Marine Mammals- Is Man Friend or Foe?
Marine Mammals- Is Man Friend or Foe?
Do you know what marine mammals are?
Marine mammals are mammals that spend their whole lives in the water. A lot of popular marine mammals are dolphins, whales and manatees. These mammals are getting injured almost every day. Now people are tying to protect these mammals. Laws are made so people can't hunt whales and signs are put up where speed boats go because some speed boats hit manatees. Manatees are being killed almost every week. Now there are only about 5,000-30,000 Manatees left. Dolphin have a different problem. When fisherman hunt tuna they catch them in nets. Dolphin also like to eat tuna so they swim near schools of tuna. The fishermen don't want to catch the dolphin but they get caught in the nets. Some companies like Star-Kist are developing dolphin safe nets so the dolphin don't drown in the nets. Instead they can scape.
People are fascinated by marine life, especially dolphin. Dolphin have cured autistic kids, help people in pain and do work for Navy Seals. One man has made a dolphin speech project. It can be found at
The Dolphin Speech Project The image is from http://loki.stockton.edu/~stk4382/dolphin.htm
with permission.
People are tying to protect these mammals by making a sanctuary (A place to protect them and get the animals better) for them. A sanctuary that we worked in was the Anne Kolb Nature Center at West Lake Park. They had fish, birds, marine mammals, microscopic life, worms, crabs and many other animals. There are plenty of sanctuaries, such as Sea World, for marine mammals like sea lions and dolphin but owners also display the mammals to people. These people heal sick animals (Mostly marine mammals) and when they are all better they can either display them or free them back to the waters. The marine mammals at Sea World are given names when displayed like Shamu or Flipper. I don't really like this place because it really isn't a sanctuary for the animals because they rarely free them and they use these animals for business, profit and publicity. Although there is a lot of sanctuaries all around the world, many animals are still dying and getting endangered and almost extinct, usually by people.
If you want to see a cool and informational site click here
Many groups study marine mammals in the wild and tries to make man harm the whales and mammals as little as possible. They do work as naturalists and educators to the community just like we did.
Do you hace a comment or opinion about this? Have you done naturalist work that affects marine mammals? If you do, will you send us MAIL? We will answer you and publish some comments on this page.