Orcas filmed making sunfish explode

Orcas have been seen smashing into sharp-tail sunfish so hard that the fish bursts into thousands of fragments, perhaps as a form of play as well as food processing 

From NewScientist by Christa Lesté-Lasserre

An orca ramming a sunfish (left) and breaking it into many small pieces (right)
Kathryn Ayres

Extraordinary underwater videos have captured orcas making sunfish explode by ramming them at high speed. 

The behaviour may help juvenile orcas feed by breaking the prey into many small pieces, but it also appears that the orcas may enjoy playing with their food.

“It’s a hunting tactic, but that involves a play game in the process,” says Erick Higuera, an independent marine biologist in Mexico. 

“There’s ‘high-octane’ adrenaline and a lot of other hormones rushing through their bodies, so, of course, there’s got to be some sort of excitement.”

Sharp-tail sunfish (Masturus lanceolatus) are among the largest bony fish, weighing up to 2000 kilograms. Higuera had already seen groups of orcas (Orcinus orca) attacking sunfish in the Gulf of California, ripping off parts of their flesh and tossing them around to each other in a playful manner. 

In the past few years, he had even witnessed them ramming the fish head-on or crushing them against the side of another orca.

Then, in July 2024, his colleague Katy Ayres at US non-profit organisation Beneath the Waves caught an explosive interaction on her GoPro camera while diving in the Gulf of California. 

An adult female orca held onto a dead sunfish while an adult male orca swam upside down towards it at full speed. 

The female released the sunfish at the last second, and the male hit it with so much force that the fish burst into a flurry of small fragments.

A year later, tourist Hector Franz shot a similar underwater scene in the same bay. 

This time, an adult female rammed right-side-up into a sharp-tail sunfish held in place by another adult female, popping it into pieces. 

Combined, the two events mark the first time scientists have seen such behaviour by orcas, say Higuera, Ayres and their colleagues.

Sunfish have “an incredibly dense, rubbery, collagenous” outer layer that’s harder to bite through, so bursting them open could be an effective way to feed on them, says Higuera.

“The explosive fragmentation seemed mostly to be of the stiff gelatinous capsule that makes up a high percentage – more than 80 per cent in large fish – of the body mass of the sunfish,” says John Davenport at University College Cork in Ireland. 

“I suspect that calves cannot achieve enough force to do this, as their mass is too low. But they can exploit a cloud of objects that contain tasty morsels.”

Earlier sightings without full footage indicated that the entire pod was involved in a strategic attack process leading up to the rammings, says Higuera. 

The findings point to advanced cooperative hunting skills and even planning – especially adapting their techniques for different kinds of prey, he says.

Higuera suspects that popping the sunfish offered a learning experience for the calves, while providing them with bite-sized snacks. 

Simultaneously, these events could also reinforce social bonds through “play” and social learning in this highly intelligent species, he adds.

Gordon Burghardt at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville says it is possible the orcas were having some fun in demolishing the fish, but play wouldn’t be the only goal, as there is clearly cooperative foraging going on as well.

“One of the fascinating things about play is that it can be a driver of behavioural innovation,” says Martina Francesconi at the University of Pisa, Italy. 

“It’s possible that a behaviour like this may have originated in a playful context and later acquired a feeding function, or vice versa. 

At this stage, we simply don’t know.”

Links :

• Frontiers in Ethology DOI: 10.3389/fetho.2026.1835536
• The Conversation : ‘Like someone whacking a piñata’: orcas explode sunfish by ramming them at high speed

Temporary navigation ban in the Arcachon Basin (33)

📷 #INCENDIE – Secteur #LePorge #LègeCapFerret (Gironde, 33)

⚠️ Interdiction temporaire de navigation dans le bassin d’Arcachon (33)

Pour assurer la sécurité maritime de l’opération d’évacuation par voie maritime des populations présentes sur la presqu’île de Lège Cap-Ferret,… pic.twitter.com/FArtOmWYka

— Préfecture maritime et commandement en chef ATLANT (@premar_ceclant) July 24, 2026

Smoke from the large Gironde wildfire is also visible from the #Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite yesterday, 23 July, streaming out over the Bay of Biscay.

