An anteriorly directed wave produced by spinal flexion aided

in lifting the chest off the ground as the fore flippers were retracted to pull the body forward. The highest length-specific speeds recorded were 1.02 BL/s for a gray seal in captivity and 1.38 BL/s for a harbor seal in the wild. The frequency and amplitude of spinal movement increased directly with speed, but the duty factor remained constant. Substrate did not influence the kinematics except for differences due to moving up or down Pexidartinib cell line slopes. The highly aquatic nature of phocids seals has restricted them to locomote on land primarily using spinal flexion, which can limit performance in speed and duration. “
“The narwhal is a hunted species for which we have many knowledge gaps. Photo-identification,

which uses photographs of natural markings to identify individuals, is widely used in cetacean studies and can address a broad range of biological questions. However, it has not been developed Selleck Small molecule library for narwhals. The marks used for other cetaceans are inappropriate for this species either because narwhals lack the body part on which these marks are found or because the marks are known to change with time. We investigated the marks apparent in photographs of narwhals. Nicks and notches on the dorsal ridge are the mark types most promising for photo-identification. They are found on 91%–98% of the individuals, thus allowing the identification of a large part of the population. They can be used to differentiate between individuals, in part because they are variable in their location, numbers, shape, and size. Although our results suggest that nicks and notches are relatively stable over time, rates of change should be formally measured to assess the probability of photographic matches over multiple years. However, we are confident that these marks can be used in studies spanning at least a field season. “
“Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) in the eastern South Pacific were once numerous off the coast of Chile and Peru. 17-DMAG (Alvespimycin) HCl British, French, and American whaling fleets started to hunt them in 1789 and Chilean land-based whaling started in 1860

(Pastene and Quiroz 2010) and ended in 1976 (Aguayo et al. 1998). However there are few details about these catches. Du Pasquier (1986) reported a catch of approximately 2,372 whales by French whalers from 1817 to 1837 in Chilean waters. Best (1987) estimated that American whalers killed over 14,600 southern right whales in the 19th century across the entire South Pacific, but he did not allocate the catch to any geographic region. Between 1951 and 1971, Soviet whaling operations in the Southern Hemisphere illegally took over 3,300 southern right whales, but none of these operations occurred in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Peru or Chile (Tormosov et al. 1998). Since the end of commercial exploitation, little information on southern right whales from the eastern South Pacific has been reported.