Humpback whale. Captions and Photo source: NOAA Photo Library
Excerpts;
Another dead whale washed ashore in Northern California, the 12th carcass that has appeared in the past few months and marks a higher-than-normal number of deaths…
Read Full Article, AP / Yahoo News
Study: Why Blue Whales Can’t Avoid Barges, Ocean Liners, Huffington Green (05-06-2015)
Navy study: Sonar, Blasts Might Hurt More Sea Life (05-14-2012)
Whales Benefit From Action On Ocean Noise, BBC News (03-04-2013)
A Rising Tide of Noise Is Now Easy to See, The New York Times (12-15-2012)
The oceanic roar originates because of the remarkable, and highly selective, way in which different kinds of waves propagate through seawater. While sunlight can penetrate no more than a few hundred feet, sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles before diminishing to nothingness. In recent decades, raucous clatter have been added to the primal chorus…
Accoustic Pollution and Marine Mammals, Nature
In the Canary Islands, 14 beaked whales washed ashore bleeding from the ears. All eventually died. A post-mortem examination revealed that the whales showed signs of decompression sickness (what scuba divers call “the bends”). Decompression sickness can occur when a mammal swims to the ocean’s surface too quickly, and the change in pressure produces lethal nitrogen gas bubbles that clog its blood vessels. Evidence of acute decompression sickness indicates unusual behavior. Over the past 40 years, cumulative research across the globe has revealed a coincidence between naval sonar testing events and acute decompression sickness in beached marine mammals…