AIS shaped bridge watching practices and collision avoidance: dangers of over reliance

 

The interference and spoofing of AIS navigation data has become a common problem and been particular prevalent in and around the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war between US/Israel and Iran.

The past couple of weeks have seen the rise what is best described as AIS “trolling” with signals appearing with fictious names such as the supposedly US-flagged Jersey Devil 404, Opium Cargo, and Dead Wallet Crew. The tracks of many these vessels are erratic and clearly false.

courtesy of Pole Star Global 

 

From SeaNews by Nandika Chand

 

One should not rely only on AIS data displayed on the ECDIS to determine the risk of collision.
Always use radar and other available aids to get a complete picture to make safer decisions. 

Knowing where the vessels are is a critical need that is being met with the Automatic Identification System (AIS).
It provides visibility and voyage-related information, like the ship’s destination and draught.

In today’s modern shipping era, AIS has emerged as an essential tool for vessel tracking and identification.
It has become an indispensable tool and aid for maritime security and navigational safety.

AIS – according to AXSMarine, a maritime intelligence tracking platform - has evolved into a versatile data source that supports a wide range of operational and commercial decisions.
Fleet managers use AIS to monitor vessel positions and performance in real time.

Chartering teams track tonnage availability to assess supply and demand in specific regions.
Port authorities analyze inbound traffic to manage congestion and berth planning, and commodity traders use aggregated AIS flows to infer trade volumes and anticipate market shifts.

Moreover, insurers and compliance teams monitor behavior for risk assessment and sanctions screening.
AIS acts as the foundation layer that enables broader intelligence when combined with domain expertise and additional datasets.

AIS in maritime is a core layer of modern navigational safety infrastructure.
The system continuously transmits and receives position, identity, and movement data, and assists mariners in maintaining awareness under all weather and visibility conditions.

Indeed, AIS is a very useful aid.

Over-Reliance on AIS

But over-reliance on this tool endangers the vessel, the cargo, and the crew.
Decisions based solely on AIS without contextual validation may lead to incorrect conclusions.
Gaps and errors are inherent in the system.

Bruce Liu, Loss Prevention Executive at Gard, pointed out that for bridge teams, pilots, and VTS operators, where navigational safety is critical, the integration and display of AIS information on navigational displays, particularly radar, have made traffic information more readily accessible.

He said it has delivered significant safety benefits but has also increased the potential for over-reliance on AIS-derived information.

“In some cases, such over-reliance may contribute to incidents, particularly when it influences the assessment of navigational risks or the decisions taken on the bridge or in VTS services.

“I also observed that many accidents occurred when bridge teams relied primarily on AIS for collision avoidance, neglecting systematic visual and/or radar observations.”

Liu explained that AIS calculates collision risk using dynamic data from both the own vessel and the AIS target.
Radar plotting, by contrast, evaluates how a target moves relative to the own ship.

Collisions

Over-reliance on AIS leads to AIS-assisted collisions.

Liu said this is a recurring factor in marine casualties.
“It is crucial for mariners to recognize the limitations of AIS and to use it as a supplement, not a substitute, for fundamental navigational practices such as visual lookout and systematic radar observation or radar plotting.”

Moreover, jamming and spoofing in conflict regions – the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and Black Sea – can compromise AIS and safety equipment, potentially increasing risk in busy shipping lanes.

Liu highlighted a few incidents, including a bulk carrier’s collision with a fishing vessel in September 2020.
Investigation revealed that the bridge team on the bulk carrier primarily relied on AIS and ECDIS for lookout, while neglecting fundamental methods such as visual lookout and radar plotting.
No radar plotting was conducted for the fishing vessel involved in the collision, nor for its accompanying fishing vessels before the incident.

