Call it philanthropic, or perhaps a marketing stunt, or maybe a little of both, but Docker – the container company that has captured the attention of the technology industry and has a whale for a logo – has “adopted” a real life whale.
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What does it mean to “adopt” a whale? Not much, actually.
What really happened is Docker donated $25,000 to the Oceanic Society in Ross, California and in exchange the organization denoted one of the whales that its affiliated scientists have been tracking for years as being sponsored by Docker, the Society’s president said.
Meet Molly Dock (pictured above), otherwise known as #763 by researchers off the coast of California. #763, a blue whale, was first spotted in August 1992 about 25 nautical miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. Since then it’s been seen 74 times by researchers, including multiple times with young calves. She is recognizable because of what researchers say is an unusually curled dorsal fin.
Why was Docker interested in “adopting” a whale? Someone on the marketing team at Docker had the idea of sponsoring a whale, given the company’s logo. Docker held a fundraiser in which Roderic Mast, president of The Oceanic Society – a nonprofit founded in the 1960s to protect ocean life – spoke about ocean conservation and how container ships in the ocean can harm whales.
Docker The whale in Docker's logo is named Moby Dock. The real life whale it adopted is a female named Molly Dock
The whale in Docker’s logo is named Moby Dock. So, #763 was named Molly Dock. Docker officials will have no official responsibilities in taking care of the whale. Mast is hoping to organize a whale watch trip with company employees though.
All this is happening even though Docker and application containers have nothing to do with container ships or actual whales (other than the company’s logo is a whale). Application containers are a way to virtualize the operating system to more efficiently pack applications on to a server and more easily migrate code from various host environments.
But, it’s always nice to support a cause. And plus, how many technology companies can say they have a pet whale?