1998
Year of the Ocean: Toothed Whales
Date Of Issue 18.05.1998
Date Of Issue 18.05.1998
|
|
|
|
Year of the Ocean: Toothed Whales
The United Nations (UNESCO) has declared 1998 as the International Year of the Ocean. In this connection Postverk Føroya has decided to issue 4 stamps depicting toothed whales.
When whale watching you must look for things which break the surface. The big whales can be recognized by their blow and small whales by their back and dorsal fin, as their blow is so small it can rarely be seen at a distance.
Whales are elegantly streamlined like fish, while their hind legs and pelvis occur only as small internal bones whose only use is to support the male's penis muscles. The boneless dorsal fin and the altered front legs, serving as fins, function as steering organs. The tail fin is transversally set, and whales move forwards by flapping their tail up and down and not from side to side, as with fish and sharks.
Toothed whales are, with few exceptions, smaller than whalebone whales. They have from 0-40 teeth in each half of their jaws, and do not replace lost teeth. The bones of the upper jaw extend far back so the nostrils have moved up to the top of the head, to the blow-hole, and the air breathed out forms the blow. Whales do not have sweat, scent or saliva glands, nor a sense of smell, but their hearing is well-developed and they are mammals with a thick layer of heat-insulating blubber. Toothed whales find their way about and communicate by sonar.
Whales breathe like other mammals, holding their breath while under water. Some whales dive down to a depth of two or possibly three kilometers, remaining under water for up to two hours, but they do not get the 'bends' when returning to the surface.
Toothed whales are carnivores and live off octopus, fish, birds, seals and other whales. No toothed whale can chew its food; the most they can do is tear it into smaller pieces before swallowing it.
Most whales have a gestation period of just under a year. They give birth to one calf at a time, and these will suckle for six months to two years. Whale milk has a fat content of 40%, so the calf grows quickly. They reach puberty quickly, generally at a length some 80-90% of their adult size and at the age of five to fifteen years.
Whales have been caught for the whole of man's known history. Whale fishing features on cave paintings of the last interglacial period and incised drawings on stone from the time after the last ice age. Pilot whales are caught in the Faeroes, with small boats making a half-circle behind a school of whales and driving them up onto land in special whale holes, in much the same way now as when the Faeroes were first inhabited in the ninth century. After many years of research, NAMMCO (North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission) have confirmed that the Faeroese catch of pilot whales is a fully sustainable exploitation of total stocks, amounting to a yearly average of 0.1% of a stock of not quite 800,000 creatures.
THE ATLANTIC WHITE-SIDED DOLPHIN (Lagenorhynchus acutus)
The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is a small toothed whale, 2.8 m in length and 235 kg in weight, with a dark-grey back, light belly, and an ochre yellow stripe along the length of its body. This dolphin has 30-40 pointed teeth one centimetre long in each half of the jaw.
Its food consists of shoal fish such as cuttlefish, crustaceans and herring, cod, blue whiting, smelt, hake and mackerel. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin has a gestation period of 10-12 months and its calf is 1.1-1.2 m long and suckles for one year. The female reaches puberty at around twelve years of age at a length of 1.9-2.2 m, when the male is 2.1-2.4 m. The female bears a calf every three or four years. This dolphin lives for up to 30 years.
This creature is widespread throughout the North Atlantic from West Greenland to Chesapeake Bight in Maryland and from east of the Barents Sea to the Azores and all the way to the Adriatic. The whale is seen in schools ranging from twenty animals to several thousand. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is often seen in the Faeroes in the company of pilot whales, either as a separate or mixed school. Whale counting suggests a stock of 50,000 - 100,000 animals within the areas investigated, with a large concentration in a belt to the south of Iceland. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is not protected, and some are caught off Greenland and the Faeroes, though normally this is fewer than 100 per year. The catches are used for human consumption.
