Submissions that have been rejected by the Creativity Pool. - The Docks aren't necessarily the final destination, if a broken idea gets fixed it may travel to a more appropriate category.
By Japan Mike
#22787
Japan's "Research Whaling' is a thin excuse for hunting whale meat, but it could actually be put to better use.

Instead of killing whales, put some sort of tracking device that continuously feeds data on the whale's location, depth, etc. Focus on whales that frequesnt the waters around Japan.

It seems that a lot of animals become aware of impending earthquakes long before humans or even electronic monitors can detect them. In this case, they could accumulate data on the whale's movements, and in the event of a major earthquake at sea (Such as the March 11th, 2011 quake), look carefully at the data on the whales movements at that time. Did they do anything unusual? Suddenly move out of the area? Produce any unusual whale calls? By observing their behavior and continuing to track them, we could predict the next big quake before it happens. Even if the prediction was only minutes before a quake, it might give people more time to escape the inevitable tsunami.

I am not a scientist, so I don't know how well this might work. But certainly Japan has the technology and the whaling fleet available to undertake this.
By Japan Mike
#22827
That's a very interesting article! Think of how much more we would know if we had the data on the movements of those whales in the weeks before they beached themselves. The article also mentioned the strange behavior of other animals before quakes - dogs, birds, worms... Simple security cameras placed in zoos, parks, etc ... that could provide some interesting data in the event of a big quake in the area.
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