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Nosy Be ( Malagasy pronunciation: [nusʲ be] ; formerly Nossi-bé and Nosse Be , lit.   ' big island ' ) is an island off the northwest coast of Madagascar . Nosy Be is Madagascar's largest and busiest tourist destination. It has an area of 320.02 km (123.56 sq mi), and its population was 109,465 according to the provisional results of the 2018 Census .

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97-505: Nosy Be means "big island" in the Malagasy language . The island was called Assada during the early colonial era of the 17th century. Nosy Be has been given several nicknames over the centuries, including "Nosy Manitra" (the scented island). The first human inhabitants of Nosy Be were small bands of Antankarana and Zafinofotsy , before the Sakalava people migrated there and became

194-415: A verb–object–subject (VOS) word order : Mamaky reads boky book ny the mpianatra student Mamaky boky ny mpianatra reads book the student "The student reads the book" Nividy bought Omura%27s whale Omura's whale or the dwarf fin whale ( Balaenoptera omurai ) is a species of rorqual about which very little is known. Before its formal description, it

291-768: A "pygmy or regionally distinct" form of Bryde's whale, which was confirmed when one was photographed and biopsied in October 2000 and its tissue sample sent to the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California . There, its DNA was analyzed and found to be a complete match with a "pygmy Bryde's" sample obtained from the Philippines – later, however, it was discovered samples from the Philippines corresponded to B. omurai and not B. edeni . During marine mammal surveys conducted in

388-602: A 3.2 m (10 ft) female neonate with fetal folds and folded dorsal fin and flukes stranded at Miyazaki , Miyazaki Prefecture , on the eastern coast of Kyushu . Off northwestern Madagascar, six different cow-calf pairs were seen: one in August 2011, three in November 2013, and two in August 2015, suggesting a protracted calving season. The three calves observed in November had bent dorsal fins (indicating that they were fairly young) but did not have fetal folds, while one of

485-562: A 6.4 m (21 ft) male off Goheung in December 2006. A 4.4 m (14 ft) male calf was also caught in small-mesh herring seine nets in the Gulf of Thailand , Songkhla Province, in May 2011, while a 7.5 m (25 ft) whale (thought to likely be an Omura's whale) was caught in fishing gear off Negombo , Sri Lanka, in August 1985. A live whale seen off Sri Lanka in 2017 also had

582-665: A 70% similarity in lexicon with the Merina dialect. The Eastern dialects are: The Western dialects are: Additionally, the Bushi dialect (41,700 speakers) is spoken on the French overseas territory of Mayotte , which is part of the Comoro island chain situated northwest of Madagascar. The two main dialects of Malagasy are easily distinguished by several phonological features. Sakalava lost final nasal consonants, whereas Merina added

679-614: A calf in 2013, and alone again in 2015 and 2017, showing that individuals can exhibit strong site fidelity. The six paratypes taken in the Solomon Sea in 1976 reportedly only had krill ( Euphausia diomedeae ) in their stomachs, while crustaceans and fish were found in a 7 m (23 ft) female from Japan. Individuals in Madagascar have been observed lunge feeding on the krill Pseudeuphausia latifrons . Omura's whale produce amplitude-modulated songs of 15-50 Hz with

776-664: A charter boat off Phuket's coast in the Andaman Sea captured a pair of Omura's whales with a drone , one of which was an exceptionally rare all-white Omura whale . As early as the late 19th century, the natives of Lila, Bohol , began hunting whales in the Bohol Sea . By the turn of the century, this had spread to nearby Pamilacan Island and later to Sagay, Camiguin . At Pamilacan, whales were caught as early as January and as late as June, but most were taken in April and May. When

873-553: A complete skeleton, both complete rows of baleen plates, and frozen pieces of muscle, blubber, and kidney collected by T. K. Yamada, M. Oishi, T. Kuramochi, E. Jibiki, and S. Fujioka. The type locality is the Sea of Japan, which may not be representative of the species’ typical range. The paratypes include the eight specimens (five females and three males), NRIFSF1-8 (National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries, Fisheries Research Agency, Shizuoka ), collected by Japanese research vessels in

970-421: A habitat for notable number of Omura's whale , and this has allowed researchers to conduct field studies targeting this rare species for the first time. Coral reefs around Nosy Be are impacted by urbanization, the discharge of the sugar industry, and unregulated tourism. Nosy Be has a tropical savanna climate . It is most humid in summer (December, January, February). The Tsaratanana massif partially protects

1067-559: A new species of baleen whale. However, due to the lack of a detailed osteological study and the absence of "conclusive data", the International Whaling Commission decided to consider them only as a regionally distinct group of "small-form Bryde's whale". Despite this declaration, the specific status of the Solomon Sea specimens was supported by a mitochondrial DNA study done by Hideyoshi Yoshida and Hidehiro Kato (1999). The identity of these eight specimens

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1164-640: A pair observed feeding within the Sandfly Passage of the Florida Islands on 14 November 2010. In October 2015, an international team of scientists, led by Salvatore Cerchio of the New England Aquarium and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , released the first images and field observations of the species from a population off northwestern Madagascar. Forty-four sightings of Omura's whale were made between 2011 and 2014, with