As for the fishing vessel, it failed to maintain the effective operation of its AIS equipment.
Its AIS signal was detected right before the collision, making early detection and tracking via the AIS system by other vessels and the VTS center impossible.

The investigation established that not every vessel has a working AIS, so it is important not to rely only on AIS for lookout.
Always use visual lookout and systematic radar observation in addition to AIS to ensure safe navigation.

In another similar incident (collision between a bulk carrier and two tankers) in July 2024 – the bulk carrier en route to Subic Bay, Philippines collided with a tanker at anchor carrying out STS operations with another tanker.
Damage was sustained by all three vessels.

Investigators found that no AIS feed was available from either tanker until about 1 min before the incident, when S2’s AIS signal first appeared on the bulk carrier’s radar and ECDIS displays.
The radar echoes of both tankers had been visible on the bulk carrier’s radar since 2250 LT.
But the OOW did not plot the targets on the radar and was primarily using the AIS data reflected on the ECDIS for determining risk of collision.

The expert stated that one should not rely only on AIS data displayed on the ECDIS to determine the risk of collision.
Always use radar and other available aids to get a complete picture to make safer decisions.

Human Dependence on Technology

Technology is meant to make things similar and complement the tasks carried out by humans, boost productivity, and augment human potential.

Liu pointed out that trust gradually shifts toward tools that provide fast, clear, and seemingly authoritative information.

AIS offers immediate identification and CPA/TCPA outputs, which can create a perception of reduced risk and reliability, particularly in busy or restricted waters.
And over time, this may unintentionally lead to a reduced emphasis on traditional cross‑checks, such as visual lookout and systematic radar observation.

Mariners should be aware of the limitations of gadgets and technology, especially AIS, which include refresh delays in data transmission, dependence on properly functioning sensors, and incomplete traffic coverage – not all vessels carry AIS, sensors may malfunction, and some vessels, such as navy ships.

 

Links :

• Gard : AIS-assisted collisions: The risks of over-reliance
• Safety4Sea : Gard warns AIS should support, not replace, traditional navigation practices 
• Maritime Executive : Collision Avoidance: AIS Versus ARPA
• MarineLink : Electronic Navigation & Dispute Resolution: Coming of Age 
• TechTimes : Hormuz Goes Dark: Ships Strip AIS Signals as Trump Claims Strait Guardianship

Trump administration allows killing of species threatened with extinction

Florida manateesin Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River, Florida.

From WP by Jake Spring

Regulatory changes to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act also demand that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consider the economic toll of habitat protection.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could soon declare that pygmy rabbits or Florida manatees are threatened with extinction.

But under a policy change issued by the Trump administration on Friday, Americans could still kill, trap and harass them.

That action — paired with another issued Friday that requires regulators to consider the economic toll of habitat protection — is part of President Donald Trump’s broad attempt to reinterpret the 1973 Endangered Species Act in ways that weaken protections for imperiled plants and animals.

In March, the administration convened the so-called God squad in a 15-minute session that decided oil and gas companies no longer need to abide by Endangered Species Act protections in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last week, the administration repealed a decades-old rule so that habitat destruction will no longer be considered a “harm” to endangered species.

On Friday, the Fish and Wildlife Service rescinded what is known as the “blanket rule,” which was first instituted in 1975 and gave threatened species the same protections as endangered ones — broadly prohibiting illegally killing, trapping or harassing them.

The rollback would only apply to newly declared threatened species, such as the Florida manatee, whose case is still pending.

Species that previously received the label would continue to have greater protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Rescinding past protections or issuing new ones can now only be done for threatened species one at a time.

The agency issued the repeal alongside another rule on Friday that requires the agency to consider the economic harms of designating areas “critical habitat” to protect endangered species.

Previously, the agency had discretion on whether to weigh those concerns.

