Seaquakes Kill 337 Whales in Chile!

337 baleen whales washed ashore in Patagonia, Chile. They were killed by several powerful undersea earthquakes in the Southern Ocean 2,000 to 3,000 miles west of the stranding site!

Or it might have been a meteorite?  Large meteors striking the surface of ocean have been reported to generate shocks as large as ten kilotons of  TNT equivalent.

seaquake in Southern Chile  kills 47 whales

The 1908 newspaper article on the left tells how 47 whales were killed by a Marine Upheaval (seaquake) off Southern Chile's Cape Horn not too far from where 337 dead whales were recently found. You can find a better copy at this link. And, if you click on "other clippings by deafwhale" you will see a lot more seaquake evidence. It's a wake-up call to those who love whales and wonder why they beach themselves.

Rapid changes in diving pressures generated by undersea earthquakes and volcanic explosions (seaquakes) have been killing whales for millions of years. The injury is barotrauma in the cranial air spaces, which is identical to the trauma caused by military sonar, oil industry airguns, and explosives. Now you understand why the US Navy and the oil industry would prefer that you know nothing about seaquakes and undersea volcanic explosion. These two powerful groups sponsor 97% of all whale research worldwide. Whale scientists must do what the money wants if they expect to get any grants at all. For this reason, you can expect whale scientists to blame this massive death on red tide or some other ignorant reason and certainly not sinus barotrauma.

The US Navy has other reasons to keep you in the dark. A seaquake sank the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion in 1968. The cause was the subject of a massive cover-up (link) so you can double your bet that the US Navy does not want to public to know the real dangers of violent seafloor upheavals. Folks along the US West Coast and Hawaii would have a heart attack if they knew submarines loaded with nuclear weapons were patrolling just off their seismically-active shoreline.

Seaquakes can also bust large oil pipes running ashore from offshore rigs. The can crack apart and oil tanker. We know for sure by seaquakes have sunk oil tankers many times in the past. Here's one example you likely never heard about (link).

Rest assured, seaquakes can indeed kill marine life and sink oil tankers, cruise ships, and nuclear submarines. If you doubt me, read this stunning report published in 1964 by the Maritime Safety Division of the US Navy. Navy scientists made it clear in their summary on the left side of page 59 that  “MARINE LIFE CAN BE DESTROYED BY A SEAQUAKE.” The US Navy also confirmed that seaquakes could bust open a ship and sink it like a sack of rocks. They stated on the last page: “Damaging seaquake: The ship may be thrown about in the water with such force that mast, booms, superstructure and machinery as well as the hull may be damaged. It is possible for seams to be opened to such an extent that flooding cannot be contained and the vessel sinks.” 

Remember the ghost ship Mary Celeste, known as the greatest sea mystery of all time. A seaquakes was responsible for that incident also (link) 

If you doubt the evidence above, here's a science article (link) written by NASA physicists informing that strong seaquakes can generate shock waves equal to 6 kilobars (100,000 pounds per square inch). An acoustic shock wave near 100,000 pounds per square inch sound unbelievable but this comes for the top scientists at NASA and his best physicists.

In the opinion of this researcher, a 30-second series of seismic p-waves measuring 50 psi and oscillating rapidly back and forth from 50 psi positive to 50 psi negative would be enough to injure the sinuses in a baleen whale's head if the animal was no deeper than ~150 feet. The danger increases as the whales gets closer to the surface. This is so because the percentage of air volume change in the sinuses is much greater when the ambient pressure is lower. Fifty psi represents ~100 feet of depth so the effect would be as if the whale dove to 100 feet and then popped to the surface and back down to 100 feet ~7 times per second for ~30 seconds.  (The average frequency of seismic p-waves are ~7 cycles per second with a duration of ~30 seconds.)   

Whales could lessen the danger if they dove deeper, but if they panicked and bolted to the surface, they would make the injury much worse. By the way, sinus barotrauma in whales is not much different than sinus barotrauma in scuba divers. Rapid and excessive pressure changes that exceed the ability to compensate is every diving mammals worse nightmare come true. This applies especially to human divers.

Now back to the 337 dead whales.  

In April 2015, more than 20 large sei whale carcasses were discovered inside an inlet along the rocky coast of southern Chile near the Gulf of Penas. Two months later another 337 carcasses were spotted from the air in the nearshore area further south of the Gulf. 

