Study: Whales Are Ecosystem "Engineers" 64
An anonymous reader writes Researchers had previously thought that, being excessively uncommon and migrant, whales didn't have much of an effect on the more extensive marine environment. However, a new study distributed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment gives whales a role as "engineers" of the oceans. In the study, scientists from the University of Vermont suggest that the 13 types of extraordinary whale have an essential and positive impact on the capacity of seas, on carbon storage, and on the state of fisheries around the globe. "The decline in great whale numbers, estimated to be at least 66% and perhaps as high as 90%, has likely altered the structure and function of the oceans, but recovery is possible and in many cases is already underway," researchers wrote in an article announcing their investigation.
As an Engineer,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Engineer I feel that the title is being misused more and more.
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Nah, he just wants the money he wasted on the sheepskin to mean something. It's a status thing.
Umm no. If he's a PE or otherwise licensed engineer (non-USA), it's a bit more than a sheepskin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]
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... and I hate those spies always sapping my sentries.
Re:As an Engineer,,, (Score:4, Funny)
Get back on your choo choo train and quit yer bitching.
Re:As an Engineer,,, Very Special Hats (Score:1)
Get back on your choo choo train and quit yer bitching.
+5 Funny also on the mark.
These affectations of language have their origin in entertainment and activities for young children that include a special 'vocational adult hat' to wear. Latent memories of this technique emerge later on as iconography, such as the cute Sherlock Holmes hat (with Cavendish pipe) or graduation mortarboard cap beside extra credit puzzles.
This Wears A Special Hat trick is used to titillate the news media [google.com], which is locked in a state of perpetual childhood.
So Mr. and Ms. Whale, I hope
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Engineers don't do things accidentally unless they fuck up. So unless we can prove the whales know what they're doing, they're acting more like the pre-agricultural humans who accidentally spread seeds wherever they spit and shit. Not quite agriculture.
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When you read the actual article, it's mostly about the fact that they shit everywhere.
How many of us (and our pets!) then deserve honorary engineering degrees? What would the ceremony be like?
For extra credit, describe criteria for awarding cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude.
~Public Sanitation Programmer
Yep. (Score:5, Insightful)
Large apex predators change their environment. Change the numbers of the apex predators and the environment changes.
- So far, so good. Ecology 101.
"Engineers of the ocean" - now we're starting to anthropomorphize. Engineering, at least in the classic sense of human engineering, is a directed, (generally) intelligent effort to change the environment. Now, cetaceans are very likely intelligent (at least smarter than the average Internet user by all accounts), but the TFS doesn't give any indications that the whales are doing this purposely to change things, they're just being apex predators.
Grrr. I hate stuff like this. Perhaps the paywalled article is better, but TFS does not impress.
Re:Yep. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, calling engineers "whales" makes them sensitive to their weight problems.
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Engineering, at least in the classic sense of human engineering, is a directed, (generally) intelligent effort to change the environment.
This is before, software users frustrated with technical support, got in the habit of routinely demanding to speak to an engineer.
As a result..... first line tech support personnel now have titles such as "support engineer", and those that build products now have titles such as 'individual contributor', 'analyst', development specialist, or 'architect'.
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And delicious.
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What annoys me is that humans are the only species on the planet that are denied the right to change their environment in this way. When we do it it's "unnatural" and "destroying our environment" when any other species a "marvel of nature".
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"Ecosystem engineer" is an ecology term, and it's meant to be descriptive not precisely literal. It doesn't necessarily indicate any intention. TFA did a poor job of conveying the fact that this is a field-specific usage, not a description of "engineering" by animals.
Some animals have disproportionately large effects on the integrity of their ecosystem - disproportionate to their biomass and physical presence, at least. These animals are called "keystone species". Apex predators are often keystone specie
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What gives whales the right to alter the environment? Whales should be regulated so their engineering impact to the oceans can be controlled.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that there are absolutely NO federal regulations on whale activities. Next they'll be deregulating the growing of vegetables!
