Wow, Papua Whaling Habits Have Unique

JAYAPURA - Whales (whale shark) in Papua has a unique custom of eating small fish caught in fishing nets of the fishermen. On the uniqueness, the animal is paired radio-frequency identification (RFID) for further investigation by researchers.

Reported by Phys on Wednesday (7/18/2012), the conservation group WWF said, the researchers injected the small radio transmitter on the skin of 30 whales in the ocean of Paradise, Papua province. In fact, the Youtube video that exhibited by Conservation International (CI) showed that whales are fish from the hole to suck the fish nets in the sea that attract viewers to reach one million viewers.

Project leader of WWF Indonesia, Beny Ahadian Noor told AFP, to collect the 30 whales measuring 45 feet long (13.7 meters), the researchers used a fishing net. Fishing nets that already contains a small fish caught by fishermen at sea.

"Radio-frequency identification (RFID) has been used in animals such as dogs peliharaaan. However, this is the first time (to do) on the whales," said Noor. According to him, researchers typically use more sophisticated methods of satellite at a cost of USD4.000, but with RFID, only at a cost of $ 4.

"This is good enough to start, because we have little information about the behavior of whales in this sea," he added. Marine biologist Mark Erdmann who joined the expedition, said researchers are not practical when swimming with underwater sticks receiver.

A more convenient marker or pair of researchers in radio transmitters (RFID) in the skin of the whales, because of the unique customs of the animal. "What makes the marking on the sea allow Cenderawasih this is (because) the unique habits of the population (this whale)", he concluded.

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