No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

Bratapfel

Bratapfel is a traditional German dessert of the winter season. It consists of apples (best are Belle de Boskoop or other sour cultivars) of which the core was removed and filled with a sweet mixture, usually honey or jam mixed with raisins and almond slices, seasoned with cinnamon. The filled apples are baked at 200 °C for 25 min and served hot with vanilla sauce. Delicious and easy to make!

Tip: Put a flake of butter on top of each apple before baking for even more deliciousness

blackqueerblog

“Hello? Yes, this whale looks very suspicious. I think he may be trying to get inside a part of the sea that’s not his. Just come quickly.”

So now white people are calling the cops on whales, SMH.

kingjaffejoffer

this is the most annoying family ive ever heard

colachampagnedad

I fully expected it to be a white woman on the phone before I unmuted this.

erysian

@why-animals-do-the-thing to me this does seem like it could have been a dangerous scenario, both for them and for the whales, and they sound like they’re from the US, so how would the marine mammal protection act come into play? Something about the responses to this video just seems too flippant to me.

why-animals-do-the-thing

It’s absolutely a dangerous situation for both of them, but I think they did the best they could given the situation.

As far as I can tell from the video, these people didn’t approach the whale on purpose - it came up and started investigating their boat. That’s genuinely scary. The whale could easily capsize a boat that small if its investigatory behavior became physical. They’re right to be freaked out. And as much as people make fun of them for calling 911, I don’t really think it was inappropriate for them to do so in this situation. Most Americans are taught to call 911 when there’s an emergency and/or their lives might be in danger … I’d say being freaked out that a whale might topple your boat in deep water qualifies. There’s nothing 911 could do in the situation, but I understand the reflex and they’d honestly have the resources to alert help if something bad did happen.

What’s dangerous about this for the whale is the fact that they started the boat - propeller injuries are very common, unfortunately. A small private craft wouldn’t do as much damage to a whale as a larger commercial vessel, but it would still be bad. While I’m not happy they did that, again I can understand it, because most of them were genuinely scared and wanted to get away.

I don’t think they’re going to be at risk from the MMPA because they don’t appear to have sought the whales out or done anything except try to remove themselves from the situation. The government will generally pursue people for purposeful violations of the harm and harassment prohibition around marine mammals, but there is also a certain amount of understanding that if a whale chooses to come up to you, there’s really not much you can do about it.

All of that being said, this would be such an incredible experience to have.

Editing to add: In current-day America, people absolutely use 911 to target minority groups in ways that are unconscionable. I know that’s what the joke in the screenshot is about, but I’ve also had people comment that calling 911 in this response was silly. My comment is only meant to address the latter issue - that it was actually a reasonable response to this specific situation.

science-fiction-is-real

there’s the coast guard who are responsible for rescuing people at sea in dangerous situations. So maybe they could have called them?

why-animals-do-the-thing

My original response to that thought is that most people in distress might not think to google the phone number for the Coast Guard and would reflexively just call 911.

I looked up the contact information for the coast guard, and it turns out:

“People in an emergency and need of Coast Guard assistance should use: VHF-FM Channel 16 (156.8 MHz), dial 911.”

There are regional numbers that can be called below that, but the website indicates that they’re for “maritime emergency use” only, which google tells me is “any serious distress to a maritime vessel or her crew.”

So, actually, they made the correct choice.

peppermintack

im losing my MIND

why-animals-do-the-thing

The quotes from this Washington Post article are funny, sure, but here’s a longer quote about some of the theories behind this phenomenon:

“A seal’s preferred prey — usually fish, octopuses and, of course, eels — like to hide within coral reefs to avoid being eaten, and since the marine mammals don’t have hands, they have to hunt with their faces.

“They like to stick their faces into the coral reef holes, and they’ll spit water out of their mouths to flush things out. And they’ll do all sorts of tricks, but they are shoving their faces into holes,” Littnan said.

Perhaps, he said, a cornered eel decided that the only way to escape or defend itself was to swim up its attacker’s nostril, and young seals who are “not very adept at getting their food yet” were forced to learn a tough lesson.

But Littnan said that theory doesn’t make much sense.

“They’re really quite long eels, and their diameter is probably close to what it would be for a nasal passage,” he said.

He added that a monk seal’s nostrils, which reflexively close when they are diving for food, are very muscular and it would be difficult for any animal to push through.

“I struggle to think of an eel really wanting to force its way into a nose,” he said.

The other way eels might be ending up in nostrils is through throwing up. Similar to how people sometimes end up accidentally spewing food or beverages from their noses, that could also happen to seals, who often regurgitate their meals.

Still, Littnan said it doesn’t seem possible that a “long, fat eel” would end up going through a seal’s nose rather than out of its mouth. The “most plausible” theory, he said, is that monk seal teenagers aren’t all that different from their human counterparts. Monk seals “seem naturally attracted to getting into troublesome situations,” Littnan said.”

So while it’s possible that this is some sort of ridiculous teenage seal behavior, please also remember that there might be alternate explanations and that at this point, they’re all based on conjecture.

Also, it’s criminal that OP didn’t screenshot the last line of the article.

“If monk seals could understand humans, Littnan said he has a message for them: ‘I would gently plead for them to stop.’“

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Bratapfel