Humpback Whales

Threatened whale species

Five whale species — the humpback, blue, fin, sei and southern right — are considered at risk and are listed as threatened species by the Australian Government. Recovery Plans have been developed for these species. A Recovery Plan aims to ensure the long-term survival in the wild of a threatened species by identifying the threats to the species, and by setting out actions necessary to stop the decline of the species.

Read the recovery plans for the:

• blue, fin and sei whales
• humpback whale
• southern right whale
•  

Australia is fortunate to have many sites around our coastline that are ideal for whale and dolphin watching. Whale and dolphin watching is a growing industry in Australia and as of 2003 was estimated to be worth close to $300 million* a year to the Australian economy. During the past five years the industry has grown by 15 per cent per year.

 

Australia is fortunate to have a number of great whale and dolphin watching sites. There are numerous whale and dolphin watching operations around Australia that offer excellent opportunities to see animals in the wild. There are also many land-based sites where whales and dolphins come within meters of the coastline. Land-based whale and dolphin watching is an inexpensive way of seeing these magnificent animals in their natural environments.

 

 

Humpback Whales

Humpback Whales belong to the group of whales known as rorquals, a group that includes the Blue Whale, Fin Whale, Bryde's Whale, Sei Whale, and Minke Whale. Rorquals have two characteristics in common: dorsal fins on their backs, and ventral pleats running for the tip of the lower jaw to the navel area. They are characterised by the possession of baleen plates for sieving the krill upon which they feed. Humpback Whales are regular visitors to the coastal waters off southern Queensland. Each year, during winter, humpback whales migrate from Antarctic waters, pass through South Island New Zealand , to the warm waters of the tropics for calving.

Many humpback whales arrive in Hervey Bay from late July and remain until November when they begin their return to the southern ocean. Whale watching in Hervey Bay has become an important attraction for tourists and naturalists. In recent years visitors to Hervey Bay, from mid-July to early November, have discovered the awe inspiring experience of watching the majestic humpback whale, and their encounters with the whales on the waters of Hervey Bay have been unforgettable. These majestic creatures have made Hervey Bay a regular stop on their annual migration to Antarctica after giving birth in the warm waters of north Queensland

Mothers and calves are now relaxed and at home with the whale watching boats which carefully approach their playground, and the guaranteed sightings are counted as "an experience of a lifetime". The humpbacks have made Hervey Bay their own, and as one of the most active and acrobatic of species they provide an awesome sight with their antics, including spectacular displays of breaching, tail flapping and pectoral slapping.

About 20 operators offer whale watching tours, all vessels leaving from the Urangan Boat Harbour with the fleet offering many variations in size, carrying capacity and various other appointments.

Some vessels have sound systems to enable passengers to hear the whales sing, offer educational videos on the journey to the Hervey Bay Marine Park.

  All vessels have experienced crew who provide knowledgeable commentary which provides a greater interpretation of these gentle creatures.

As the years go by, the whales seem increasingly comfortable with the cruise vessels and often come so close you can almost reach out and touch them. Of course, tour operators adhere strictly to Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, designed in consultation with the Hervey Bay operators, to protect the whales and keep them coming back to Hervey Bay year after year. Other marine life which can be sighted during a day's whale watching include dolphins, turtles, and occasionally dugong.

Humpback Whale Facts

• The humpback whale takes its name from the habit of breaking the water surface with a large area of its back when diving.
• Approximately 3,000 Humpback whales will migrate this season between Antarctica and the Great Barrier Reef
• Humpbacks are still the third most endangered species of all the big whales, but now their numbers are increasing 13% each year.
• They are the fifth largest animal on this planet, growing up to 15 metres in length with a weight of up to 45,000kg (99,000lbs) - equivalent to 11 elephants or 600 persons each!
• Humpbacks are the most acrobatic of all of the great whales
• The species displays a wide variety of leaping, rolling and breaching movements which provide fascinating viewing for whale watchers.
• The humpback whale is also well known for its complex underwater vocalisations or whale songs particularly during breeding.
• Adult whales have been seen to breach 20 - 30 times within 5 minutes, displaying awesome grace and power.

