky.social 🧪🌎🦑

www.americanscientist.org/blog/macrosc...

Yes please and thank you! ☺️

PhyloPic PhyloPic is an open database of free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses. Download silhouettes for use in educational materi...

Since I've introduced a few of my colleagues to this resource recently:

www.phylopic.org has free to use silhouettes of a large number of organisms. These can be really useful for drawing out phylogenies (for the non biologists: basically a species-level family tree).

Your weekly reminder to come hang out in the feeds & nerd out about animals. Photography, science, art, observations, news, & more is welcome!

🐍 Reptiles/Amphibians: bsky.app/profile/did:...
🦉Birds: bsky.app/profile/did:...
🦑 Marine Life: bsky.app/profile/did:...
🦊 Mammals: bsky.app/profile/did:...

A global biodiversity tipping point as first marine fish extinction declared A species of ray, so rare it has only ever been recorded once back in the late 1800s, has been declared extinct after an assessment by an international team led by Charles Darwin University (CDU).

🦑🐟☠️

A green hummingbird with white belly and gold and pink on its throat sits on a branch

A pink and blue bird sits on a branch.

A bright orange hummingbird standing on the edge of a hummingbird feeder

An orange bird stares at the camera with its head cocked to one side

Hi Birds Feed! 🪶🌿🐡 yall up for another theme? Winter can be gloomy and dreary, let’s fight the Sunday scaries and the winter blues with some colorful birds!

Two nice dolphin periotic bones (inner ear bones) I found on our #blackfriday tour! The top one is an unnamed 'platanistoid' dolphin, and the bottom one is cf. Eoplatanista. Both are found only in earliest Miocene rocks (Aquitanian stage, ~23-18 Myo).

Novel aerial observations of a group of killer whales Orcinus orca in The Bahamas Novel aerial observations of a group of killer whales Orcinus orca in The Bahamas

🧪🦑

Megamouth pups next to scientists

How big are those babies, you ask?

(Photo from the workup at the national museum of the Philippines, from @jean8rum.bsky.social )

This one’s better

Yeees finally welcome to the sky! Intently following this super cool rare case or a rare animal!