Re:How dare they (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there are quite a number of regulations concerning human activity in and around whales. Come to think of it, if engineers had those same regulations apply to them (mostly don't bother the whale, stay at least 100 yards away, no nearby explosions and such), then engineers might have a better chance of getting something useful accomplished.
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Joke: 1
You: 0
No they're not (Score:5, Interesting)
Whales shape their environment, just as their environment has shaped them. That's how evolution works. Evolution is nothing but the establishment of equilibria between niches and the creatures occupying those niches. When either the niche or the creature (or the number of creatures) changes, of course the other will follow suit.
The new information in this article is that scientists have discovered a way in which whales influence their environment. Engineering has nothing to do with it.
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I don't see anything new or interesting in the articles to consider it a "discovery of a way" (e.g. http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Pag... [uvm.edu] )
In contrast this is a better article with more detail on how whales could _actually_ affect ecosystems significantly: http://www.newscientist.com/ar... [newscientist.com]
And that's a 4 year old article.
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Your use of the word "selection" should have given it away: that's not evolution, that's natural selection. Natural selection is a part of evolution, but they are not identical, just as you are not identical to your liver, even though your liver is a part of you.
As far as I can determine "being slightly less in equilibrium" does not contain any semantic content. You're either in equilibrium, or you're not in equilibrium. The variation among individual creatures is what allows selection (driven by the enviro
Sooo.... (Score:3, Funny)
Engineers (Score:2)
I'm so old, I still think an "engineer" is the guy who drives a train.
Clearly, a whale isn't going to be driving a train, though, so they must be the other type of engineer. But how do they work a slide rule with those flipper things?
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The invention of waterproof calculators allowed for whales to more easily perform tedious calculations.
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No, no, they're combat engineers, like dolphins. Don't ask me where they get the explosives.
If whales are engineers... (Score:3)
...what does that make beavers?
Re:If whales are engineers... (Score:5, Funny)
...what does that make beavers?
A dam nuisance.
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...what does that make beavers?
A dam nuisance.
No mater which way you take that statement it ironically turns out to be true.
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Consultants
Re:If whales are engineers... (Score:5, Funny)
Beavers are the Koch Brothers. They directly cause global warming by cutting down trees that safely sequester greenhouse gases. When they eat and digest the trees, the greenhouse gases are released again as beaver flatulence.
Beavers build dams blocking our natural beautiful rivers, which make our own hydroelectric facilities less efficient. This makes us more dependent on Big Coal, and forces us to build a nuke In Your Backyard.
Beavers build low-cost sub prime mortgage McMansions, which will cause another Savings & Loan bailout crisis recession.
Beaver rhymes with Bieber, and The Bieber is ripped to his tits on cough sirup most of the time.
Save the whales, nuke The Bieber.
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translation (Score:3)
They're using unfamiliar units to define their made up measurements.
The oceans are 1.3 billion cubic kilometers (that's a lot of engineering!)
That's 45,909,066,700,000,000,000 square feet
The Library of congress is 2,100,000 square feet
So the whales are engineering over 21 trillion libraries of congress!
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I'd like to know how you converted cubic kilometers to square feet.
Re:translation (Score:4, Funny)
With Science!
Whales are mammals... (Score:2)
Shave the whales.
I don't know about whale engineers (Score:2)
More common than you'd think! (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q [youtube.com]
Humans are "non-engineers" ... (Score:1)
Whale poop.
I'm all for saving the whales, but to give the planet a break, perhaps we could compensate by finding a way NOT to treat human poop.
I am certain, combined, people are fuller of it.
Was going to joke about my 5th grade subst teacher (Score:1)
But I guess now, knowing the extent of her responsibilities, I have to treat her with more respect.
All singing, all dancing Creatures for Good (Score:2)
Could you hit any more topical achievements: helps the fisheries, help the climate through CARBON STORAGE? Crap might as well throw in helps peace in the Middle East and nurtures orphan kittens.
Big message: don't hunt whales because ... they're good for fisheries and the climate and ... everything.
Homer: "Right, Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal."