Whales: Giants of the Ocean

Whales: Giants of the Ocean

Whales are among the largest and most remarkable animals on Earth. These marine mammals live in oceans around the world, from warm tropical waters to the cold seas surrounding the poles.

Life Beneath the Surface

Although whales spend their lives in water, they breathe air through blowholes located on top of their heads. They must regularly return to the surface to breathe before diving again in search of food or traveling through the ocean.

Whales are warm-blooded, give birth to live young, and nurse their calves with milk. A thick layer of fat called blubber helps protect them from cold water and stores energy during long migrations.

Two Main Groups

Whales are generally divided into baleen whales and toothed whales. Baleen whales filter small animals from the water using flexible plates inside their mouths. This group includes blue whales, humpback whales, and gray whales.

Toothed whales use teeth to catch fish, squid, and other prey. Many of them also use echolocation, producing sounds and listening for returning echoes to understand their surroundings. Sperm whales, belugas, and orcas belong to this group.

The Blue Whale

The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever lived. An adult can grow longer than a city bus and weigh well over one hundred tonnes. Despite its enormous size, it feeds mainly on tiny crustaceans called krill.

Communication and Migration

Whales communicate using clicks, whistles, pulses, and complex songs. Some sounds can travel across great distances underwater. Humpback whales are especially famous for their long, patterned songs.

Many species migrate thousands of kilometres each year. They often feed in cold, nutrient-rich waters before traveling to warmer regions where they mate and give birth.

Protecting Whales

Commercial hunting once caused severe declines in many whale populations. Today, whales also face threats from fishing gear, ship collisions, underwater noise, pollution, and changes to ocean ecosystems.

Conservation programs, safer fishing practices, protected habitats, and international cooperation can help whale populations recover. Protecting whales also supports healthier oceans because these animals play an important role in marine food webs and nutrient cycles.

Distribution of leaflets against the devastation of EI

Members of the Regional Coalition against reform EI conducted Thursday noon, distribution of postcards and flyers at the corner of Saguenay Boulevard and rue Lavoisier in Jonquière.

A dozen people took advantage of their lunch hour to remind people, the consequences qu’entraînera the new reform of employment insurance. “With this action, we wanted to remind everyone that this will have a negative impact on our workers and it will destroy the regional economy,” said Sylvain Bergeron, regional coordinator LASTUSE A mascot with the effigy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper was there and sipped a drink on a coffin, representing the employment insurance program.

The movement is growing day by day. So far, the Maritimes and Quebec were mobilized for the cause. It is now the turn of Ontario to defend its values. “The more we will win the West, more Harper will be forced to sit down to negotiate and bring this reform,” says Bergeron.

The Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean is actively involved in outreach events. “We feel that people here are behind us. In the last events in Montreal and Thetford Mines, we managed to fill eight buses and the effects of the new reform does not yet being felt.

Some implications

Entrepreneurs in the forestry sector have more difficulties to find labor this year. “Their former employees do not come back because of the reform that will force them to do research intensive job. They prefer to find a less paid work, but more stable, “says Sylvain Bergeron.

According to him, the next impact will take place at community agencies. “In this area there are 800 workers. Nearly 400 of them have to unemployment at a time in the year. They will have to look for another job to meet the new rules, “he says.

Although the summer holidays are upon us, members of the Coalition promise to come back strong in the fall with other outreach activities and mobilisation.

What kind of brochures are available?

This is a challenge that we can bring the information expected by the person you meet, whether user, citizen … A patient information they can use to choose and sometimes open a door to alternative solutions which will support a move towards more autonomy.

During contact with your audience, you may want to go with your board of a written document as a reminder or additional information. Looking for a document, so simple and complete as possible, enabling it to go further, to choose, to understand.

The Brussels local health promotion center has chosen for several years to facilitate the journey of a document from the broadcaster of information to its final target: the user. We aim to help professionals to choose the most suitable media and obtain them easily.

