by Gregory McNamee

If it quacks like a duck, it has to be a duck. No? No, not really—and never mind the confusing name of the geoduck. Instead, our quarry is the “bio-duck,” a resounding, resonating, booming, quacking sound that researchers have picked

Two manatees swimming in clear waters of Florida, U.S.--© Nicolas Larento/Fotolia

Two manatees swimming in clear waters of Florida, U.S.–© Nicolas Larento/Fotolia

up for half a century on sonar in the Southern Ocean. Ducks are wide-ranging, of course, and they can be plenty loud, but nothing on the order of the subsurface racket that seemed to emanate from some atomic-mutant high-flyer. Instead, reports the BBC, the “quack” was among the repertoire of expressions by the little-studied Antarctic minke whale. Another mystery solved, though the idea of a giant duck is pleasing, considering that a new entry in the tired Godzilla franchise is upon us, cause to hope for a new breed of monster waiting in the, ahem, wings.

* * *

Eel recruitment. It’s a phrase that suggests that the snakes of the sea are actively looking for new members, but it means something quite specific to marine biologists. The European eel is now an endangered species, in part because so many predators—including humans—feed on it, in part because, as those scientists are now appreciating, ocean currents are changing as part of the overall phenomenon of climate change. As a new paper in the journal Current Biology documents, the eels begin their lives in the Sargasso Sea, then arrive two years later in the rivers of western Europe, where they live for up to two decades before returning to the Sargasso to spawn. Those that survive from juveniles to adulthood are said to be “recruited” into the population, and their numbers are rapidly declining as a result of a perfect storm of overfishing, habitat destruction, disease, and an ever more difficult transoceanic voyage because of those changing currents.

* * *

Sirenians (manatees and their kin) have been on the earth, or, better, in the water, for about 50 million years. Scientists have been looking closely at their transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic habitat in that distant past, about 42 million years ago, examining fossils found in the borderlands of Germany and Belgium. One formerly described species, Halitherium schinzii, may be folded into another owing to the incompleteness of the fossil record, according to a recent paper in the scientific journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. The “systematic consequences” that the title of the paper refers to include the possibility of retiring the genus, since “the use of the ‘Halitheriinae’ is not considered essential, because it does not contribute to a better understanding of sirenian diversity.” A small matter to civilians, perhaps, but an important one for taxonomists seeking to understand the evolution of the sirenians, whose closest terrestrial relative is the elephant.

* * *

It’s evident to anyone who’s paying attention that the world’s oceans are troubled environments, and not just because of that Texas-sized island of plastic afloat in the high Pacific. The Marine Mammal Center, a California-based nonprofit, reports that a record number of patients are filling its clinics in Sausalito, San Luis Obispo, and Monterey: as of late April, 87 northern elephant seals, 76 California sea lions, and 19 harbor seals, collectively consuming 1,000 pounds of fish a day. Since a pound of fish costs a dollar, the center could use your assistance. That’s a dollar better spent than put into the coffers of a certain for-profit aquarium, also located in California, that has come under investigation in recent months for its treatment of captive orcas in violation of the Animal Welfare Act.