1261-399: A paper on sightings of Omura's whale made off Nosy Be in 1991–1995, 1998, and 2000, including photographs of an aggregation of a dozen whales seen skim and lunge feeding in 40 to 80 m (130 to 260 ft) of water in November 1994 at 13° 26' S, 48° 05' E. In 2017, the first confirmed live sightings of Omura's whale were made off Taiwan and Sri Lanka. On December 31, 2023, tourists on

1358-493: A peak frequency of 36.1 Hz and an average duration of 9.2 seconds. This is sometimes followed by a tonal call of 17 Hz and four seconds in duration. These songs are repeated every two to three minutes, sometimes for as long as thirteen hours. Songs have been recorded off northwest Madagascar year-round, with peak activity from late October to late January and again from late May to late June. Overlapping choruses of several singing individuals have been recorded throughout

1455-547: A phonological quality not unlike that of Portuguese . /o/ is marginal in Merina dialect, found in interjections and loan words, though it is also found in place names from other dialectical areas. /ai, au/ are diphthongs [ai̯, au̯] in careful speech, [e, o] or [ɛ, ɔ] in more casual speech. /ai/ , whichever way it is pronounced, affects following /k, ɡ/ as /i/ does. The alveolars /s ts z dz l/ are slightly palatalized . /ts, dz, s, z/ vary between [ts, dz, s, z] and [tʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ] , and are especially likely to be

1552-412: A quarter of the body length. The pectoral fins are short but slender, being from about 13 to 15 per cent of the body length. The dorsal fin ranges between 7.5 and 20 cm (3.0 and 7.9 in) in height and 18 to 60 cm (7 to 23.5 in) in length for specimens 3.9 to 7.15 m (12.8 to 23.5 ft) in length, and is placed about 57 per cent of the body length back from the tip of the rostrum. It

1649-675: A scar on its rostrum suggestive of an entanglement with fishing gear. Two individuals of Omura's whale were victims of ship strike , including the holotype of the species, an 11 m (36 ft) female found off Tsunoshima in the Sea of Japan in September 1998, and a whale brought into Manila Bay on the bow of a ship. Omura's whale is listed on Appendix II of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. It

1746-488: A specimen of unknown sex that stranded in 1983 in Phuket Province , Thailand, was 7 m (23.0 ft) in length. Of 16 "Bryde's whales" caught by hunters from Pamilacan between 1991 and 1993, 12 were measured. These cluster into two size categories, nine whales less than 10 m (32.8 ft), and three 12 m (39.4 ft) or more. Later, 85% (24 of 28) of the identified skull specimens examined from

1843-449: A toggle-headed grommet harpoon with a 2.5 m (8.2 ft) wooden shaft similar to the "dolphin irons" used by American whalemen in the mid-19th century, which in turn was either attached to a 140 m (460 ft) rope with a plastic fishing float or a 400 m (1,300 ft) rope with a plastic float or oil drum at the end. After an hour or more, the whale tired, and men took turns cutting it until it died. The boats usually towed

1940-591: A voiceless [ə̥] : Final *t became -[tse] in the one but -[ʈʂə̥] in the other: Sakalava retains ancestral *li and *ti, whereas in Merina these become [di] (as in huditra 'skin' above) and [tsi] : However, these last changes started in Borneo before the Malagasy arrived in Madagascar. The language has a written literature going back presumably to the 15th century. When the French established Fort-Dauphin in

2037-412: A whale was spotted from shore, between 10 and 20 pump boats (boats with motors originally used for pumps) were launched in chase. When within range, a "hookman" jumped onto the whale's head and stabbed it with a 35-cm-long, 22.5-cm-wide stainless steel hook attached to a heavy line of 30 m (98 ft) with a 2 m (6.6 ft) bamboo spar buoy at the end of it. At Camiguin, they harpooned it with

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2134-401: A white chevron on the back, pectoral fins with a white anterior border and inner surface, and flukes with a white ventral surface and black margins. Like fin whales, it also exhibits a white left gape and a dark right gape, a reversal of the asymmetrical pigmentation on the lower jaw. It has a very falcate dorsal fin with a leading edge that gradually slopes into the back, halfway in shape between

2231-417: A word, but they are pronounced /p, t/ . @ is used informally as a short form for amin'ny , which is a preposition followed by the definite form, meaning for instance with the . Diacritics are not obligatory in standard Malagasy, except in the case where its absence leads to an ambiguity: tanàna ("city") must have the diacritic to discriminate itself from tanana ("hand"). They may however be used in

2328-500: Is Andoany , commonly known as Hell-Ville . The volcanic island has an area of about 312 km (120 sq mi) - 30 km long, 19 km wide - and its highest peak is Mont Lokobe at 450 m (1,480 ft); the volcano is of Holocene origin but has not erupted in recorded history. There are eleven volcanic crater lakes on the island. The island is known for having one of the world's smallest frogs ( Stumpffia pygmaea ) and chameleon ( Brookesia minima ). The Lokobe Reserve