Before appearing on the display …

Upstream research work, description and classification is performed as a team. Search news first. The first objective for the CLPS is to keep abreast of new publications in health promotion. Or a copy is sent to us “spontaneously” or we found the info in a magazine. Once the local center, the leaflet follows a predefined path: it passes between hands of the team to see if it does indeed concern the many fields of health promotion, choose a category of classification, describe it in keywords … He receives a score, a copy is given to the documentation center, a contact is often taken with the association which broadcasts, and he finds himself on a display for visitors from CLPS. For brochures for the public, an update of work will be required to check availability copies over the months.

From now on, all the flyers we have listed and classified may be found at the local health promotion center (there are over three hundred, available from sixty different broadcasters). Gradually, we want to make this information available on the internet (you can access it through the network’s website presented last article).

The CLPS information sheet

Two to three times a year (depending on the news), the CLPS Brussels published several pages of information on a selection of recent documents. The choice is made in teams on the following criteria: the subject provides a relevant perspective on this issue or helping to discover the health promotion, content and formatting are sufficiently valid, the producer has no commercial interest, copies of stocks are available, sometimes. The sheet is a leading broadcast media for a campaign whose CLPS is a partner.

The July 2001 leaflet was sent to 400 organizations (community centers, youth centers, addiction centers, family planning centers, federations, medical homes, IMS, towns). Applications exceeded our expectations fifty organizations came for flyers in the three months that followed. A total of 24,000 copies for the 17 campaigns presented.

The leaflet is sent this March is a little different from previous: it becomes more of a vector CLPS information. Besides presenting the leaflets for users, there will also find information on some documents for professionals, some pedagogical tools and interesting websites. Abstracts attempt to describe in a few words the interest of the document, without issuing notice. Press kits are precious for that task.

The tools can be borrowed from the documentation center and all documents submitted will be ordered CLPS for several months. The advantage is of course to be able to obtain different media on the go at one time. Spoke on, you have the coordinates of each diffuser to purchase additional copies.

The distribution of leaflets Hadopi violates traffic laws

Since yesterday morning, the “awareness campaign” of the High Authority for the Distribution of Works and Internet rights protection is turned on. Tens of thousands of “explanatory leaflets” were distributed in the vicinity of highway tolls. This operation will last until tomorrow evening and will then be repeated the next weekend (27 to 29 August).

As we explained yesterday, delivering our first observations, this operation is to prevent back from vacation French hazards caused by illegal downloading. In all, according to the press release, about 830,000 people are expected to be potentially affected by the brochure. But this operation is it legal?

On Twitter as on our forums, several observers put into perspective the campaign against the traffic. In its regulatory part, Article R412-52 explains in the field of “disturbing traffic” that “giving away or make distributing flyers, leaflets, writing, images, photographs or any objects to drivers or vehicle occupants traveling on an open to public traffic route is punishable by a fine for offenses of the fourth class.”

According to the document (.pdf) Road Safety detailing the “major traffic fines and sanctions”, a fourth class fine for such a disorder rises to 135 euros (minus the amount increases to 90 euros plus the fine flat is 375 euros).

This departure, if confirmed, is expanding the list of violations of the High Authority. Earlier this year, the first official logo of the administrative authority resumed a typeface protected by an exclusive business license. At the time, the agency in charge of this work had invoked a “mistake of computer manipulation.” Then a new logo was finally unveiled a few months later, this time in compliance with intellectual property.

Last month, the authority responsible for enforcing intellectual property is again illustrated. On 27 July, the decree specifying the proceedings before the Rights Protection Commission (DPC) was published in the Official Journal. Or it violates the Code of Criminal Procedure, by not informing the public prosecutor while the law rightly imposes systematic transmission.

The distribution of leaflets was the first real action of the High Authority to the public. But hardly she started it already hit the seal of illegality. But a law was a chaotic legislative process, it is hardly surprising.