The Interior Department said in a statement that the latest changes were necessary to “advance President Donald J. Trump’s directives to strengthen American energy independence, improve regulatory predictability, and ensure federal actions align with the best reading of the law.”

“For too long, the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized to stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in the statement.

Clay Samford, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, called the new rules “bad for imperiled wildlife and for wild lands.”

“It’s part of this administration’s push to reduce protections for public lands and wildlife that are enjoyed by all Americans, in favor of narrow business interests,” he said.

Samford said the rule to factor economics into critical habitat decisions could affect situations like that of Hawaii’s ‘I‘iwi bird. 

The brilliantly colored red birds, also known as scarlet honeycreepers, are listed as threatened, but cattle ranchers have fought back against land being listed as critical habitat for the species.

Samford said that under the new rule, officials would be required to consider the ranchers’ claims in their decisions, making it far more likely that the agency would exclude their land from protections.

Both regulations were similarly changed in the first Trump administration and then reinstated under President Joe Biden.

The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a libertarian conservation think tank, praised the repeal of the blanket rule.

“For too long, the blanket rule treated threatened species the same as endangered ones, dulling incentives for recovery,” said Jonathan Wood, PERC’s vice president of law and policy. 

“By restoring a tailored approach, the Service can better reward progress and encourage proactive conservation.”

Outside groups generally petition the agency to consider individual species for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

A backlog of more than 500 species are awaiting evaluation for listing as threatened or endangered, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

Other animals being considered for protection that could be affected by the rule change include plants like the purple-flowered Aztec Gilia and Clover’s cactus, both found only in New Mexico.

The number of listings of threatened and endangered species has slowed as the Trump administration cuts the number of personnel able to make those analyses.

The Fish and Wildlife Service lost about 18 percent of its staff in the first few months of the second Trump administration, as compared with the final year of the Biden administration, amid wider efforts to shrink the government, according to data obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group. 

That included 530 fewer staff biologists.

Fewer workers, along with new paperwork requirements to consider protections for species individually, is likely to add to the backlog, Samford said.

“It for no reason takes away a default protection system that has worked for 50 years and replaces it with a promise to do species-specific rules, when we know that this agency is overworked and understaffed and it can usually take a long time to do those rules,” Samford said.

Links :

• EarthJustice : With Two New Rulemakings, Trump Administration Attempts to Further Weaken Endangered Species Act
• PSB : U.S. cancels automatic protections for imperiled animals as critics warn of extinctions
• Time : Trump Administration Scales Back Endangered Species Protections—Again
• The Conversation : Why Trump’s move to gut the Endangered Species Act likely won’t hold up in court 
• Surfrider : Endangered Species Act Rollbacks: How Are Coasts And Wildlife At Risk?

How a 200-year-old whale could hold the clues to beating cancer

Fluke of a submerging bowhead whale, Canada, Nunavut, Bylot Island, Sirmilik National Park

From ArcticToday by Mary McAuliffe

 
The bowhead whale is, by every biological calculation, the perfect breeding ground for cancer.
It weighs over 80,000 kilograms and lives for more than 200 years — more cells, more divisions, more time for genetic damage to accumulate than almost any other creature on Earth.
Yet, it is one of the least cancer-prone animals alive.
Scientists can finally explain why.
Researchers at the University of Rochester identified a DNA-repair protein called CIRBP that operates at levels 100 times higher in bowhead cells than in any other mammal, including humans, according to their study published in Nature.

The bowhead whale is an Arctic specialist, spending its entire life in and around sea ice in the waters of northern Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Greenland.
Iñupiat hunters have long maintained that bowhead whales live two human lifetimes.
That claim had been met with skepticism by Western science until Victorian-era harpoon points were found embedded in the bodies of recently caught whales, a pattern that could not be explained unless those animals had survived encounters with 19th-century hunters and gone on to live another century.

Subsequent research confirmed a maximum lifespan of more than 200 years, making the bowhead the longest-lived mammal on Earth by a significant margin.

