Dolphins at work

Dolphins at play.

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You saw the pink dolphin in Oman. I kept thinking about the ones in the Amazon.

The videos of a pink-looking dolphin off Oman’s coast caught everyone’s attention. And honestly, I can understand why. You don't come across something like that every day.

But while reading about it, I found myself thinking about the Amazon river dolphin, also known as the boto.

These dolphins live in freshwater rivers and can grow up to 2.5 metres long. Their pink colour varies from one individual to another and is influenced by factors such as blood flow beneath the skin and scarring. They also use echolocation to navigate the murky waters they call home.

But there's more to them than their unusual colour. They interact, compete, choose mates and display complex behaviours. They aren't just fascinating creatures to look at. They have lives of their own.

And those lives are under threat.

Fishing, dams, pollution and deforestation are damaging their habitats. Mercury released by activities such as illegal gold mining can enter rivers, accumulate in fish and eventually harm dolphins that feed on them.

Something about this stays with me.

We can spend hours watching a video of an unusual animal, sharing it with friends and marvelling at how beautiful nature is. But how often do we think about what happens to these animals after the excitement fades?

I don't think there's anything wrong with being fascinated by a rare sighting. That curiosity can be the beginning of learning something new.

But perhaps it can also lead us to ask a bigger question: Can we truly appreciate the beauty of nature while remaining indifferent to what is happening to it? 🌿

Note: The species of the pink-looking dolphin spotted off Oman has not been confirmed. The Amazon river dolphin is mentioned here for comparison.

Sources: The Indian Express · Associated Press · India Today

Check out this guy's videos of riding with pods of dolphins off CA!

For the past few months there has been a pod of inshore bottle nose dolphins who like to bow ride us out of our harbor in Moss Landing. They are some of my favorites that we see. We have 9 different species we see pretty regularly here on Monterey Bay, California.

I want to share a science-art project I developed with Livia Zaharia. We called it Whale & Dolphin Orchestra.

The idea is to combine dolphin whistles and whale calls from different parts of the world into a single orchestra. You pick recordings on a map, listen to the animals' calls, and generate music guided by their measured rhythms and pitch contours.

I made a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/CI_CTcqpJ_Q

The prototype is here: https://whales.liviazaharia.com/

We selected short excerpts from open research collections (PANGAEA, NOAA DCLDE, OpenWhistle, and the Dominica Sperm Whale Project datasets), including humpback songs, dolphin whistles, sperm-whale click patterns, and orca calls.

To make the music, we measure when phrases start, how long they last, and how their pitch changes. We map tonal contours to notes and clicks to percussion, then combine those parts into an audio guide for the music model. We choose the instruments and how those measurements map to music.

We developed this as a proposal for the HIFMB × HWK ArtWaves residency. Alongside the orchestra, Livia made a jewelry generator that uses the recordings’ amplitude and frequency to shape her ring designs. She also drafted a physical installation for the project.

Everything is open-sourced at https://github.com/Livia-Zaharia/whales

We’re still deciding which generative music model to use by default. In the video you can hear ACE-Step and Stable Audio 3, which one do you like more?

Thanks to the people saving them.

It's my fav😍