2425-478: Is 61.5 per cent of the body length from the tip of the lower jaw to the umbilicus, whereas it is about 63 per cent from the tip of the lower jaw to the end of the ventral grooves. The flukes are about a quarter to a fifth of the body length in width. Omura's whale is among the smallest of the rorquals – only the two species of minke whale , the common and Antarctic , which reach 9.75 and 10.7 m (32.0 and 35.1 ft) in length, respectively, are smaller. Of

2522-440: Is absent in both B. brydei and B. edeni . Unlike B. edeni , the alisphenoid is separate from the squamosal in B. omurai . The head of the first rib is not bifurcated in B. omurai , unlike B. brydei and B. edeni . Omura's whale has a total of 53 vertebrae, including seven cervical (the standard number among mammals), 13 thoracic , 12 lumbar , and 21 caudal . Like all members of its genus, it has only four digits on

2619-461: Is also a photograph (taken between 1915 and 1944) of a whale caught by the villagers of Lamakera that "strongly resembles a young Omura's whale in size and shape". Among the small "Bryde's whale" caught 40 mi off Shionomisaki , Wakayama Prefecture , in June 1976, were two sexually mature females of 7.9 and 8.5 m (26 and 28 ft), both of which are thought to likely be Omura's whale. Of

2716-533: Is an official language of Madagascar alongside French . Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language , brought to Madagascar with the settlement of Austronesian speakers from the Sunda Islands (about 7,300 kilometres or 4,500 miles away) around the 5th century AD or perhaps between the 7th and 13th centuries. The Malagasy language is one of the Barito languages and is most closely related to

2813-506: Is considered the national language of Madagascar. It is one of two official languages alongside French in the 2010 constitution put in place the Fourth Republic. Previously, under the 2007 constitution, Malagasy was one of three official languages alongside French and English. Malagasy is the language of instruction in all public schools through grade five for all subjects, and remains the language of instruction through high school for

2910-462: Is evidence that the predecessors of the Malagasy dialects first arrived in the southern stretch of the east coast of Madagascar. Adelaar (2017) proposes that a distinct Malagasy speech community had already been established in South Borneo before the early Malagasy speakers migrated to East Africa. Malagasy has a tradition of oratory arts and poetic histories and legends. The most well-known

3007-740: Is not clear if they are actually trilled, or are simply non- sibilant affricates [ʈɻ̊˔ ᶯʈɻ̊˔ ɖɻ˔ ᶯɖɻ˔] . However, in another Austronesian language with a claimed trilled affricate, Fijian , trilling occurs but is rare, and the primary distinguishing feature is that it is postalveolar. The Malagasy sounds are frequently transcribed [ ʈʂ ᶯʈʂ ɖʐ ᶯɖʐ ], and that is the convention used in this article. In reduplication, compounding, possessive and verbal constructions, as well as after nasals, fricatives and liquids, 'spirants' become stops, as follows: Here, stressed syllables are indicated by grave diacritics ⟨à⟩ , although these diacritics are normally not used. Words are generally accented on

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3104-420: Is one of Madagascar's five Strict Nature Reserves ( Réserves Naturelles Intégrales ). Nosy Be is also home to a specific color of panther chameleon ( Furcifer pardalis ). Nocturnal animals include lemurs (mouse and dwarf), chameleons (e.g. short nosed, and stump tailed), leaf-tailed geckos , frogs, and birds. Recent studies indicate that adjacent waters around the channel between Nosy Be and Madagascar host

3201-434: Is pronounced [fə̥ˈnurnə̥] . According to Penelope Howe in 2019, Central Malagasy is undergoing tonogenesis , with syllables containing voiced consonants are "fully devoiced" and acquire a low tone ( /ba/ → [b̥à] ), while those containing unvoiced consonants acquire a high tone ( /pa/ → [pá] ). However, this development appears to not occur in posttonic syllables, and she called it " pitch accent " instead. Malagasy has

3298-456: Is the national epic, Ibonia , about a Malagasy folk hero of the same name. Malagasy is the principal language spoken on the island of Madagascar. It is also spoken by Malagasy communities on neighboring Indian Ocean islands such as Réunion , Mayotte and Mauritius . Expatriate Malagasy communities speaking the language also exist in Europe and North America. The Merina dialect of Malagasy

3395-902: Is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family , a grouping that includes languages from Indonesia , Malaysia , the Philippines and the Pacific Islands . In fact, Malagasy's relation with other Austronesian languages had already been noted by early scholars, such as the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland in 1708. Among all Austronesian languages, Dahl (1951) demonstrated that Malagasy and Ma'anyan – an East Barito language spoken in Central Kalimantan , Indonesia, on

3492-404: Is uncertain – they may refer to Omura's whale or the smaller form of Bryde's whale ( B. edeni ). These three individuals were noted to have very small baleen plates – about 22 by 15 cm (8.7 by 5.9 in), about 22 by 16 cm (8.7 by 6.3 in), and 23.5 by 17.5 cm (9.3 by 6.9 in), respectively – with length-breadth quotients of 1.34 to 1.46, within the upper range (1.00-1.43) of

