User:Georgewilliamherbert/Jimbo Whale

The Jimbo Whale incident is one of Wikipedia's more notable and bizarre cases of Wikistalking, apparently involving speciesism, real-world threats, and Wikipedia's founder.



Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been involved in a number of philanthropic projects, including having funded a research project at the University of Central Lancashire on the feasibility of reintroducing Grey Whales into the Atlantic Ocean (see Reintroducing Grey Whales to Atlantic). There had historically been a large Grey Whale population in the Atlantic, but it was hunted to extinction around 1700.

Jonas Whumble, a researcher in the Bahamas who is affiliated with The Dolphin Communications Project, has for some years claimed to be able to communicate simple English text to a school of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins in the Bimini region using a special underwater lightboard. The school of dolphins was unusual in that it also was observed having regular social interactions with a group of Humpback Whales who also summer near the Bahamas.

The sequence of events in the Jimbo Whale incident seems to have begun when Whumble communicated the proposal to reintroduce Grey Whales into the Altantic to the school of dolphins that he is working with. Whumble reported that the dolphins became extremely agitated and left the area of the research facility shortly after the message was sent.

Approximately one week later, on April 1, 2005, a tourboat containing Jimmy Wales and roughly fifty other vacationers was attacked by a Humpback Whale on the Main river in Frankfurt, Germany. This was a unique occurrence; Humpback whales have not been observed that far up a freshwater river in the past, though they have been observed to travel up rivers and into bays (see Humphrey (whale)).

The tourboat was slightly damaged but no injuries occurred. The whale had been observed in the river about an hour prior to the attack and was serendipitously photographed along with Jimmy Wales by a Wikipedia editor.

Jimmy Wales has publicly stated that he has avoided large bodies of water for the last year.