Scientists quickly suggested red tide had killed them; however, the Deafwhale Society strongly disagrees because the icy Antarctic water that flows into the Southern Chilean Coast is far too cold to support a massive bloom of the species of algae that causes red tide. Toxic blooms generally occur where there are high levels of nutrients, together with the occurrence of warm, sunny, calm conditions. As you will read below, the conditions needed for red tide are not present south of 47 degrees where the 337 carcasses were discovered. As far as I can determine, there has never been a red tide near the southern tip of Chile.  

On the other hand, there is evidence of red tide toxin in Northern Chile, 2,000 miles north of the current standing sites where the water is warmer and more stagnant.

In investigating the April sei whale beaching, we found several nearby shallow-focused whale-dangerous earthquake (link) causing us to advance the idea that shockwaves from one of these events had killed the whales very near where they beached (link). However, in consideration of the finding of 337 dead whales in area in June, we expanded our research and now admit that we might have selected the wrong earthquake.

We now postulate that undersea earthquakes upstream from the Southern tip of Chile have been causing baleen whale mass beachings in this area for millions of years. Everything is the same as it was in the 1908 article above. 

Our attention was especially drawn to a 6.7 magnitude shallow-focus earthquake that occurred ~2,400 miles west of the stranding area on 19 May 2015 (link) (link). Earthquakes at 6.7 magnitude yield the energy equivalent of 5 million tons of TNT (link). This is the strongest earthquake to occur in this area of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge in the last 100 years (area chart) maybe even longer.  We also note a 5.6 magnitude quake (80,000 tons of TNT equivalent) in the same area on June 9th (link).

Think about it for a few minutes.  Five million tons of TNT exploded below a large group of diving whales. Both the US Navy and the whale scientists they bribe must be damned idiots if they think 5 million tons of TNT is not dangerous to diving whales.

As to the timing of the 6.7 magnitude event, it is possible that a massive bloom of  non-toxic phytoplankton drifted through the epicentral area during May at the same time the seafloor erupted catastrophically. If this did indeed happen, billions of tiny critters would have attracted larger zooplankton, the favorite food of the filter-feeding mysticeti whales. There might have been as many as 300 whales busy feeding within a 50 mile circumference of this powerful quake. The point being that both the shockwaves and the intense changes in diving pressures induced by this 6.7 magnitude shallow seaquake might have fatally injured 300+ baleen whales. The injury would have knocked them senseless, causing the whales and/or their carcasses to swim or float blindly downstream. The surface current would have carried them straight to the southern tip of Chile where they would have been washed ashore in the first week of June, a few weeks before the pictures and images of 337 dead whales were recorded (link).  

One other point... seismic shocks from this event would have traveled up and down the fault for ~30 miles in both direction so the epicenter might have been 60 miles long. Any precursors the whales might have used as a warning of a pending event may have only been in the area directly above the focal point. The area 10 miles to either side of might have been precursor free.  

It is also possible that several of the other 29 moderate earthquakes that occurred upstream from where the carcasses were found, contributed to the large number of dead whales (link). 

Seaquake Shocks Injure Whales  

Every small boy who learned to swim in a river or pond knows what happens if he strikes together two stones under water while his head is submerged. A solid blow causes pain in and around his sinus cavities. We can apply this same effect to diving whales when the seabed is ripped asunder by the sudden fracture of millions of tons of rock. If whales are caught by surprise nearby such a natural undersea upheaval, the world’s most prolific divers will feel unimaginably intense torture in their massive cranial air spaces. This is so because water, being non-compressible, will transmit the full vibratory force of the shattering seafloor.

Underwater earthquake shocks (aka; seaquakes) are not felt as a single blow because the shifting forces that causes the intense changes in diving pressures is not one big bang. Rather, the seismic p-waves that crisscross the bodies of the diving whales are generated by a series of wrenching snaps, as the rocky seabed, twisted out of shape by a massive accumulation of strain slowly exerted over centuries, suddenly lurches back toward an alignment that relieves the stress. The result is that solid rock, which normally moves only with the passing of geological ages, accelerates briefly to 8000 kilometers per hour, unleashing huge quantities of vibratory energy, creating violent shaking movements that transfer directing to the hydrospace as low-frequency (~7 cps) hydroacoustic compression waves (p-waves) that consist of both a positive and negative pressure pulses of equal intensity.

