Talking of Damaged Critters I was horrified to see some pics in The
Australian newspaper showing the scars of a humpback whales encounter with
a boat's properller.
Click here http://www.newsphotos.com.au/
and type WHALE in the search box ... scroll down & check out all the whale
pics taken on June 28 - Whale visits Sydney at Dobroyd Head.

The story was in Thursdays addition .. but I did not notice it until I was
tidying up the Reading Room before COB Friday arvo.

Story accompanying 3 of these pics on the front page is: Whale given
something to blubber about by Claire Harvey.
How to survive a hit-&-run? Grow a 15 cm layer of blubber & watch out for
careless cabin cruisers.

The enormous open wound, looking like a giant tyre mark tattooed deep into
the whale's back, was caused by the properller of a boat, probably about
30m long, that ran over it.

But the juvenile whale, which is about 18m long was protected by the thick
coating of fat that keeps it warm in icy Antarctic water.

As the injured humpback swam around in circles in Sydney's Middle Harbour,
four other whales from its pod kept singing. Eventually, the humpback
appeared to respond to their call & late yesterday began swimming out into
the Tasman Sea.

"What may have happened is there were 2 or 3 boats in the area, the whale
got confused about which boat was closer, came up for air, and whack," Mr
Ross said. While the crew of the boat would have felt the impact, they may
not have realised that had struck a whale, he said. Boats & surfers are not
allowed withing 100m of whales, Jet skis must keep 300m away. [Mr Ross is
the whale expert for the National Parks & Wildlife Service]. END

No second guesses what I would like to do to the skipper of THAT boat.
During whale season off our west coast IF we are out fishing we are always
on the lookout for whales to ensure we dont invade their space. I have only
been out at sea once (trolling for fish) where a mother whale appeared to
zoom straight at our vessel when her young pup decided it wanted to leave
her protection & zip over to play with the funny yellow fish (our boat).
That canary yellow boat was called Jaundice .. owned by wacko doctors of
course ;-))  We were more worried that the whales could get hooked up in
the 4 lines we had out at various lengths & were so busy hauling those in
it spoilt the fun of having a young whale surface close by .. and, as usual
I had not thought to bring the camera :-(
Viv