Sunday May 15 , 2022
I've Been Thinking:

A whale was recently sighted off the coast of Haifa. This is big news. It was the first whale ever spotted off the coast of Israel.

It was a massive sperm whale.

The sighting was photographed by a graduate student named Kim Kobo. And so the whale was given the name Kim, because was the first person to see it.

Kim, the grad student, was part of a group of marine scientists.

After spotting the whale, the marine scientists contacted colleagues in the hope of gaining information and they received conformation that this was the first sighting of this – or any whale in Israel ever.

They are now cataloguing the whale and identifying it thru scars and other indicators.

About her namesake, Kim Kobo said: "It's a nice feeling. It's especially exciting that I was part of this study. Most of our lab members have dolphins named after them… But I had the honor of having a sperm whale taking my name."

According to Dr. Aviad Scheinin, the Head Apex Predators Investigator at the University of Haifa’s Morris Kahn Marine Research said: "Sperm whales are on the verge of extinction in the Mediterranean and their population is in rapid decline.”

He added: “We hope that our discovery will show that the Haifa area serves as an important habitat for them. We hope that Kim will be the first on a long list of Israeli whales."

This is one whale of a story.

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