3589-567: Is used by the government and media in Madagascar. Standard Malagasy is one of two official languages of Madagascar alongside French, in the 2010 constitution of the Fourth Republic of Madagascar. Malagasy is written in the Latin script introduced by Western missionaries in the early 19th century. Previously, the Sorabe script was used, a local development of the Arabic script . The Malagasy language

3686-642: The Battle of Tsushima . In 2013, two French tourists and one local were lynched (beaten and burned by a mob after rumors that they were responsible for the death of a local boy. A Madagascar court gave four men the maximum hard labour for life over the mob lynching. Nosy Be is located about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from the coast of Madagascar in the Mozambique Channel ; several smaller islands are located nearby, including Nosy Komba , Nosy Mitsio , Nosy Sakatia, and Nosy Tanikely. The island's main town

3783-652: The Bohol Sea were found to be Omura's whales, whereas only 15% (4 of 28) were what was tentatively called the Indo-Pacific form of Bryde's whale ( B. brydei ). The former size category may be primarily (if not entirely) Omura's whale, whereas the larger whales – one of unknown sex of 12 m (39.4 ft) and two females of 13 m (42.7 ft) – would be the larger, offshore form of Bryde's whale. Of those smaller whales, four males ranged from 6.7 to 9.8 m (22.0 to 32.2 ft), four females ranged from 4.9 to 9.3 m (16.1 to 30.5 ft), and one of unknown sex

3880-407: The Bohol Sea ), Vietnam ( Quảng Ngãi Province ), Malaysia ( Pahang ), Thailand (with sightings and strandings from February, May to June, and November to December; including the provinces of Phang Nga , Phuket , Prachuap Khiri Khan , and Songkhla ), Indonesia (with sightings and strandings from February, April to June, and from September to November; with records from West Sumatra ,

3977-552: The Comoros . Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language, as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere. Malagasy is divided across its twelve dialects between two main dialect groups; Eastern and Western. The central plateau of the island, where the capital Antananarivo and the old heartland of the Merina Kingdom is located, speaks the Merina dialect. The Merina dialect is the basis of Standard Malagasy, which

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4074-617: The Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans , primarily in shelf waters between 35° N and 35° S, with the majority of records in the tropics (between 23° 26' N and 23° 26' S). Their range includes southern Japan (with strandings and entanglements recorded in March and from May to October; including the prefectures of Yamaguchi , Miyazaki , Kagawa , Mie , Shizuoka , and Chiba ), South Korea (December to January, from

4171-519: The Ma'anyan language , still spoken on Borneo . Malagasy also includes numerous Malay loanwords, from the time of the early Austronesian settlement and trading between Madagascar and the Sunda Islands. After c.  1000 AD , Malagasy incorporated numerous Bantu and Arabic loanwords brought over by traders and new settlers. Malagasy is spoken by around 25 million people in Madagascar and

4268-596: The Solomon Islands , New Caledonia , Sri Lanka (February), the Chagos Archipelago , Iran (September, Strait of Hormuz ), Egypt (April, the northern Red Sea ) northwestern Madagascar (12° 01' S to 19° 23' S, with sightings by researchers from August and October to December, by whale watch operators from April to December, and acoustically detected year-round), Mauritania (November, Trarza Region ), Brazil (September, Ceará ), and in

4365-403: The manus of each pectoral fin (the third digit is missing). The phalangeal formula is: I-5, II-7, IV-6, V-3. Its appearance resembles the larger fin whale (thus the alternate common names of dwarf fin whale and little fin whale ), both having a dark gray left lower jaw, and on the right side a white mandible patch, a white blaze, a dark eye stripe, a white inter-stripe wash, as well as

4462-410: The provinces of South Jeolla and South Gyeongsang ), China (with strandings from November to February and in August; including the provinces of Zhejiang , Fujian , Guangdong , and Guangxi ), Taiwan (with strandings from November to March and in May; there are also sightings from April to May and July to August), Hong Kong (March), the Philippines ( Manila Bay , Busuanga , and

4559-624: The "ordinary" Bryde's whales caught off New Zealand , whereas the two caught near the Cocos-Keeling Islands in 1978 were not differentiated from the 118 other "ordinary" Bryde's whales taken in the eastern Indian Ocean, south of Java . As a result of allozyme analysis, their distinctive baleen and small size at physical maturity compared to Bryde's whale, and photographs obtained of the harvested whales (showing their fin whale-like coloration), Shiro Wada and Kenichi Numachi (1991) decided that these eight individuals represented members of

4656-401: The 17th century, they found an Arabico-Malagasy script in use, known as Sorabe ("large writings"). This Arabic-derived Sorabe alphabet was mainly used for astrological and magical texts. The oldest known manuscript in that script is a short Malagasy-Dutch vocabulary from the early 17th century, which was first published in 1908 by Gabriel Ferrand though the script must have been introduced into

