That chart specifically says “sightings”. So does that actually mean there are more whales or does that mean there are more humans than ever and specifically more humans with cameras than ever before?
Not saying it’s lying I’m just curious if the wording is being used to be intentionally misleading or if the real data doesn’t look so peachy.
You got me curious and I wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing responses to this. I agree that public sightings would certainly be correlated with whale population, but it would have plenty of other compounding factors, so it’s a pretty poor way to estimate population.
The Internation Whaling Commission will do sighting surveys do get an actual population estimate. This is with groups of specific people going out in boats and/or planes to spot them and using those numbers to extrapolate population number with certain confidence intervals. I’m not sure how they do the extrapolation, but I can’t be bothered looking into it further.
I did also find this plot using population estimates, including a projection to 2030 (made in 2019)
I’m guessing we would have the capability to gather more accurate measurements, but there’s probably just no funding for that and the current sighting surveys are good enough for what we need…
Wait does “sightings” literally just mean someone says they saw a whale?
So that could just be one whale that got into a shipment of cocaine and went on a breaching spree. /s
I get that there’s not much incentive for people to lie about having seen a whale, but I feel like we have the technology to have a more accurate number than just “Ted said he saw one”.
Aren’t you the guy who started a flame war in the lemmy.ca instance for not understanding US/Canadian trade relations?
Yeah, I’d bet you probably don’t understand how more independent sightings of whales along their known migratory paths would point to higher numbers in their population. You don’t really understand numbers or history.
I didn’t intentionally start a flame war. I stated some facts and lightly insulted some Canadians and they all collectively lost their minds. That was a 1v50 scenario and I seemed to be the only one having any fun in there. Its a real shame they locked the thread.
And yes I am able to understand how more people saying they are seeing whales would lead scientists to believing there are probably more whales. I literally never said anything to contradict that.
All I said was that we as a species have better technology and could feasible come up with a way to get a much more accurate number than just trusting peoples word.
I never said it would be cheap or easy. Just that we could hypothetically come up with a better system than just trusting that Ted said he saw another whale.
28 day old account that’s posting hourly. I won’t even bother taking the bait.
Other people have already explained why you’re wrong in both the threads. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Might I suggest reading some marine science methodology instead of arguing with Canadians about the economic crisis they’re facing. Unless you’re getting paid well for it, I suppose.
God damn y’all are really some of the worst types of people. You know I never really check anyones profile to see what type of comments they leave on other posts. I don’t check to see how old accounts are. I don’t go through and unlike everything they have ever said like an obsessed psychopath. I just comment and go. You people seem to be the petty and sad types. Multiple people from that Canada thread went to my profile and went back and disliked every single comment and post I’ve made in those 28 days lol. That is some basement dwelling loner behavior if I have ever seen it.
You’re all so condescending and holier than though all the time as well. Constantly talking down at people and insulting anyones intelligence who you disagree with in any way. It really is quite pathetic.
You think I’m actually so stupid that I think all the whales exist in a space the size of an Olympic swimming pool or something? No I clearly understand why they do things the way they have done them so far.
What you dense motherfuckers don’t seem to grasp is that I’m not pretending that I know any better. I was merely pointing out that we could hypothetically get more accurate information than the way they currently do it. That’s all. I don’t need to know anything about marine biology to know that using eyewitness testimony or “sightings” is so unreliable that it is generally the last thing lawyers will use because anything else is more credible evidence.
Wait does “sightings” literally just mean someone says they saw a whale?
Yes
I get that there’s not much incentive for people to lie about having seen a whale, but I feel like we have the technology to have a more accurate number than just “Ted said he saw one”.
You have zero understanding of the scale of the ocean.
… We have sensors along all of our coasts that can detect basically anything in the water. Obviously it’s mostly looking for submarines from enemy nations, but they routinely “spot” whales.
I feel like using literally any actual measurement tool would be better for data collection that just a bunch of people saying they saw one.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
I understand the ocean is vast, but it’s not like we are trying to count giant squids. These things come to surface all the time and they frequent areas often occupied with humans. We could absolutely have more accurate numbers than “sightings”.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
That photo shows two partly submerged Russian submarines in a port, so no waves. Those submarines are 73m long, so longer then a normal whale and the part above the water is also larger then your normal whale. In other words there is no way to spot a whale in the open ocean with satellites.
