Killer whale

Draft Plan:

• Introduction
• Orcas:
  • Classification
  • Physionomie
  • Habitation and Distribution
    • The different groups
  • Adaptation to this habitation
  • Nutrition
  • Hunting
  • Reproduction
  • Spatial and behavior structure
  • Communication
  • The population growth
• Pollution:
  • Definition
  • Human activity
    • Traffic
    • Farming
    • Hunting
  • Chimical pollution

• Observation of the animal
  • The diefferant technics to observe the animal

Introduction

In this project I would like to make my own research by using different kinds of ressources as books or even by interviewving searches working on Orcas for years. My project talks about the huge problem, that is each year increasing, pollution and in what it influences marine mammals, more precisely Orcas. I will write about these incredible animals which are constantly attacke by different pollution factors and in conclusion which influence different domains of their life. The main goal of this work is to show in what and by what the different kinds of pollution infuences and degradates Orcas life. This will also determine how big is this impact and that all the marine mammals are tuch by pollution. I will first write on pollution on one side and on the other on Orcas. Than I take the both sibject and mixed them together by seeing what kind of impact there will be and happen maybe in few years. After on I went to a specific place which is Vancouver to do an outside experiment and will disscuss and deal with the different problems pollution causes on killer whales. This will show and proove certain of the points I have mention in the first part of my work. M y project is so organize in a way of writing about Orcas ,by presenting this animal, about pollution, presenting the different kinds and by what are the provoct, making and hypotheses of what's happend when we have these differents factors that tuches Orcas and finnaly by having an exterior experiment in a certain area that will give a certain matier to my work by prooving certain of my hypothese or by myself seeing a beginning of some problem pollution causes.

Classification: Orcas, Orcinus orca

In common life we give the names of animal according to our own language. However we use a system call binomial nomenclature to have no mal entendu between scientific coming from different language. This is why we use a a scientific language to give names to animals. The binomial nomenclature uses 3 laws. First we say the genus and the specie of the animal in Latin. When we write the scientific name of the animal the first letter of the genus is written in uppercase letter and the hall name is written in italic. The scientific name of the killer whale is Orcinus orca. Each animal is classified in a specify way according to there characteristics. We use for this a system call hierarchic classification.
Here is the hierarchic classification of the Orca:
Domain: Eucaryote
Reign: Animal
Crotch: Stringed
Class: Mammals
Order: Cetacean
Family: Delphinia
Genus: Orcinus
Specie: Orca
Genus, species: Orcinus orca

Morphology

The Orcas as often been merged with a whale because of his extraordinary size. However Orcas are dolphins. The biggest ever known. There other name killer whale can also bring confusion of there real origins which is dolphins.
The size of an orca changes choosing it's sex and also it's geographic location.
Size:

• Male:

When a male orca reaches it's maturity, it can be 9.8 m long. It wises in average 3.6 and 5.5 tone, it can even wise 11t. The back, codal and pectoral fin can be in average 2 meter.

• Female:

When a male orca reaches it's maturity, it can be between 5 and 7.7 meter long. It wises in average an1.3 and 3.6 tone, it can even wise 7.4t. The back, codal and pectoral fin can be in average

• The young:

At the birth the the young measures between 1.8 to 2.7 choosing it's location birth. The weight of the new born is in average 180 kg.

Coloration:
We can easily recognize an Orca because of his distinctive corporal black and white pigmentation.

Body shape:

Habitation and Distribution

The different species

We have 3 different species of killer whales:

• Resident killer whales
• Transient killer whales
• Off-shore killer whales

Location:

• North Atlantic
• North Pacific
• South hemisphere

Reproduction

The Orcas have a close reproduction mode to the non aquatic mammals and including ours.

Spatial and behavior structure

During expedition we can observe that dolphins member and so Orcas are structured as a herd. In fact these animals stay in group together and stay closer to each other than to an animal from an other group. We can observe one or two leaders in the herd and the presence of a constant central group. These leaders are stronger and larger than the others. These dominant member observed the area for potential danger or investigates if there is something new happening near the group.We sometimes have also two or three members of the group that are more in front of the others to watch for inshore areas or danger. When there is a danger the animals immediately regroups there self in a packed group with the youngest in the middle protected by the other members. There movement are synchronize and in harmony. The group structure of orcas allows them a good use of the space around them as for hunting in several different conditions.