4753-468: The 9 specimens included in the formal description of Omura's whale, but also within the lower range of the Bryde's whale complex (1.2 to 1.33). The holotype of the smaller form of Bryde's whale ( B. edeni ) from Myanmar , though, had baleen plates of 30 by 15 cm (11.8 by 5.9 in), or a length-breadth quotient of exactly 2.0 – within the typical range of the Bryde's whale complex (1.8 to 2.4). Of

4850-559: The Indian Ocean from Java to Madagascar. It is likely that they went through the Maldives , where evidence of old Indonesian boat design and fishing technology persists until the present. The migrations continued along the first millennium, as confirmed by linguistic researchers who showed the close relationship between the Malagasy language and Old Malay and Old Javanese languages of this period. The Malagasy language originates from

4947-711: The Indo-Pacific Bryde's whale ( B. brydei ). This was supported by genetic studies, which found that, based on comparison of published phylogenies, the small "Bryde's whales" from the Philippines correspond to Omura's whale. A monograph from 1923 describes three skulls of balaenopterids taken by native whalers in Indonesia. Later examination of photographs of those skulls by one of the scientists (Tadasu K. Yamada) that had formally described Omura's whale showed that two of them, one from Bangsri, Java , and another from Lamakera , Solor, belonged to B. omurai . There

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5044-479: The Indo-Pacific form of B. brydei , but are invisible in dorsal view in B. edeni and the North Pacific form of B. brydei . B. omurai has two small foramina "along the suture between the parietal and squamosal in the posterior wall of the temporal fossa ", which both B. brydei and B. edeni lack. B. omurai has an oblique ridge on the dorsal side of the maxilla near the base of the rostrum, which

5141-410: The Indo-Pacific in the late 1970s. The longest baleen plate (NRIFSF6 includes 18 more baleen plates), an earplug, and a piece of the sixth thoracic vertebra with associated epiphysis were collected from each individual. Omura's whale has several unique skeletal features that distinguish it from its congeners, namely B. brydei and B. edeni . In B. omurai and B. brydei , the posterior end of

5238-458: The Japanese vernacular name of Tsunoshima kujira ( English : Horn Island whale). The holotype is an 11.03 m (36.2 ft) adult female, NSMT-M32505 (National Science Museum, Tokyo), which stranded at Tsunoshima ( 34°21′03″N 130°53′09″E  /  34.35083°N 130.88583°E  / 34.35083; 130.88583 ) in the southern Sea of Japan on 11 September 1998. It includes

5335-602: The Protestant London Missionary Society to establish schools and churches. The first book to be printed in Malagasy using Latin characters was the Bible , which was translated into Malagasy in 1835 by British Protestant missionaries working in the highlands area of Madagascar. The current Malagasy alphabet consists of 21 letters: a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, y, z. The orthography maps rather straightforwardly to

5432-475: The Solomon Islands in 2009 and 2010, what were "most likely" Omura's whales were sighted on three occasions. They were estimated to be 6 to 10 m (20 to 33 ft) in length and lacked obvious auxiliary ridges. The sightings were made very close to shore (within a few hundred meters), one on the west coast of Malaita in November 2009, one on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal in November 2010, and

5529-504: The Southeast Barito languages , and the Ma'anyan language is its closest relative, with numerous Malay and Javanese loanwords. It is known that Ma'anyan people were brought as labourers and slaves by Malay and Javanese people in their trading fleets, which reached Madagascar by c.  50 –500 AD. Later, c.  1000 , the original Austronesian settlers mixed with Bantus and Arabs , amongst others. There

5626-436: The ascending process of the maxilla widens to become squarish, whereas in B. edeni , it is slender and round throughout its length. In B. omurai , this widened posterior portion conceals the premaxilla , which disappears below the maxilla and nasal and does not reach the frontal , whereas in both B. brydei and B. edeni , the premaxilla reaches the frontal. The parietals flare laterally in dorsal view in B. omurai and

5723-598: The calves sighted in August had an erect dorsal fin, indicating that it was older but still probably born that year. These calves were estimated to range in length from 3 to 5 m (9.8 to 16.4 ft). Little is known of the behavior and diet of Omura's whale. Their blow is low and diffuse. After surfacing, the dorsal fin is usually not visible until after the head and splashguard have disappeared and they don't fluke when diving. They have been seen lunge feeding, defecating, and breaching off both Komodo National Park and northwestern Madagascar; they've also been seen rolling at

5820-509: The carcass to Lila for butchering, where it was sold and the meat eaten raw or cooked. Pamilacan hunters alone caught 10 to 20 per year, whereas at Camiguin, they caught them only sporadically. When Maria Louella L. Dolar and colleagues (1994) examined photographs or baleen of the whales caught in the Bohol Sea between 1991 and 1993, they identified them as Bryde's whales; this was supported by osteological examinations of skulls collected from

5917-594: The colony of Madagascar. The outpost became an important trade harbor in the Mozambique channel. During the nineteenth century, the French settlers developed cash crop agriculture (mainly sugar cane) and recruited indentured laborers from East Africa. Though it was difficult for the French to control the littoral, they founded a plantation colony in Nosy Be, mainly producing sugar and cash crops. The French used both military force and diplomacy to maintain their position in