If the seabed shifts in the vertical plane, as happens during both normal and reverse (thrust) faulting, and the foci is 7 to 20 km below the rock-water interface, the p-waves will impact the rock-water boundary causing the seabed to dance up and down like a gigantic piston many miles in diameter. This sudden up and down motion pushes and pulls at the bottom of the non-compressible water like a gigantic sonar transducer, generating a series of low-frequency changes in the surrounding water pressure estimated at ~600 pounds per square inch for a magnitude 5 earthquake. These waves of changing ambient pressures speed towards the surface at 1,500 meters per second.

If you believe pressure waves from a 100-gun seismic array, or similar pressure waves generated by a high-energy military sonar, can kill marine mammals, you must also believe that a seaquake can do the same since man-made noise pales in comparison to natural undersea upheavals. (see seaquakes louder than nuclear explosions)

If seaquake noise can be louder than a nuclear explosion, what would happen to whales caught feeding near where several million tons of rock suddenly split apart?

The danger to marine life was not newly discovered by the Navy is 1966. As illustrated in the news clipping above and on the left, thousands of seamen have witnessed dead whales and massive schools of dead fish floating after an undersea concussion but thought such seaquake carnage was normal as revealed by the 1908 and 1945 examples. Fishermen and whalers just went out to sea, hooked up to the dead whales and towed them to the whaling station and collected some cash. No alarm at all and no one doubted that a seaquake could injure a pod of whales or kill an entire school of fish. 

There are many variables that must be considered to know whether a seaquake might fatally injure diving whales. For example, usually when a series of seismic p-waves traveling through the solid earth encounter the rock-water interface, some of the wave energy will reflect back to the solid and some will refract into the water. On the other hand, when the distance from the quake's focus point to the rock-water interface is less than the ~7 kilometer length of the p-waves, the compressional energy enter the hydrospace as if there were no interface at all. When this occurs, p-waves from earthquakes focused between 1 to 7 kilometers below the rocky bottom will move into the water without distortion or energy loss. And since the focus is so near the water, the intensity of the waves do not lose much wallop due to spreading. The point is no two seaquakes are the same regardless of their magnitude.

This anomalous transparency at the air-water interface was recently discovered (link) (link). When asked if the same transparency existed at the rock-water barrier, Dr. Oleg A. Godin replied in the affirmative. He stated that his findings applied as much to the solid/water boundary as it did to the air/water boundary. This means that quakes as small as 4.7 magnitude might indeed injure diving whales if they originated less than 7 km below the seabed. This boundary transparency was recently confirmed by two researchers working at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division (link).

As mentioned above, sound waves propagating through a liquid consist of half cycles of compressions (positive pressures) and expansions (negative pressures). During the compression phase, the volume of air inside the whale’s cranial sinuses would rapidly compress. During the expansion phase, this same volume of air would instantly expand. In other words, whales above the epicenter would experience a series of unimaginable alterations in diving pressures that bounce back and forth between positive and negative pressure at an average of ~7 cycles per second (14 half-cycles). This disturbance in diving pressures might continue for a minute or more. This means that submerged whales, busy feeding on plankton, might be caught off guard and suffer a serious barotraumatic injury inside their cranial air spaces.

On the other hand, jerking movement in the horizontal plane during strike-slip faulting does not normally generate dangerous changes in diving pressures because water is not compressed when the seabed moves parallel to the surface. It’s similar to rowing your boat with the paddled turned sideways. However, there are instances when quick parallel motion along the drop-off edges of steep undersea mountains, and at junctions where transform faults intersect with mid-ocean ridges, that strike-slip events can push directly against the water. Such situation will indeed generate potent seaquakes along mountainous mid-ocean ridges and at the edge of continental drop offs. During such events, the changes in water pressure will travel horizontally and can easily become trapped in a sound channel.

We know baleen whales use these sound channels to communicate over long distances because this is where their low-frequency calls are often recorded. However, there exists a special danger in the Southern Ocean because the channel is no more than a few hundred meters below the surface, one-fifth as deep as it is at the equator.

If seismic p-waves are trapped in this sound channel, whales diving, feeding, and communicating in the Arctic and Antarctic might be injury up to 100 miles from the epicenter of a strong earthquake. 

According to lead scientists Carolina Gutstein, this is the largest single baleen whale stranding event known to science. But this statement cannot be true. Gutstein’s team could not identify the species of the rotten carcasses nor the species of the skeletons from the air. This event is certainly not a single mass stranding of 337 baleen whales. Otherwise, there would only be rotting carcasses and no bones, or there would be only bones. The evidence of both carcasses and bones establishes different stranding dates. It might even be that a series of maybe 20 different strandings occurred over several months, and over 300 miles of shoreline in which there are a thousand channels and small islands that would trap dying whales.

