LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Whales (Ecotourism): Great Whales
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Right whales prefer coastlines and sometimes large bays, but may spend a lot of time on the open sea. The Northern right whale populations are considered to be close to extinction. Right whales are baleen whales, they filter their food through their long baleen plates. Right whales open their great mouths and graze along the surface of the water. Right whales mostly eat small crustaceans including copepods and small shrimp-like animals called euphausiids.
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Size differentiation among whale species often takes the form of great whales versus lesser whales. Political rather than scientific reasoning commonly underlies this distinction. The term great whales describes the largest members of the cetacean order. Factually, the baleen whales are not only the largest cetaceans, they ... rank among the largest species of mammals in the world. They range in size from the average twenty foot pygmy right whale to the average one hundred foot blue whale.
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Have students research the migration routes of several other species of whales. One source is National Geographic, "The Great Whales, Migration and Range," December, 1976. (Scientists often know where whales summer and winter but may not know the routes they take to get there.) Another source is the satellite tracking program implemented by WhaleNet. WhaleNet provides blank charts, weather maps, and the latitude and longitude of the whales and other marine mammals.
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In the early and mid-1900's, several species of whales in the Southern Ocean were hunted to the edge of extinction, but they are now gradually recovering thanks to international regulation. However, the great abundance of whales in the Antarctic region remains a thing of the past. Today the entire area around the continent of Antarctica has been declared an international whale sanctuary with whaling activities closely monitored by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
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Every summer, great numbers of whales, walrus and seals migrate from Pacific to Arctic Ocean and back through Bering Strait. The most common cetaceans are gray and beluga whales. Anadyr Airport pier is the best place in the World to swim with belugas (July-September).
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At the peak of the whaling boom, there were enough whales migrating through Tasmanian waters to support 45 whaling stations, nine of which were in or around Hobart. So great were the numbers of massive southern right whales in the Derwent that it was considered dangerous to cross the estuary in small boats.
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Great Whales