THE KILLER WHALE (Orcinus orca)
The killer whale is easily recognisable by its large dorsal fin and white saddle marks. The male's dorsal fin is high and triangular, while the female's is smaller and rounded towards the rear. The fins are large and wide. The male grows to 10 m long, and the female 8.5 m. The killer whale has 10-13 teeth 6-8 cm long in each half of the jaw, and eats anything from octopus, basking shark and fish such as salmon, herring, cod, Greenland halibut, mackerel, tuna and eagle rays to birds resting on the sea or on rocks, and seals and whales of all sizes. In Greenland, it catches a number of narwhals and white whales. The killer whale has a gestation period of 17 months. A new-borne calf is 1.8 - 2.5 m long and will suckle for over a year. At puberty, the males are 5.2- 6.5 m long and 15-16 years old, while the females are 4.6-5.4 m long and 8-10 years old. A female will give birth once every four to nine years. The killer whale is thought to live to over 50 years.
This is a cosmopolitan whale and is found everywhere from the tropics to the arctic. There are particularly large numbers off the Lofoten Islands, between the Faeroes and Iceland and round Iceland. They live in small schools, but may join larger schools of approaching 1000 animals. The small schools are composed of females and their offspring of both sexes.
Each year a few killer whales are caught in Greenland and Iceland, and up to 1986 a few were caught on the Faeroes for human consumption, in the same way as with pilot whales. Stocks are estimated at 8,500 - 13,000 in the North-East Atlantic and the animal is not protected. They are a great nuisance to fishermen everywhere, as they take the bait from the hooks and eat any hooked fish.
BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (Tursiops truncatus)
The bottlenose dolphin is a smooth dark-grey, clumsy-looking toothed whale with a lighter coloured belly. It has a short snout and its dorsal fin is more triangular than the pilot whale. The male grows to 2.7-3.8 m long, and the female to 1.9-3.6 m, with a weight up to 650 kg. The bottlenose dolphin has 18-26 teeth of length 1.5-2 cm in each half of the jaw. This dolphin eats shoaling octopus and fish such as grey mullet, eel, anchovy, blue whiting, Norway pout, herring, cod and mackerel. The bottle nose dolphin can be a problem for fisheries through eating net and hook-caught fish. It has a gestation period of 12 months and new-born calves are 0.8-1.2 m long and suckle for one to one-and-a-half years. At puberty the male is 2.4-2.8 m long and around 11 years old, while the female is 2.3-3.1 m long and 12 years old. A female will give birth once every 4-8 years. The bottlenose dolphin lives up to 50 years, though the female lives 10 years longer than the male.
This dolphin is widespread in both temperate and tropical seas. It requires higher temperatures than other whales and therefore is not found as far north as Greenland. It lives in schools ranging from a few in number to up to a thousand and these consist of both sexes and different age ranges. In the Faeroes, the bottlenose dolphin is most commonly seen together with pilot whales, either individually or in a mixed school. So far no estimate has been made of stocks in the North Atlantic. The bottlenose dolphin is very common and not protected. They are occasionally caught in the Faeroes, with landings of up to 10-50 per year, but this is a very irregular occurrence . They are used for human consumption.WHITE WHALE (Delphinapterus leucas)
The white whale lacks an actual dorsal fin and is a spotted dark-grey and brownish colour at birth, but turns completely white at 5-12 years. The male white whale is the larger at 4-5.5 m, with the female at 3-4.1 m and with weights of up to 1.6 tonnes. The white whale has 8-11 conical teeth 3-3.5 cm long in each half of its jaw. Its food consists of fish, such as common ice cod, polar cod, other codfish, and in former days at any rate, Greenland halibut and the following: lumpfish, humped salmon, capelin, sand eel, smelt, salmon and char. They also eat annelids, various large crustaceans and octopus. The white whale has a gestation period of 14-15 months, and mating takes place in February-April. The calf is born the following April-May and is 1.6 m long, weighs 79 kg and suckles for two years. At puberty the male is 6-8 years old and the female 4-7 years. The white whale cow calves every three years and the whale may live up to 35 years.
The white whale mainly lives north of 55°N in the arctic waters round the North Pole. Strays may turn up far to the south in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. The white whale approaches shallow coasts and may spend time in brackish water or even wander far up rivers. It has been sighted once in the Faeroes. The white whale is classified into at least 16 separate stocks worldwide. It lives in small schools and is preeminently a coastal whale. It may join larger schools of several thousand creatures. Total stocks of white whale are about 50,000- 70,000 animals, with concentrations in Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, the White Sea and the Okhotsk Sea. Every year around 1,100-1,400 white whales are caught off Greenland, Canada and the north of Russia-Siberia for human consumption.