 

Although they have the general shape of a fish, Humpback Whales are mammals. They are warm blooded, breath air and bear live young and nurse them with milk.

  The humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae is aptly named from the Greek megas meaning great and pteron, a wing, because of its huge wing like flippers. The pectoral fins of the Humpback Whale are up to 5 metres (15 feet) in length, one third of the animals total length.

  These marine mammals are superbly adapted to a life of swimming and diving, and are playful and inquisitive by nature. Their size belies their grace in the water. There are no more than 5000 individuals in the Southern Hemisphere. They are the third most endangered whale species in the world, after the bowhead and right whales and are totally protected.
They grow up to 15m (50 feet) long and can weigh up to 45,000kg (99,000lbs) - equivalent to 11 elephants or 600 persons each. They have a stocky body with a broad, rounded head and extremely long flippers, which can be up to one-third of the animal's total length.

 

  colour is generally blackish with a white area covering the throat grooves. They have up to 22 throat grooves running along the belly from the chin to the navel. The flippers are almost pure white below and mottled black and white above.

 

  The underside of the tail flukes is marked with a variable pattern of white, making each whale recognisable at the surface as it throws its tail into the air before sounding.

 

 

 

 
A series of knobby protuberances on the head, jaws and flippers often have large barnacles growing on their summits. Each bump has a long coarse hair growing from its centre. These are believed to act as sensors.

 

Work Gender Pay Gap

http://au.biz.yahoo.com/090830/31/28an8.html

Gender pay gap 'should be declared'

The Federal Government is being pressured to force companies to reveal how their pay rates for men and women compare.

The Equal Pay Alliance, comprising more than 130 business and community groups, has sent an open letter to Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for the Status of Women, demanding mandatory audits of pay rates.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions is among the letter's signatories and its president, Sharan Burrow, says Australia has a culture of discrimination which undervalues women's work.

"We'd like to see pay equity audits mandated so that there is a transparency [and] people know what the pay rates for grades right up to management are," she said.

She says it takes a woman 14 months on average to earn what a man earns in a year, and women retire with half the amount of savings.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, also a member of the alliance, says companies in the United Kingdom already reveal male and female pay rates in their annual reports.

"That is legislation that has only been brought in recently so there are different solutions which we might look to internationally," she said.

Marie Coleman, from the National Foundation for Australian Women, says the Federal Government should at least begin mandatory pay reporting in the public sector.

"They can certainly promote, in the private sector, more vigorous approaches towards equal pay and equal opportunity," she said.

"It would be perfectly possible for government contracts to only be available to businesses which could demonstrate that they had effective equal-opportunity and equal-pay strategies in place."

 

Work Annual Hours of Work

Annual hours over eight centuries

Year	Type of worker	Annual hours
13th century	Adult male peasant, UK	1620 hours
14th century	Casual laborer, UK	1440 hours
Middle Ages	English worker	2309 hours
1400-1600	Farmer-miner, adult male, UK	1980 hours
1840	Average worker, UK	3105-3588 hours
1850	Average worker, U.S.	3150-3650 hours
1987	Average worker, U.S.	1949 hours
1988	Manufacturing workers, UK	1855 hours
2004	Average worker, Germany	1364 hours
2008	Average worker, India	2817 - 3443 hours

^[5]

[edit] Importance

Working time is a quantity that can be measured for an individual or, in the aggregate, for a society. In the latter case, a 40-hour workweek would imply that employed individuals within the society, on average, worked 40 hours per week. Most often, the concern of sociologists and policy-makers focuses on the aggregate variables.

Some industrialized nations legally mandate a maximum work week length of between 35 and 45 hours per week, and, require 2 to 5 weeks per year of holiday. However, the actual hours of work per week cannot fall below a certain minimum without compromising a nation’s ability to produce the material standards of living to which its citizens have grown accustomed.

If the work week is too short compared to that society's ideal, then the society suffers from underemployment of labor and human capital. All else being equal, this will tend to result in lower real incomes and a lower standard of living than what could be had with a longer work week in the same society.

