Bottlenose dolphins say, "The Clarence River is a nice place to live,"

Not so long ago this site carried a report titled Yamba - a nice place to live about Yamba being a very friendly place for humans.

Now, Christine Fury, a researcher with Southern Cross University’s Whale Research Centre, has found that Northern Rivers bottlenose dolphins agree - the most popular place for them to live is the Clarence River,which runs through Yamba, Maclean and Grafton.

Ms Fury, who has been studying local estuarine dolphin populations for three years, has uncovered some fascinating facts about our warm-blooded mammalian cousins.
SCU reports that Ms Fury's study provides the first published data on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Australian estuaries.

Ms Fury estimates that about 71 dolphins live in and around the Clarence River compared to about 34 dolphins in the Richmond River.

“The Clarence River is the most popular because it is the largest estuarine river system in NSW and therefore has a greater volume of water. It also has less urban and agricultural development. Both these factors mean the water quality is better,” Christine said.

“Dolphins are the top predators in the river systems, so the cleaner the water, the more fish in the river and the better the ability to sustain a bigger dolphin population.”

During her 2,000 hours on the rivers observing dolphins, Christine found that a dolphin’s favourite fish is mullet, or whiting as a second choice.

The mothers teach their calves how to catch fish, but it takes three to four years for the youngsters to become proficient at catching their own dinner and they are supplemented with their mother’s milk until that age.

Once weaned, the juveniles leave their mothers and hang out in mixed-sex pods, learning from each other and spending a lot of time in play.

As the males get a little older, they break off into pods of three or four, working collectively to catch fish and mate with females using an uncommon herding manoeuvre.

Mothers and their calves, and female pods, escape the more aggressive sexual attention of the males by entering the shallower waters of river tributaries, where the males generally do not follow as they prefer to remain in the deeper, main channels, where they can assert their dominance.

Also, the tributaries have smaller fish, which are easier for the calves to catch and eat. Fish are swallowed whole, head first, after first being either stunned by a tail flap or bitten. Dolphins will often flip a fish into the air and then catch it head-first so as to be able to swallow it properly.

Like humans, dolphins have distinct personalities. Research shows the more gregarious, inquisitive and curious dolphins prepared to stray furthest from mum have the best chance of long-term survival.

Diligent and informed management of future increased environmental disturbances will be needed to ensure the long-term survival of these dolphin populations, Christine said.

You can read the full research paper at http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/126/paper/MF08109.htm

Possum Comitatus gives a lesson on the folly of small numbers to Andrew Bolt

At his new blog Pollytics Possum Comitatus gives Andrew Bolt a lesson he deserves in the post; Of race and crime and Andrew Bolt.

Andrew Bolt has been banging on about Africans again- Sudanese and Somalian born Africans in particular and their crime rates compared to the Victorian population as a whole. It stems back to some a#sehattery about how Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon might have produced statistics that Bolt found misleading on the issue of Sudanese migrant crime rates in Victoria last year – stats that she gave in response to a Kevin Andrews spiel about the same.

Apparently, Bolt reckons that Nixon "helped to turn voters against the Howard government" in those heady weeks before the poll and that she " fed a campaign of abuse against the immigration affairs minister, Kevin Andrews, that was so vitriolic it may have ended an honest man's career."

(Which we can only take to mean as a Minister of the Crown since he's still a Parliamentarian).

Oh really?

The post goes on to skewer Bolt to the wall:

If Bolt was trying to bring to our attention a few simple facts, but in such a way that it didn't stir the hornet's nest of bigotry – then he failed dismally. Any idiot can produce those numbers – hell, any idiot did. When it was pointed out that the proportion of total distinct offenders born in Somalia was about the same as the proportion of 15-19 year old Victorians of any hue – a little bit of nuance to calm the rampaging hysteria over at Cult Bolt, that's when he got all manbeastly. His d#ck swinging, chest beating attempt at a p#ssing contest in the comments would be pretty funny if it wasn't actually a real community of people we were dealing with here. [Word edits were done by me to avoid any over-eager filter out in the blogosphere]

Go, Poss - you are so beautiful when you are angry!

True Food Network releases GM-free food guide

Click to enlarge

The pocket sized GE-free Food Guide can be ordered or downloaded here.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

A LOL for Senator 'Cleanfeed'

An interesting snippet on the AFP Big Brother

Yesterday Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie wrote in The Age:

THE internet communications and websites of anti-war campaigners, environmentalists, animal rights activists and other protest groups are being secretly monitored by state and federal agencies.

A Melbourne private intelligence firm specialising in "open-source intelligence" has been engaged by Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General's Department to monitor and report on the protest movements' use of the internet.

Which is somewhat interesting as it was only at the beginning of this year that the Australian Federal Police granted contract number CN60721 to a Melbourne firm Global Edge Group Pty Ltd [trading as National Open Source Intelligence Centre (Australia)] for just such work worth $184,800.00.

http://www.geg.com.au/ / http://www.nosic.com.au/

So if your political or social commentary blog has a few visits from IP addresses in the range of 202.125.35.165 or 203.147.239.149, then you have possibly been visited on behalf of the powers that be in Australia.

Or perhaps you should consider yourself to be of interest if you have ever visited No Bases which was obviously on past peek list: 017 http://www.nosic.com.au/cgi-bin/iB/ikonboard.cgi 97 22 119 30-Jun-2004 21:04

Ah! The dubious joys of modern blogging - if Conroy doesn't get you then McClellan or Keelty will :-)

Graphic found at Spy Lab

Andy Borowitz outs Obama's change of direction

Because North Coast Voices has been silent on the subject of President-Elect Barack Obama lately I take this opportunity to present the Borowitz Report on this prominent politician.

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS' "Sixty Minutes" on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it "alienating" to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate - we get it, stop showing off."

The President-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.

Dikipedia also has an updated entry on the new president-elect which ends with:

Barack Obama is married to Michelle Obama (nee Robinson), with whom he has five children: Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa and Rudy.

Southern Cross academic tells Northern Rivers residents to contact Rudd about climate change

According to The Northern Star on Monday:

THE Rudd Government's commitment to fighting climate change will soon be tested, according to Professor Jerry Vanclay, head of Southern Cross University's school of environmental science.

Dr Vanclay was speaking at a climate change forum held in Ballina on Friday night, organised by Federal Member for Page, Janelle Saffin.

The professor said it was still too early to rate the Government's performance on climate change, but he suspected it would not be following all the recommendations in the Garno Report.

"I sense there has been a softening of their position," he said.....

He said the burning of coal and petroleum created six billion tonnes of carbon emissions each year, of which only four billion tonnes could be offset by Mother Nature.

"An immediate reduction of about one-third will immediately stop the problem of global warming," he said.

Dr Vanclay said reducing carbon emissions by one-third would be easy for most people. "Solar hot water panels, driving a smaller car, having a water tank so water doesn't need to be transported and building homes that don't need air-conditioning would be enough," he said.

Dr Vanclay warned that the evidence to support climate change was very strong. "I don't have a lot of patience for people who question climate change, there is no question about it any more," he said.

Dr Vanclay said people needed to tell Kevin Rudd to take the lead on climate change action because Australia's infrastructure was under threat.

If you wish to have your say on climate change:

The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

or

Online email here.