Dorete Bloch
The United Nations (UNESCO) has declared 1998 as the International Year of the Ocean. In this connection Postverk Føroya has decided to issue 4 stamps depicting toothed whales.
When whale watching you must look for things which break the surface. The big whales can be recognized by their blow and small whales by their back and dorsal fin, as their blow is so small it can rarely be seen at a distance.
Whales are elegantly streamlined like fish, while their hind legs and pelvis occur only as small internal bones whose only use is to support the male's penis muscles. The boneless dorsal fin and the altered front legs, serving as fins, function as steering organs. The tail fin is transversally set, and whales move forwards by flapping their tail up and down and not from side to side, as with fish and sharks.
Toothed whales are, with few exceptions, smaller than whalebone whales. They have from 0-40 teeth in each half of their jaws, and do not replace lost teeth. The bones of the upper jaw extend far back so the nostrils have moved up to the top of the head, to the blow-hole, and the air breathed out forms the blow. Whales do not have sweat, scent or saliva glands, nor a sense of smell, but their hearing is well-developed and they are mammals with a thick layer of heat-insulating blubber. Toothed whales find their way about and communicate by sonar.
Whales breathe like other mammals, holding their breath while under water. Some whales dive down to a depth of two or possibly three kilometers, remaining under water for up to two hours, but they do not get the 'bends' when returning to the surface.
Toothed whales are carnivores and live off octopus, fish, birds, seals and other whales. No toothed whale can chew its food; the most they can do is tear it into smaller pieces before swallowing it.
Most whales have a gestation period of just under a year. They give birth to one calf at a time, and these will suckle for six months to two years. Whale milk has a fat content of 40%, so the calf grows quickly. They reach puberty quickly, generally at a length some 80-90% of their adult size and at the age of five to fifteen years.
Whales have been caught for the whole of man's known history. Whale fishing features on cave paintings of the last interglacial period and incised drawings on stone from the time after the last ice age. Pilot whales are caught in the Faeroes, with small boats making a half-circle behind a school of whales and driving them up onto land in special whale holes, in much the same way now as when the Faeroes were first inhabited in the ninth century. After many years of research, NAMMCO (North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission) have confirmed that the Faeroese catch of pilot whales is a fully sustainable exploitation of total stocks, amounting to a yearly average of 0.1% of a stock of not quite 800,000 creatures.
THE ATLANTIC WHITE-SIDED DOLPHIN (Lagenorhynchus acutus)
The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is a small toothed whale, 2.8 m in length and 235 kg in weight, with a dark-grey back, light belly, and an ochre yellow stripe along the length of its body. This dolphin has 30-40 pointed teeth one centimetre long in each half of the jaw.
Its food consists of shoal fish such as cuttlefish, crustaceans and herring, cod, blue whiting, smelt, hake and mackerel. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin has a gestation period of 10-12 months and its calf is 1.1-1.2 m long and suckles for one year. The female reaches puberty at around twelve years of age at a length of 1.9-2.2 m, when the male is 2.1-2.4 m. The female bears a calf every three or four years. This dolphin lives for up to 30 years.
This creature is widespread throughout the North Atlantic from West Greenland to Chesapeake Bight in Maryland and from east of the Barents Sea to the Azores and all the way to the Adriatic. The whale is seen in schools ranging from twenty animals to several thousand. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is often seen in the Faeroes in the company of pilot whales, either as a separate or mixed school. Whale counting suggests a stock of 50,000 - 100,000 animals within the areas investigated, with a large concentration in a belt to the south of Iceland. The Atlantic white-sided dolphin is not protected, and some are caught off Greenland and the Faeroes, though normally this is fewer than 100 per year. The catches are used for human consumption.
THE KILLER WHALE (Orcinus orca)
The killer whale is easily recognisable by its large dorsal fin and white saddle marks. The male's dorsal fin is high and triangular, while the female's is smaller and rounded towards the rear. The fins are large and wide. The male grows to 10 m long, and the female 8.5 m. The killer whale has 10-13 teeth 6-8 cm long in each half of the jaw, and eats anything from octopus, basking shark and fish such as salmon, herring, cod, Greenland halibut, mackerel, tuna and eagle rays to birds resting on the sea or on rocks, and seals and whales of all sizes. In Greenland, it catches a number of narwhals and white whales. The killer whale has a gestation period of 17 months. A new-borne calf is 1.8 - 2.5 m long and will suckle for over a year. At puberty, the males are 5.2- 6.5 m long and 15-16 years old, while the females are 4.6-5.4 m long and 8-10 years old. A female will give birth once every four to nine years. The killer whale is thought to live to over 50 years.
