Son of a beach!
I’m sorry to tell you a sad whale of a tail,
hey everyone, Julia here for DNews
Recently over 200 whales washed up on a beach in New Zealand.
They face injury and death from dehydration.
Unfortunately almost 20 died and the rescuers have to wait until high tide to try again
to rescue the rest.
So why does this happen?
Well it seems beachings aren’t a new thing.
There’s evidence of mass beachings going back to Aristotle.
He said: "It is not known why they sometimes run aground on the seashore: for it is asserted
that this happens rather fre­quently when the fancy takes them and without any apparent
reason.
Well scientists think they have a few reasons..
One idea suggests that maybe whales chase prey and accidently get caught up in the tide.
Yet this theory doesn’t hold much water.
Too many whales end up with on a beach with an empty stomach.
And deep sea whales are more likely to strand themselves than those who spend more time
closer to shore, like orcas.
Maybe they’re just following their friends.
Whales are incredibly social creatures.
Perhaps one whale is sick or injured and heads to shallow water to take refuge.
Perhaps the tide comes in and the whale winds up on a beach.
The other animals hear its distress calls and come to the rescue, but get stranded themselves.
Yet some genetic testing showed a diversity in the animals and those next to each other
weren’t necessarily closely related and they found a surprising lack of mothers for
some of the beached babies.
This suggests a lack of social cohesion perhaps indicating a different cause.
Another reason for beachings might be toxic algae.
A study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B found repeated ancient beachings
dating 6-9 million years ago.
To explain the repeated nature of the event, they looked to a current explanation.
Toxic algae blooms, called “red tides” contributed to the death and washing up of
humpback whales on the coast of cape cod in the 80s.
Another idea of repeated stranding spots, links the coastline to the deaths.
Researchers from the University of Western Australia, think whales echolocation can’t
see gentle sloping shores, and sometimes rough winds or surf scramble it too.
One theory, blames us.
Evidence of sonar causing beaching started gathering in 2000, when a sonar test by the
US Navy killed 17 whales.
A medical exam showed the sonar was so loud, it triggered massive bleeding around the ears.
Other exams in other beachings showed of a kind of depression sickness, just like the
bends in humans, in some whales.
A 2008 stranding of 100 melon headed whales on a beach in madagascar was caused by high-frequency
mapping sonar systems, the animals probably tried to avoid the weird sound so they moved
into an unfamiliar and as it turned out, unsafe area.
whale whale whale, why don’t you check out this video on how algae kills whales?
but before you do leave comment below.
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