In contrast, a work week that is too long will result in more material goods at the cost of stress-related health problems as well as a "drought of leisure." Furthermore, children are likely to receive less attention from busy parents, and childrearing is likely to be subjectively worse. The exact ways in which long workweeks affect culture, public health, and education are debated.

Several nations have imposed limits on working time in an effort to combat unemployment. This has been done both on a national level, as in France's 35-hour workweek, and on the company-union level, for example the agreement between Volkswagen and its union to temporarily reduce the workweek to 29 hours to preserve jobs. This policy is controversial among economists.

[edit] Days of the work week

Main article: Workweek

The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday through Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure.

Several countries have adopted a workweek from Monday morning until Friday noon, either due to religious rules (observation of shabbat in Israel) or the growing predominance of a 35-37.5 hour workweek in continental Europe. Several of the Muslim countries have a standard Sunday through Thursday or Saturday through Wednesday workweek leaving Friday for religious observance, and providing breaks for the daily prayer times.

 

History of Whaling in Australia

History of whaling in Australia

Whaling in Australia commenced in the late 18th century. There is no known history of Aboriginal communities in Australia having hunted whales.

Early whaling was carried out using harpoons from small boats. Once caught the whales were towed behind the boats back to whaling stations on shore. Whale by-products were used for a number of things: whale blubber was melted down to be used as oil for lamp fuel, lubricants, candles and as a base for perfumes and soaps, Baleen (whalebone) was used for items such as corsets, whips and umbrellas.

Whaling and the export of whale by-products such as whale oil became Australia's first primary industry. One of the first commercial whaling operations in Australia was the Davidson Whaling Station located just outside of Eden on the South-East coast of New South Wales. Numerous other coastal whaling stations were established around Australia in the late 1820s to 1830s.

The development of harpoon guns, explosive harpoons and steam-driven whaling boats in the late 19th century made large-scale commercial whaling so efficient that many whale species were over-exploited and came very near to extinction. This over-exploitation eventually led to the demise of the whaling industry in Australia. As whale numbers dropped, laws were passed to protect a number of the species.

Demise of the whaling industry

Whale protection for certain whale species commenced in the 1930s after the effects of whaling on whale populations became more apparent. For example the southern right whale was protected in Australian waters as early as 1935, after more than 26 000 individuals had been taken in Australian and New Zealand waters between 1822 and 1930.

Whaling stations in Australia and New Zealand killed over 40 000 humpback whales on their migrations from the Antarctic Ocean to the warm tropical waters north of Australia. Whaling ceased on humpback whales in 1963, and they were protected worldwide in 1965 after recognition of a dramatic global decline in numbers.

Commercial whaling continued on sperm whales until 1978, with 16 000 taken from 1952 in Australian waters until the end of commercial whaling in 1978.

Commercial whaling in Australia ceased in 1978 with the closure of Australia's last whaling station, the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company, in Western Australia. In 1979 Australia adopted an anti-whaling policy, putting a permanent end to whaling in Australian waters. At the same time Australia started to focus heavily on working towards the international protection and conservation of whales. The 25th Anniversary of Australia's anti-whaling policy was celebrated in 2004.

Whales today

Since the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling came in to place in 1986, many whale populations have begun to recover. The Southern Right Whale, which was nearly extinct by the middle of the nineteenth century, is now showing signs of recovery. In recent years, growing numbers appear off the southern Australian coast, where breeding and socializing behavior occurs before they head south to feed in the nutrient-rich Antarctic waters.

 

Matisse... Art and English Virtual Class

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/118248-artists-who-changed-the-art-world-matisse

This class would talk about Matisse. He was an impressionist with some great designs based on Japanese Prints with flat areas of rich paint and rich color. Matisse painted in vibrant colors and created some exotic patterns with his designs which he based on the Japanese style of painting. Give your impressions about his Art using language discussing Matisse Prints and Paintings.

