R.P. BenDedek
Canada's Whale Researcher Dr. Volker Deecke
By R.P. BenDedek
Nov 11, 2005 - 6:24:00 AM

In an Article entitled: Queensland, The Sunshine State, published at Magic City Morning Star News in Maine USA and its' accompanying file under the same title at KingsCalendar, I presented some photographs from the South East portion of Queensland and North Eastern New South Wales.

Amongst those photographs were some of Whales, which I saw on a Whale Sightseeing tour off Moreton Island, which lies east of my home town Brisbane. I was looking through my photos today, and realised that I had not presented the best shot of the whale swimming under the boat.

While I was thinking about the photos, I began to think about the whaling problem, especially the furore that the Japanese sometimes cause in their fondness for whale meat.

As I was doing this, I was reminded that about 10 years ago, I did an internet search to find Volker Deecke, a German living in Canada, and doing his research on Whales.

Although I have never personally met Dr. Deecke, (nor his renowned father Dr. Luder Deecke - Vienna) I was for many years in contact with his Grandfather, (listed 30 years ago himself in the Oxford - Cambridge's Men and Women of Distinction) and on two occasions met family members from both sides of his grandparents families, when they separately visited Australia. (It was his grandfather who told me what Dr. Volker Deecke was doing.)

At any rate, at the time I did the internet search, Volker Deecke had an underwater video camera set up somewhere along the Canadian (?) coastline, and you could link into it and see whales underwater in real time.

Since many of the Magic City Morning Star readers are Canadians, and I needed an excuse to show you this one good photo of the whale under the boat, I thought I would just bring Dr. Deecke to your attention. His work is quite interesting. You can find him online at North Pacific Universities Marine Mammal Research Consortium, and on his own homepage. He has a fantastic photo of an Orca jumping out of the water.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this one photo of the whale under the boat.

At KingsCalendar I've put my whale photos (including those I lifted from a video I took) into one file: HERE.

Email: Whales@kingscalendar.

Jonah had no particular love for whales

R.P. BenDedek (pseudonym) writes for Magic City Morning Star News and is the author of 'The King's Calendar:The Secret of Qumran' at www.kingscalendar.com. From Brisbane Queensland (Australia), he is a Conversational English Teacher currently teaching in China (Hubei Radio and TV University Wuhan).