What the new research reveals is that the bowhead’s secret is not that it kills off damaged cells faster than other animals; it repairs them better.
Rather than relying on more tumor-suppressor genes to destroy cells that go wrong, the bowhead’s cells simply make far fewer errors in the first place, catching and correcting DNA breaks before they can accumulate into the kind of damage that causes cancer.
And in a finding with striking implications for human medicine, the key protein driving this repair mechanism also appears to work in human cells.
That raises the possibility that what keeps a whale healthy for two centuries could eventually help point researchers toward developing treatments for human cancer and age-related disease.

“By studying a mammal that is capable of maintaining its health and avoiding death from cancer for more than two centuries, we are offered a unique glimpse behind the curtain of a global evolutionary experiment,” the researchers wrote.
Key FindingsPeto’s Paradox, solved: Large, long-lived animals should get far more cancer than small ones, simply because they have more cells dividing over more years.
This mismatch between predicted and actual cancer rates is known as Peto’s Paradox.
The bowhead whale is the most extreme example, and this study offers the clearest answer yet to how evolution solved the problem: not by building more cancer defenses, but by building better DNA repair.
The CIRBP protein — present at 100 times normal levels: Researchers found that a cold-triggerable RNA-binding protein called CIRBP manifests at roughly 100 times higher concentrations in bowhead whale cells compared to other mammals.
This protein supercharges the repair of double-strand DNA breaks, one of the most dangerous forms of genetic damage and a primary driver of cancer when left unrepaired.
Repair, not destroy: Most cancer research focuses on tumor suppressor genes that trigger cell death when something goes wrong.
Bowhead cells take a different approach; they repair damaged DNA rather than eliminating the cell entirely.
The researchers describe this as a “repair-not-eliminate” strategy and suggest it may be the key to maintaining healthy tissue over an extraordinarily long lifespan.
It works in human cells too: In a critical finding for medical research, bowhead CIRBP was shown to improve DNA repair efficiency and reduce mutation rates in human cells in laboratory experiments.
This suggests the mechanism is not unique to whales.
Rather, the underlying biology is shared with humans, meaning it could in principle be harnessed therapeutically to slow aging and reduce cancer risk.
Indigenous knowledge confirmed (again): Iñupiat hunters have long maintained that bowhead whales live two human lifetimes.
That claim was validated when Victorian-era harpoon fragments dating from the 1800s were found embedded in whales caught in the late 20th century.
This research builds on that foundation, using genomic tools to explain the biology behind what Iñupiat communities observed generations ago.
Cold may be part of the answer: CIRBP stands for cold-inducible RNA-binding protein (it was originally identified as a protein activated by cold temperatures).
The fact that it is permanently elevated in bowhead cells may reflect the whale’s adaptation to life in near-freezing Arctic waters, with a cold-response mechanism that evolved to also serve as a powerful cancer defense.
A model species for aging science: The bowhead joins a small group of exceptionally long-lived animals, including the naked mole rat, that researchers are using to understand why some species age so slowly.
What makes the bowhead extraordinary is its combination of extreme size and extreme lifespan.
Most very large animals die relatively young; most very old animals are small.
The bowhead does both, making it uniquely valuable as a biological model.
For Arctic communities whose cultures and food systems have been intertwined with the bowhead whale for millennia, this research carries a particular resonance.
Iñupiat knowledge of whales’ longevity predates Western science by generations, and the biological mechanisms now being uncovered in laboratories are, in some sense, a translation of what hunters have already understood about these animals from direct observation over centuries.

Beyond the cultural dimension, the bowhead’s biology now stands as one of the most promising natural models for understanding how to slow aging and prevent cancer in humans.
The Arctic is not just a landscape being reshaped by climate change.
It is home to one of the most medically significant animals on Earth, and scientists are only just beginning to decipher what its genome has to say.

Read the full research here.