Watch whales frolic in your browser

AFTER THE successful experience doing a yearly webcast of the Magellan penguins, the Chubut state government in Argentina now brings whale-watching to the Interweb.

Since Chubut is such a far corner of the World, the state government is resorting to internet video streaming to bring the marvels of its coast to a world audience, hoping that perhaps next year visitors would like to explore these destinations in person. Now, after doing the same arrangement with the yearly Magellan penguins arrival last year, the State government brings the world+dog a chance of seeing the " southern right whales", also dubbed the Franca Whale as those arrive to the coastal area of the Valdez peninsula. But hurry, as the live video stream began today and ends on June the 1st.

The unlikely source of SpaceToday.org enlightens us by recounting: "Franca whales, also known as southern right whales feed somewhere in the South Atlantic during the summer and autumn and then return to Argentine waters in the winter and spring to raise their calves." It adds that the Franca whale, being a slow swimmer, was "hunted almost to extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries". There has been also an effort to track them by satellite.

Linux users should get MPlayer and the MPlayer plug-in installed. We tested the stream here using a beta version of Firefox 3.0 and Mplayer Plug-in and it works fine, although it required several hits of the reload button until the stream finally connected. If you can't get in, hit reload and keep trying.

One advice, though: during the first 30 minutes of our watching, we could see the windy shoreline, we could see coast guards with binoculars aiming at the sea, we could see the camera panning the waters and the horizon and even birds and sea wolves. We even saw one of the techies adjusting one of the microphones. But we couldn't see any whales. Until, finally, one whale finally graced us with his -or her- presence.

It seems that whales when not being harpooned to death by the Japanese "researchers" are rather webcam-shy, unlike the penguins which were eager to show themselves on a web stream last year.

In any case, keeping an eye on the web stream is surely way cheaper than travelling over 7500 miles from London or 6600 Mi from Sacramento, California, for instance. In case you're to impatient to wait for the whales to show up in the stream, the web site features a multimedia section full of pictures and videos. The government of Chubut says this internet transmission will stream from today and until Sunday, June 1st.

In short, the web page for the 2008 "Whales Vigil" webcast is here, a page offering the chance of sending others a whales-themed postcard is here, and as a bonus here's a direct link to the MMS video stream. µ

L'INQs
An arid coast bursting with marine life
Right Whales at the Whackypedia
Video: Whales at Valdez Peninsula (YouTube)
Tracking threatened species by Satellite
BBC: Saving the whale from Space
Becca goes whales-watching