Artists who changed the Art World - Matisse by Maggi Carstairs

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Matisse, Master of Color

The art of our century has been dominated by two men: Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They are artists of classical greatness, and their visionary forays into new art have changed our understanding of the world. Matisse was the elder of the two, but he was a slower and more methodical man by temperament and it was Picasso who initially made the greater splash. Matisse, like Raphael, was a born leader and taught and encouraged other painters, while Picasso, like Michelangelo, inhibited them with his power: he was a natural czar.

Matisse's artistic career was long and varied, covering many different styles of painting from Impressionism to near Abstraction. Early on in his career Matisse was viewed as a Fauvist, and his celebration of bright colors reached its peak in 1917 when he began to spend time on the French Riviera at Nice and Vence. Here he concentrated on reflecting the sensual color of his surroundings and completed some of his most exciting paintings. In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed as having duodenal cancer and was permanently confined to a wheelchair. It was in this condition that he completed the magnificent Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.

Matisse's art has an astonishing force and lives by innate right in a paradise world into which Matisse draws all his viewers. He gravitated to the beautiful and produced some of the most powerful beauty ever painted. He was a man of anxious temperament, just as Picasso, who saw him as his only rival, was a man of peasant fears, well concealed. Both artists, in their own fashion, dealt with these disturbances through the sublimation of painting: Picasso destroyed his fear of women in his art, while Matisse coaxed his nervous tension into serenity. He spoke of his art as being like "a good armchair"-- a ludicrously inept comparison for such a brilliant man-- but his art was a respite, a reprieve, a comfort to him.

Matisse initially became famous as the "King of the Fauves", an inappropriate name for this gentlemanly intellectual: there was no wildness in him, though there was much passion. He is an awesomely controlled artist, and his spirit, his mind, always had the upper hand over the "beast" of Fauvism.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/matisse/

Matisse's Fauvist years were superseded by an experimental period, as he abandoned three-dimensional effects in favor of dramatically simplified areas of pure color, flat shape, and strong pattern. The intellectual splendor of this dazzlingly beautiful art appealed to the Russian mentality, and many great Matisses are now in Russia.

Art and English...Monet

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/117770-artists-who-changed-the-art-world-monet

This class would talk about Monet. Impressionist with some awesome paintings of flowers and scenery. Monet used rich colors and created scenes that captured the life of the Artists of France. Discuss his paintings and learn about Impressionism in Art and learn to speak and write English.

Artists who changed the Art World - Monet by Maggi Carstairs

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* Early works, Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre 1840-1872
* First Impressionist paintings
* Later Impressionism
* Paris
* Rouen Cathedral
* Poplars on the Epte
* Waterlilies
* Haystacks
* Houses of Parliament, London
* Last years

His youth was spent in Le Havre, where he first excelled as a caricaturist but was then converted to landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom he derived his firm predilection for painting out of doors. In 1859 he studied in Paris at the Atelier Suisse and formed a friendship with Pissarro. After two years' military service in Algiers, he returned to Le Havre and met Jongkind, to whom he said he owed `the definitive education of my eye'. He then, in 1862, entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris and there met Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille, with whom he was to form the nucleus of the Impressionist group. Monet's devotion to painting out of doors is illustrated by the famous story concerning one of his most ambitious early works, Women in the Garden (Musée d'Orsay, Paris; 1866-67). The picture is about 2.5 meters high and to enable him to paint all of it outside he had a trench dug in the garden so that the canvas could be raised or lowered by pulleys to the height he required. Courbet visited him when he was working on it and said Monet would not paint even the leaves in the background unless the lighting conditions were exactly right.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/

Monet's persistence in painting in series, beginning with the Gare Saint-Lazare and continuing in the Poplars and Haystacks, attains an impressive climax in the series he devoted to Rouen Cathedral. He began work at Rouen early in 1892, the year after he had finished the Haystacks and the last of the Poplars, and took a room above a shop in the rue Grand-Pont from which to observe the west front of the great church. He broke off to return to Giverny but resumed work at Rouen in the spring of 1893. The rest of that year and most of 1894 was spent in completing the paintings from memory.

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