Yeah that’s not even close to the most powerful satellite that the US government has. They only allow public images to be shared with a resolution of ~25-30cm/Pixel if memory serves correctly. They have had much more powerful spy satellites for years now.
Now I am fully aware that those types of satellites would never be allowed to be “wasted” on silly things like counting whales, but again hypothetically if they really really wanted to they absolutely could use them to do that sort of thing.
You would probably want to tag several pods with physical trackers and then watch those whales with the satellite. After training it on that data for long enough you could hypothetically make software that spots whales surfacing and then sees what direction they are likely going and it can then start to guess where they think that same pod will pop up later using the data it gathered from those pods being tracked physically with trackers from before.
Obviously I am simplifying and hand waving away a ton of unbelievably complicated things but given enough time and money I think you could absolutely create a system that is able to track and count whales using satellites in a way that would likely be more accurate than any only human based counting method.
You would probably want to tag several pods with physical trackers and then watch those whales with the satellite. After training it on that data for long enough you could hypothetically make software that spots whales surfacing and then sees what direction they are likely going and it can then start to guess where they think that same pod will pop up later using the data it gathered from those pods being tracked physically with trackers from before.
Yes, we could hypothetically do the things we are already doing for tracking how tagged whales behave in addition to using spottings as a way to estimate numbers of whales.
What you aren’t understanding is the scope of the ocean and that being able to do these things in small areas or with a limited number of tagged animals is vastly different than doing it for the entire ocean. That is why they use crowdsourced techniques like spotting!
I feel like using literally any actual measurement tool would be better for data collection that just a bunch of people saying they saw one.
Cool, cool. You are wrong though. Science says you are wrong.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
No, we don’t have enough satellites to track every time a whale surfaces to breathe. Nor do we have the ability for satellites to know if it is the same whale.
Yeah… And they used to scramble peoples brains with an ice pick to try and fix people with depression. Then they learned there is a better way to do things. Science can always be improved. It’s incredibly naive to think the method with which we use to count whales currently could not also be improved or made more accurate in any way.
I mean it seems economical, but I don’t know if it’s particularly scientific. Usually in science they want specific numbers. Values. Things they can measure directly.
What specifically constitutes a single “sighting”? What if a whale surfaces multiple times around the same group. How would they know if that’s multiple different whales breaching or just one whale that’s breaching multiple times? Either one of those scenarios seems like an opportunity for data to get skewed doesn’t it?
I’m not asking because I think I know any better. I am genuinely curious how they quantify a “sighting”.
That chart specifically says “sightings”. So does that actually mean there are more whales or does that mean there are more humans than ever and specifically more humans with cameras than ever before?
Not saying it’s lying I’m just curious if the wording is being used to be intentionally misleading or if the real data doesn’t look so peachy.
You got me curious and I wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing responses to this. I agree that public sightings would certainly be correlated with whale population, but it would have plenty of other compounding factors, so it’s a pretty poor way to estimate population.
The Internation Whaling Commission will do sighting surveys do get an actual population estimate. This is with groups of specific people going out in boats and/or planes to spot them and using those numbers to extrapolate population number with certain confidence intervals. I’m not sure how they do the extrapolation, but I can’t be bothered looking into it further.
I did also find this plot using population estimates, including a projection to 2030 (made in 2019)
I’m guessing we would have the capability to gather more accurate measurements, but there’s probably just no funding for that and the current sighting surveys are good enough for what we need…
More whale sightings is a good indication that there are more whales. Cameras have nothing to do with sightings.
Wait does “sightings” literally just mean someone says they saw a whale?
So that could just be one whale that got into a shipment of cocaine and went on a breaching spree. /s
I get that there’s not much incentive for people to lie about having seen a whale, but I feel like we have the technology to have a more accurate number than just “Ted said he saw one”.
Aren’t you the guy who started a flame war in the lemmy.ca instance for not understanding US/Canadian trade relations?
Yeah, I’d bet you probably don’t understand how more independent sightings of whales along their known migratory paths would point to higher numbers in their population. You don’t really understand numbers or history.
I didn’t intentionally start a flame war. I stated some facts and lightly insulted some Canadians and they all collectively lost their minds. That was a 1v50 scenario and I seemed to be the only one having any fun in there. Its a real shame they locked the thread.
And yes I am able to understand how more people saying they are seeing whales would lead scientists to believing there are probably more whales. I literally never said anything to contradict that.
All I said was that we as a species have better technology and could feasible come up with a way to get a much more accurate number than just trusting peoples word.