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6014-496: The defeat of Queen Tsiomeko 's army. The French colonized the island from 1840, founding an outpost named Hell-Ville (from French Admiral de Hell ). The 1848 abolition of slavery in the French colonies resulted in a revolt against the French by the Sakalava people, who were extensively involved in the slave trade. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the island was governed by the French as an internal protectorate within

6111-678: The eight individuals taken by Japanese scientific whaling in the 1970s, six were processed aboard the factory ship Tonan Maru No. 2 in the Solomon Sea (9°49'-10°17'S, 157°29'-157°56'E) on 24 October 1976, and two were processed aboard the factory ship Nisshin Maru No. 3 near the Cocos Islands ( 10°51′S 97°02′E  /  10.850°S 97.033°E  / -10.850; 97.033 and 10°53′S 94°29′E  /  10.883°S 94.483°E  / -10.883; 94.483 , respectively) on 15 and 17 November 1978. Three of

6208-415: The eight specimens taken during Japanese whaling in the Indo-Pacific, the five females ranged in length from 10.1 to 11.5 m (33.1 to 37.7 ft), while the three males ranged from 9.6 to 10.0 m (31.5 to 32.8 ft). The females ranged in age from perhaps only 9 years (the earplug was damaged or partially lost) for an 11.2 m (36.7 ft) individual to 29 years for the longest female, whereas

6305-539: The following ways: After a stressed syllable, as at the end of most words and in the final two syllables of some, /a, u, i/ are reduced to [ə, ʷ, ʲ] . ( /i/ is spelled ⟨y⟩ in such cases, though in monosyllabic words like ny and vy , ⟨y⟩ is pronounced as a full [i] .) Final /a/ , and sometimes final syllables, are devoiced at the end of an utterance . /e/ and /o/ are never reduced or devoiced. The large number of reduced vowels, and their effect on neighbouring consonants, give Malagasy

6402-408: The island from the strong north-east winds affecting the region in August or during tropical depressions . The wet season lasts from October until the beginning of May, followed by a relatively short dry season that lasts through September. As characteristic of its climate however, it still sees moderate amounts of precipitation even during this time. Daytime temperatures remain fairly steady throughout

6499-506: The island of Borneo – were particularly closely related. The language also has apparent influence from early Old Malay . Furthermore, there appears to be a Bantu influence or substratum in Malagasy phonotactics (Dahl 1988). There are some Sanskrit loanwords in Malagasy, which are said to have been borrowed via Malay and Javanese . Adelaar (1995) suggested that the vocabulary of Malagasy also contains many words that are of South Sulawesi origin. Further evidence for this suggestion

6596-612: The island, appointing the former ruler of Nosy Be Binao as the gouverneur principal of the island. During the Russo-Japanese War Nosy Be became a supply station for Russia's Second Pacific Squadron. The main fleet led by Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky reached Nosy Be on January 9, 1905, where it met a smaller detachment led by Admiral Dmitry von Fölkersam that had arrived already on December 28, 1904. The fleet stayed for two months for refurbishing and coaling, leaving on March 17 to meet its fate ten weeks later at

6693-530: The island, travel via Tuk-Tuk, scooters, and boats are common along side cars. French international schools: Local public schools: Nosy Be is twinned with: Malagasy language Malagasy ( / ˌ m æ l ə ˈ ɡ æ s i / MAL -ə- GASS -ee ; Malagasy pronunciation: [malaˈɡasʲ] ; Sorabe : مَلَغَسِ ) is an Austronesian language and dialect continuum spoken in Madagascar . The standard variety, called Official Malagasy,

6790-406: The late 1970s in the Indo-Pacific and an adult female collected in 1998 from Tsunoshima , an island in the Sea of Japan . Later, abundant genetic evidence confirmed Omura's whale as a valid species and revealed it to be an early offshoot from the rorqual lineage, diverging much earlier than Bryde's and sei whales . It is perhaps more closely related to its larger relative, the blue whale . In

6887-412: The latter when followed by unstressed /i/ : Thus French malgache [malɡaʃ] 'Malagasy'. The velars /k ɡ ᵑk ᵑɡ h/ are palatalized after /i/ (e.g. alika /alikʲa/ 'dog'). /h/ is frequently elided in casual speech. The reported postalveolar trilled affricates /ʈʳ ᶯʈʳ ɖʳ ᶯɖʳ/ are sometimes simple stops, [ʈ ᶯʈ ɖ ᶯɖ] , but they often have a rhotic release, [ʈɽ̊˔ ᶯʈɽ̊˔ ɖɽ˔ ᶯɖɽ˔] . It

6984-518: The majority in 2013 (thirteen) and 2014 (twenty-five). Forty-two were made off Nosy Iranja and the Ampasindava Peninsula, while only two occurred off Nosy Be . They were observed in open shelf waters that averaged 31 m (102 ft) deep (range: 4 to 202 m, or 13.1 to 662 ft) and were never seen in deep waters off the shelf break or in shallower coastal waters or embayments. In 2018, Pierre Laboute and Philippe Borsa published