+ Herd = family !

Communication

Sounds for marine mammals is very important,as in water the visibility is greatly limited. Killer whales use sounds to naviguate,locate their preys and to communicate with each other.What's special with these mammals is that each group has his own languange. Sounds of each of these groups is the same with some special differatiations. Thanks to this we can generaly recombine the family tree of some groups and fine the lien de parenter between them.

Pollution

We are dealing here with the marine pollution. In fact orcas live in ocean and are influence by the pollution which is taken place in oceans. 71% of the earth surface is occupied by water and 97% of this water is found in ocean. On earth we have 5 million animals and plants. Even though only 5% of these animals and plants live in the ocean, because of the so important place water has on our blue earth we are touch and cetacean even more than us by the marine pollution, which is increasing. Pollution is a big factor in the degradation on earth’s water health. It is fluent and can quickly extend as it print itself in the water and cannot after be clean. This is a great problem as it also causes diseases and when the pollution is chemical it prints itself in plants which pollute each animal that eats them.

Let’s start by the beginning of food chain. First in the marine’s food chain starts with the phytoplankton (plant plankton). This miniscule plants absorb the sun’s rays which are use to make photosynthesis and thus to produce energy. They are the energy resource of the entire living animal, this is why they at the beginning of the food chain. In addition the phytoplankton represents a huge mass of the vegetal spicy thus it is the regulator of the earth’s oxygen. They allow us to live and breathe. Any tiny variation in the ocean temperature as 1C° can cause huge problems, as it alters the phytoplankton’s growth and in consequence changes the entire marine’s live. We than, have the Krill, which is in the second place in the food chain.-., This zooplankton is bunch of very small and tiny shrimps which are 3 to 7 cm long. All together they can weight 500 million tones which represents even more than the weight of the total human population on earth. They essentially grow in zones where the conditions are perfect for phytoplankton growth which is their nutrition. We can so find them in the north pole and mostly in the south pole. The krill represents 80% of the nutrition of sea birds, 100% of certain whales a fanon, of most fishes, also of some penguins and finally of some squid.This is one of the only example on earth were only one nutrition exists for so many species and which shows us how important they are and how big the impact on the marine worlds would it have if there was no more krill and zooplankton. In addition we can see that the krill is fragile and if the pollution kills it all the cetacean, fishes and other ocean mammals will disappear with it.

Different kinds of pollution: Our earth is a fragile matiere and can be easily degradated by anything as pollution. During these last 100 years the human activity has destroyed the earth’s nature and oceans. This is caused by the constant increase in the development of industries and also the high and rapid increase of the earth’s demography and plenty of other factors. For example every day, every month and every year huge quantity of use water not treated, of oil, industriel rejet and déchets. All these examples and other pollutants are brought in the oceans essentially by the atmosphere, rivers and marin corents. Even tgou there is 1’370 milliards metre cube of ocean’s water, which permits it to diluate easily pollution, they is still a major problem. In fact when there is a big ecological catastrophe it can easily spread everywhere as marin corants and so water l’emporte. This affects a lot of marine species and marine plants as they live in water and are attacked by the pollutants agent. Pollution kills each day a lot of marine animals or living in the oceans and this is, for most of the factors, or fault. Each country pollutes oceans at different levels and by a certain way. Domestic pollution: Most of the earth’s population, more precisely 60%, lives at less than 60 km of the ocean and seas costs. This results to the reason why, the zone mostly touch by pollution, are the cost zones. In fact because of the presents of human activity as we explained before pollutes a lot and by different ways. In addition this population is in a constant growth which makes that we are having even more than before pollution near these sectors. One of the reasons of these results is the sewages.

References

Dolphin Societies, discoveries and puzzles, edited by Karen Pryor and Kenneth S.Norris
The Ecology of whales and dolphins, edited by D.E.Gaskin
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/KillerWhale/home.html http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/marine-pollution-how-ocean-became-toxic-waste-dump

maybe you should start putting all the references somewhere on the wiki...--Pierre.brawand 2 février 2009 à 22:59 (MET)