This is a cosmopolitan whale and is found everywhere from the tropics to the arctic. There are particularly large numbers off the Lofoten Islands, between the Faeroes and Iceland and round Iceland. They live in small schools, but may join larger schools of approaching 1000 animals. The small schools are composed of females and their offspring of both sexes.
Each year a few killer whales are caught in Greenland and Iceland, and up to 1986 a few were caught on the Faeroes for human consumption, in the same way as with pilot whales. Stocks are estimated at 8,500 - 13,000 in the North-East Atlantic and the animal is not protected. They are a great nuisance to fishermen everywhere, as they take the bait from the hooks and eat any hooked fish.
BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (Tursiops truncatus)
The bottlenose dolphin is a smooth dark-grey, clumsy-looking toothed whale with a lighter coloured belly. It has a short snout and its dorsal fin is more triangular than the pilot whale. The male grows to 2.7-3.8 m long, and the female to 1.9-3.6 m, with a weight up to 650 kg. The bottlenose dolphin has 18-26 teeth of length 1.5-2 cm in each half of the jaw. This dolphin eats shoaling octopus and fish such as grey mullet, eel, anchovy, blue whiting, Norway pout, herring, cod and mackerel. The bottle nose dolphin can be a problem for fisheries through eating net and hook-caught fish. It has a gestation period of 12 months and new-born calves are 0.8-1.2 m long and suckle for one to one-and-a-half years. At puberty the male is 2.4-2.8 m long and around 11 years old, while the female is 2.3-3.1 m long and 12 years old. A female will give birth once every 4-8 years. The bottlenose dolphin lives up to 50 years, though the female lives 10 years longer than the male.
This dolphin is widespread in both temperate and tropical seas. It requires higher temperatures than other whales and therefore is not found as far north as Greenland. It lives in schools ranging from a few in number to up to a thousand and these consist of both sexes and different age ranges. In the Faeroes, the bottlenose dolphin is most commonly seen together with pilot whales, either individually or in a mixed school. So far no estimate has been made of stocks in the North Atlantic. The bottlenose dolphin is very common and not protected. They are occasionally caught in the Faeroes, with landings of up to 10-50 per year, but this is a very irregular occurrence . They are used for human consumption.WHITE WHALE (Delphinapterus leucas)
The white whale lacks an actual dorsal fin and is a spotted dark-grey and brownish colour at birth, but turns completely white at 5-12 years. The male white whale is the larger at 4-5.5 m, with the female at 3-4.1 m and with weights of up to 1.6 tonnes. The white whale has 8-11 conical teeth 3-3.5 cm long in each half of its jaw. Its food consists of fish, such as common ice cod, polar cod, other codfish, and in former days at any rate, Greenland halibut and the following: lumpfish, humped salmon, capelin, sand eel, smelt, salmon and char. They also eat annelids, various large crustaceans and octopus. The white whale has a gestation period of 14-15 months, and mating takes place in February-April. The calf is born the following April-May and is 1.6 m long, weighs 79 kg and suckles for two years. At puberty the male is 6-8 years old and the female 4-7 years. The white whale cow calves every three years and the whale may live up to 35 years.
The white whale mainly lives north of 55°N in the arctic waters round the North Pole. Strays may turn up far to the south in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. The white whale approaches shallow coasts and may spend time in brackish water or even wander far up rivers. It has been sighted once in the Faeroes. The white whale is classified into at least 16 separate stocks worldwide. It lives in small schools and is preeminently a coastal whale. It may join larger schools of several thousand creatures. Total stocks of white whale are about 50,000- 70,000 animals, with concentrations in Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, the White Sea and the Okhotsk Sea. Every year around 1,100-1,400 white whales are caught off Greenland, Canada and the north of Russia-Siberia for human consumption.
Dorete Bloch
|
All Issues Copyright Posta, www.stamps.fo
|