7081-443: The more gradual slope of the fin whale and the more acute angle of Bryde's and sei whales. Its dorsal fin is also proportionally smaller and less upright than these other species. It typically has a single prominent median ridge on the rostrum, but can have faint lateral ridges, which are more pronounced in calves. Bryde's whale, on the other hand, has three prominent ridges on the rostrum. It has 45 to 95 ventral grooves that extend past

7178-466: The most numerous ethnic group on the island. These people were joined later by some Comorians , Indians or Antandroy . Nosy Be made first major appearance in Madagascar's history when King Radama I announced that he intended to conquer the whole west of Madagascar. That plan was eventually achieved in 1837 when the Sakalava Kingdom of Boina came into the possession of Ranavalona I upon

7275-528: The penultimate syllable, unless the word ends in ka , tra and often na , in which case they are stressed on the antepenultimate syllable. Secondary stresses exist in even-numbered syllables from the last stressed syllable, when the word has more than four syllables ( fàmantàranàndro [ˌfamˌtarˈnandʐʷ] "watch, clock"). Neither prefixation nor suffixation affect the placement of stress. In many dialects, unstressed vowels (except /e/ ) are devoiced, and in some cases almost completely elided ; thus fanòrona

7372-480: The phonemic inventory. The letters i and y both represent the /i/ sound ( y is used word-finally, and i elsewhere), while o is pronounced /u/ . The affricates /ʈʂ/ and /ɖʐ/ are written tr and dr , respectively, while /ts/ and /dz/ are written ts and j . The letter h is often silent. All other letters have essentially their IPA values. The letters c, q, u, w and x are all not used in native Malagasy words. Mp and occasionally nt may begin

7469-601: The plantation of ylang-ylang (for the production of essential oils) and tourism. Nosy Be is the most developed tourism destination in Madagascar. This is the only place in Madagascar where all-inclusive large resorts can be found. There are no traffic lights on the island, instead roundabouts are used. The island is served by Fascene Airport . The airport is serviced by commercial flights with Air Madagascar , Air Austral , Airlink, Ewa, Ethiopian Airlines , and has direct flights from Europe on Neos . Its main city and harbour, Hell-Ville , can be reached by boat from Ankify . On

7566-462: The putative new species to be conducted. As a result of external morphology, osteology, and mitochondrial DNA analysis of two of the harvested whales and the Tsunoshima specimen, Wada, Masayuki Oishi, and Yamada described Balaenoptera omurai in the 20 November 2003 issue of the journal Nature . In honour of the people of Tsunoshima, who helped remove the flesh from the type specimen, it was given

7663-430: The right side, the front third are yellowish-white, the intermediate 100 plates are bi-colored (dark on the outer side and yellowish-white on the inner side), and the remaining plates in the back were all black, while on the left side, the majority are bi-colored with the remaining back plates being all black like the right side. The average length and width for the nine specimens was 26 by 21.4 cm (10.2 by 8.4 in),

7760-575: The same sites by Dolar, William F. Perrin, and others (1996), who suggested they were a "small form" of Bryde's whale. The specimens were deposited in the collections of the Marine Research Laboratory of Silliman University in Dumaguete , Negros Oriental , Philippines, where they were examined by T. K. Yamada and co-workers (2008). They discovered that 24 of the skulls were actually from Omura's whales, whereas only four were from

7857-573: The seven records from Japan involve bycaught individuals, including a 9.2 m (30 ft) male in Sagami Bay in October 2003, a 10.05 m (33.0 ft) female in Tokyo Bay in May 2004, and a 6.3 m (21 ft) female near Ise Bay in March 2012. Both records from South Korea were individuals taken as bycatch, including a 6.3 m (21 ft) female off Geoje in January 2004 and

7954-407: The smallest length-to-breadth quotient (1.22) for any species in its genus. Omura's whale seen off New Caledonia , the Solomon Islands , West Sumatra , and East Kalimantan showed extensive scarring from cookiecutter shark bites, indicating they had ventured into deep waters; whereas those off Madagascar did not exhibit them. The rostrum is flat and V-shaped with the head occupying about

8051-524: The southeast area of Madagascar in the 15th century. The first bilingual renderings of religious texts are those by Étienne de Flacourt , who also published the first dictionary of the language. Radama I , the first literate representative of the Merina monarchy , though extensively versed in the Arabico-Malagasy tradition, opted in 1823 for a Latin system derived by David Jones and invited

8148-696: The southern Java Sea , Bali , Komodo , the Solor Archipelago , Seram , Raja Ampat Islands , and East Kalimantan ), the Cocos (Keeling) Islands , the Andaman Islands (April), Australia ( Western Australia from Exmouth to north of Darwin in the Northern Territory at about 9° 30' S - 10° S, 130° E), South Australia (January, Gulf St Vincent ), Queensland (November to December, Port Douglas and Mission Beach ),

