{"id":395827,"date":"2019-02-11T07:14:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T06:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/navy-sonar-is-literally-scaring-whales-to-death\/"},"modified":"2019-02-11T07:14:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T06:14:16","slug":"navy-sonar-is-literally-scaring-whales-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/navy-sonar-is-literally-scaring-whales-to-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy Sonar Is Literally Scaring Whales to Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While scientists have already linked <\/span>naval sonar<\/a> <\/span>with mass strandings of some whales, like beaked whales, they haven\u2019t understood exactly what the cause was \u2013 until now. Turns out, it\u2019s literally <\/span>scaring them<\/a> <\/span>to death.<\/p>\n

Beaked whales<\/a> <\/span>are among the deepest diving marine mammals on earth, with Cuvier\u2019s beaked whales hitting some of the deepest depths \u2013 going nearly 10,000 feet below the surface. Their bodies have adapted to allow them to go so deep to forage; their heartrate slows, blood flow is restricted and oxygen is conserved.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, scientists have found that stranded whales have nitrogen bubbles in their tissues, which is a telltale sign of compression sickness, otherwise known as \u201cthe bends.\u201d It\u2019s a painful condition often associated with scuba divers who rise to the surface too quickly, so it\u2019s strange that whales would be suffering from it.<\/p>\n

However, in a new study just published in the journal <\/span>Proceedings of the Royal Society B<\/a>, scientists have found that naval <\/span>sonar<\/a> i<\/span>n certain frequencies is scaring them so badly, or inducing a \u201cflight or fight response\u201d that their fear alters their diving behavior and quickens their heartrate, which in turn gives them the bends.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn the presence of sonar they are stressed and swim vigorously away from the sound source, changing their diving pattern,\u201d lead author Yara Bernaldo de Quiros, a researcher at the Institute of Animal Health at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, told <\/span>AFP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stress response, in other words, overrides the diving response, which makes the animals accumulate nitrogen,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s like an adrenalin shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

These mass stranding events we see now were infrequent before the 1960s, but increased after the development of naval mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS). It was developed in the 1950s to detect submarines, but didn\u2019t start causing problems for beaked whales until…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While scientists have already linked naval sonar with mass strandings of some whales, like beaked whales, they haven\u2019t understood exactly what the cause was \u2013 until now. Turns out, it\u2019s literally scaring them to death. Beaked whales are among the deepest diving marine mammals on earth, with Cuvier\u2019s beaked whales hitting some of the deepest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-395827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}