In Deafwhale's opinion, this part of Patagonia is the largest baleen whale trap ever discovered! In fact, the entire coast of Chile has likely been a graveyard for earthquake-injured whales for 20 to 30 million years as evidence by the recent find of ancient whale bones in the Chile desert (link). The scientists who found this whale graveyard said they were the result of not one but four separate mass strandings. Instead of wondering if these beachings were the result of natural undersea upheavals, they  advanced the false notion that the whales were killed by red tide toxin. Can't be talking about seaquake-induced sinus barotrauma if you expect to get any grants from the US Navy or the oil industry. It's like the days when big tobacco controlled all the lung cancer research. Remember? We had actors and doctors on TV pushing cigarettes.  

But the scientists can not say red tide kill them for sure because there were no distinct algal cell fragments in the sediments. What they found were multiple grains encrusted in iron oxides that could only hint at past algal activity. The lead scientists said, "We can't say whether the samples were the killer algae, but they do not falsify the argument for harmful algal blooms..." (link) This is a really dumb statement for a scientist. They find algae cysts that were supposedly buried in a red tinted iron oxide ~10 million years ago and just assumed it was red tide. There are hundreds of algae species making the odds at least 100 to 1 that these cyst came from a toxic species. This ain't science; it's pure bullshit. 

And what they supposedly found certainly does not in any way falsify the argument that the whales were killed millions of years ago by violent pressure disturbances induced by upstream earthquakes. In other words, the scientists who found the bones picked from all the known causes of mass beachings except natural undersea disasters, the most likely cause.  This is to be expected because red tide is the fallback stranding concept used by scientists who refuse to consider shockwaves and concussions generated by earthquakes in the seafloor. Such violent oceanic disturbances have been killing marine mammals for 50 million years but scientists refuse to think about such events. Why? The answer is simple: they are covering up pressure-related barotrauma in whales because this is the identical trauma that is induced by military sonar, explosives, and oil industry airguns.

Before blaming red tide, one must consider that the cold tidal waters washing in and out of these inlets comes directly from the ice cold Antarctic via the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) also known as the West Wind Drift (WWD). The water is simply too cold for a massive bloom of  Karenia brevis, Alexandrium fundyense, or any of the other toxic dinoflagellates that produce the deadly red tide toxin. 

The cold Circumpolar Current (aka: West Wind Drift) flow around Antarctica to wash into Southern Patagonia 

This current flows clockwise from west to east around Antarctica. It is also known as the West Wind Drift (labeled at the bottom of the chart above). The ACC is the dominant circulation feature of the Southern Ocean and has a mean transport of 100-150 million cubic meters per second, making it the largest ocean current in the world.

As you see above, this cold current flowing into the Southern Chilean Coast keeps warm ocean waters away from the area where the whales beached. This cold water also keeps red tide algae from blooming near the southern tip of Chile. Red tide algae need more warmth before a bloom could get started and kill whales south of the Gulf of Penas. There is no evidence that a toxic red tide bloom has ever occurred in this area of the world.

The current running offshore of the stranding area is also known as the Humboldt Current.

The way it looks at first glance, some of the present bunch of whales might have stranded over a year ago or even longer. How long does it take for bones to vanish from a beach? And how long does it take for the flesh to disappear if the carcasses were frozen solid during Patagonia's cold winter starting in March of 2015?

In the Deafwhale Society's opinion, it looks like the scientists discovered the world’s leading baleen whale stranding area—the most perfect place in the world to start digging for ancient baleen whale bones.

Chile’s Southern Patagonia is like a Cape Cod or a Farewell Spit, the two leading toothed whale stranding beaches in the world. Said differently, this area serves as a trap for baleen whales injured by undersea earthquake activity ~1,500 to ~3,000 miles upstream and west of Patagonia, not whales killed a few miles offshore. The Southern Ocean west of southern tip of Chile, serves as a major feeding grounds for baleen whales. They are often observed in these waters in groups of 3 to 50 individuals. Many species feed here at different times.