8245-415: The subjects of history and Malagasy language. There are two principal dialects of Malagasy: Eastern (including Merina ) and Western (including Sakalava ), with the isogloss running down the spine of the island, the south being western, and the central plateau and much of the north (apart from the very tip) being eastern. Ethnologue encodes 12 variants of Malagasy as distinct languages. They have about

8342-409: The surface in apparent mating (the last of which allowed the identification of a male) off the former area. Off Madagascar, average group size was only 1.1 individuals (272 individuals in 247 groups), but loose aggregations of as many as a dozen whales could be seen. A total of thirteen cow-calf pairs were observed between 2011 and 2016, including a female first seen in an aggregation in 2012, then with

8439-588: The third edition of Mammal Species of the World , the "species" is relegated to being a synonym of Balaenoptera edeni . However, the authors note that this is subject to a revision of the genus. The database ITIS lists this as a valid taxon, noting a caveat on the disputed systematics of this species, Balaenoptera edeni and Balaenoptera brydei . The six specimens obtained in the Solomon Sea in 1976 were only noted to be smaller at sexual maturity than

8536-429: The three females caught in the Solomon Sea, two were ovulating and lactating and one was resting (not lactating, ovulating, or pregnant), while one of the two females caught near the Cocos Islands was accompanied by a calf estimated to be about 3 m (9.8 ft) in length. Nothing is known of the duration of gestation and lactation, and little is known of the timing or extent of breeding seasons. In August 2005,

8633-530: The three males ranged from perhaps 21 years (another damaged or partially lost earplug) for the longest male to 38 years for one of the 9.6 m (31.5 ft) specimens. All were physically mature with the exception of the smallest female. Of individuals found stranded in Taiwan and Thailand between 1983 and 2004, five males ranged in length from 5.13 to 10 m (16.8 to 32.8 ft), while two females were 4.3 and 5.95 m (14.1 and 19.5 ft), respectively –

8730-430: The umbilicus. The type specimen (NSMT-M32505) had 203-208 pairs of baleen plates that were "short and broad with uncurled, stiff, grayish-white fringes", while NRIFSF6 had an estimated 181–190 on the right side – fewer than any other species in its genus. Other specimens of Omura's whale had between 204 and 246 pairs of baleen plates. Like the fin whale, NSMT-M32505 exhibited asymmetrical coloration in its baleen, as well: on

8827-512: The vicinity of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago . In 1999 and 2000, an unidentified species of rorqual was repeatedly seen in the waters of Komodo National Park . They were small (most estimated to be only 7 to 10 m (23 to 33 ft) in length) with asymmetrical coloration similar to the fin whale, only had a single prominent ridge on the rostrum, and an extremely hooked dorsal fin. At first, they were tentatively identified as

8924-567: The year as well. Four Omura's whales were satellite -tagged off northwest Madagascar in November 2016. The tags stayed on an average of 42 days (range: 30–58 days). The tagged whales traveled an average of 2,530 km (range: 2,148 to 3,181 km) but remained within a small coastal range of only 230 to 405 km (average: 283 km) off the northwest coast of the island. All whales traversed their entire individual ranges several times, spending most of their time on shelf waters and rarely venturing into deep waters. Omura's whale are found in

9021-529: The year, hovering around 30 °C (86 °F), while the nights are slightly cooler during the dry season. The island constitutes a department within Diana Region and is organized as the City of Nosy Be (Commune Urbaine de Nosy Be). Its mayor is Mr. Vita Zarga. Once a major location of plantation of sugar cane and production of its derived products ( sugar , rum ), the island's main activities are now

9118-529: Was 9.4 m (30.8 ft). Lone individuals seen off Madagascar were estimated to range between 8 and 12 m (26 and 39 ft), while calves were estimated to be between 3 and 5 m (9.8 and 16.4 ft). The identity of three mature specimens (two females and a male) examined by biologist Graham Chittleborough in 1958 at a whaling station in Western Australia , which ranged in length from 10.6 to 11.74 m (34.8 to 38.5 ft),

9215-544: Was finally resolved in 1998 when an unidentified whale, which had died after colliding with a fishing boat in the Sea of Japan and was towed to Tsunoshima, was examined by Tadasu Yamada, Chief of the Division of Mammals and Birds at the National Science Museum, Tokyo . This specimen closely resembled the individuals caught in the 1970s in external appearance and allowed a complete osteological examination of

9312-478: Was presented by Blench (2018). Malagasy is the demonym of Madagascar , from which it is taken to refer to the people of Madagascar in addition to their language. Madagascar was first settled by Austronesian peoples from Maritime Southeast Asia from the Sunda Islands ( Malay archipelago ). As for their route, one possibility is that the Indonesian Austronesian came directly across

9409-516: Was referred to as a small, dwarf or pygmy form of Bryde's whale by various sources. The common name and specific epithet commemorate Japanese cetologist Hideo Omura  [ jp ] . The scientific description of this whale was made in Nature in 2003 by three Japanese scientists. They determined the existence of the species by analysing the morphology and mitochondrial DNA of nine individuals – eight caught by Japanese research vessels in

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