I never said it would be cheap or easy. Just that we could hypothetically come up with a better system than just trusting that Ted said he saw another whale.
28 day old account that’s posting hourly. I won’t even bother taking the bait.
Other people have already explained why you’re wrong in both the threads. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Might I suggest reading some marine science methodology instead of arguing with Canadians about the economic crisis they’re facing. Unless you’re getting paid well for it, I suppose.
God damn y’all are really some of the worst types of people. You know I never really check anyones profile to see what type of comments they leave on other posts. I don’t check to see how old accounts are. I don’t go through and unlike everything they have ever said like an obsessed psychopath. I just comment and go. You people seem to be the petty and sad types. Multiple people from that Canada thread went to my profile and went back and disliked every single comment and post I’ve made in those 28 days lol. That is some basement dwelling loner behavior if I have ever seen it.
You’re all so condescending and holier than though all the time as well. Constantly talking down at people and insulting anyones intelligence who you disagree with in any way. It really is quite pathetic.
You think I’m actually so stupid that I think all the whales exist in a space the size of an Olympic swimming pool or something? No I clearly understand why they do things the way they have done them so far.
What you dense motherfuckers don’t seem to grasp is that I’m not pretending that I know any better. I was merely pointing out that we could hypothetically get more accurate information than the way they currently do it. That’s all. I don’t need to know anything about marine biology to know that using eyewitness testimony or “sightings” is so unreliable that it is generally the last thing lawyers will use because anything else is more credible evidence.
Yes
You have zero understanding of the scale of the ocean.
… We have sensors along all of our coasts that can detect basically anything in the water. Obviously it’s mostly looking for submarines from enemy nations, but they routinely “spot” whales.
I feel like using literally any actual measurement tool would be better for data collection that just a bunch of people saying they saw one.
Hell we have enough satellites to track whales. Especially since they have to surface to breath.
I understand the ocean is vast, but it’s not like we are trying to count giant squids. These things come to surface all the time and they frequent areas often occupied with humans. We could absolutely have more accurate numbers than “sightings”.
That photo shows two partly submerged Russian submarines in a port, so no waves. Those submarines are 73m long, so longer then a normal whale and the part above the water is also larger then your normal whale. In other words there is no way to spot a whale in the open ocean with satellites.
Yeah that’s not even close to the most powerful satellite that the US government has. They only allow public images to be shared with a resolution of ~25-30cm/Pixel if memory serves correctly. They have had much more powerful spy satellites for years now.
Now I am fully aware that those types of satellites would never be allowed to be “wasted” on silly things like counting whales, but again hypothetically if they really really wanted to they absolutely could use them to do that sort of thing.
You would probably want to tag several pods with physical trackers and then watch those whales with the satellite. After training it on that data for long enough you could hypothetically make software that spots whales surfacing and then sees what direction they are likely going and it can then start to guess where they think that same pod will pop up later using the data it gathered from those pods being tracked physically with trackers from before.
Obviously I am simplifying and hand waving away a ton of unbelievably complicated things but given enough time and money I think you could absolutely create a system that is able to track and count whales using satellites in a way that would likely be more accurate than any only human based counting method.
Yes, we could hypothetically do the things we are already doing for tracking how tagged whales behave in addition to using spottings as a way to estimate numbers of whales.
What you aren’t understanding is the scope of the ocean and that being able to do these things in small areas or with a limited number of tagged animals is vastly different than doing it for the entire ocean. That is why they use crowdsourced techniques like spotting!
Cool, cool. You are wrong though. Science says you are wrong.
No, we don’t have enough satellites to track every time a whale surfaces to breathe. Nor do we have the ability for satellites to know if it is the same whale.
Yeah… And they used to scramble peoples brains with an ice pick to try and fix people with depression. Then they learned there is a better way to do things. Science can always be improved. It’s incredibly naive to think the method with which we use to count whales currently could not also be improved or made more accurate in any way.
More sightings means more whales. It’s a concept similar to bird banding
I mean it seems economical, but I don’t know if it’s particularly scientific. Usually in science they want specific numbers. Values. Things they can measure directly.
What specifically constitutes a single “sighting”? What if a whale surfaces multiple times around the same group. How would they know if that’s multiple different whales breaching or just one whale that’s breaching multiple times? Either one of those scenarios seems like an opportunity for data to get skewed doesn’t it?
I’m not asking because I think I know any better. I am genuinely curious how they quantify a “sighting”.