This area 1,500 to 3,000 miles upstream also serves as the epicenter of a very large number of whale-dangerous undersea earthquakes. These events give off shockwaves and concussions that could easily knock a group of feeding whales senseless. The injuries would either kill them outright, or they might survive for up to 60 days. Unable to navigate in their injured state, they would be forced to swim in only one direction, DOWNSTREAM in the path of least drag. To understand how and why read http://deafwhale.com/surface-currents-guide-stranded-whales/

Capt. David Williams  Deafwhale Society

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Site Map for http://deafwhale.com  

Why Whales Strand: The Logical Truth   
Seaquakes kill 322 Baleen Whales in Chile   
Three Fin Whales Killed by Seaquake   
The Danger of Seaquakes   
How Seaquakes Cause Whale Strandings   
Scientists Lying About Whale Strandings   
Whale Scientists Spreading Propaganda Part II   
Scuba Divers Survive Seaquakes   
Surface Currents Guide Whales to the Beach   
Seaquake-Vessel Encounters from 1900 to 2015   
Seaquake-Vessel Encounters from 1800 to 1899   
History of Whale Drive Fisheries and Seaquakes   
Typical Seaquake Reported by a Ship at Sea   
Various Whale Beaching Theories   
Whale Stranding Solutions   
Variables in Seaquake-Induced Whale Strandings   
Narwhals Trapped in Arctic Ice   
Seaquake Causes Whale Beaching   
1988 article why whales and dolphins strand (PDF)   
2013 Science Article - seaquakes cause whale strandings (PDF)   
Seismic Airguns Kill Endangered Sea Turtles    
Nuclear Submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) sunk by seaquake   
1966 US Navy verifies seaquakes sinks ships and kill marine life   
Ghost Ship Mary Celeste abandoned during seaquake    

Site Map for http://deafwhale.blogspot.com   

2015

Dec 09: Whale Dangerous Earthquake South of Perth 
Dec 09: Seaquake causes dolphins to strand Baja California   
Nov 23: Seaquakes kill 322 baleen whales in Chile    (shocking)  
Aug 24: NOAA whale scientists dumbfounded   
Aug 14: stranded dolphin is determined to be deaf   
Aug 08: seaquake causes pilot whales to strand Nova Scotia   
Jul   27: is our stranding solution flawed as scientists claim   
Jun  01: pilots stranded Isles of Skye from Reykjanes Ridge   
May 22: dead whales washing ashore on the California Coast   
May 10: earthquake kills 20 Sei Whales near Chile Coast   
Apr  10: seaquake strands 150 melon-headed whales in Japan   

2014   
Dec 25: navigation failure in mass stranded whales  (most popular)   
Dec 08: seaquake causes 7 sperm whales to beach Australia   
Nov 24: seaquake beaches 3 sperm whales at Golden Bay   
Nov 04: seaquake beaches 60 pilot whales in Bay of Plenty   
Oct 29: nine pilot whales strand on Prince Edward Island   
Apr  11: 60 pilot whales beach in Bay of Plenty   
Mar 20: Cape Ray Newfoundland 37 dolphins beach   
Mar 14: undersea quakes louder than nuclear explosions   
Mar 13: seaquakes cause whale strandings 32 million years   
Mar 02: blue whale killed by seaquake in Kuwait   
Feb 27: seaquake kills young killer whale   
Feb 23: predicting mass beachings based on seaquakes   
Feb 21: lessons in understanding why whales beach   
Feb 18: seaquake Greenland Sea kills 3 sperm whales   
Feb 12: nine orcas killed by seaquake   
Jan 30: Cape Cod mass stranding predicted   
Jan 20: seaquake causes 39 pilot whales to strand Florida   
Jan 16: seaquakes beach 65 pilot whales in Golden Bay   
Jan 05: seaquake beaches 30 pilot whales in Golden Bay   

2013   
Dec 06: why did pilot whales beached in the everglades?   
Apr 30: seaquake beaches 6 killer whales in Iceland   
Apr 25: beached whales stop war games   

2012   
Dec 08: seaquake beach pilot whales South Carolina   
Nov 15: pilot whales beach at Golden Bay, New Zealand   
Nov 04: seaquake causes two pods to beach at King Island   
Oct 28:  pilot whales strand on North Andaman Island   
Oct 17: earthquakes cause New Zealand whale stranding   
Sep 09: earthquake kills pregnant sperm whale   
Sep 03: seaquake strands pilot whales in Scotland   
Aug 24: two quakes cause near beaching in Cape Verde   
Jul  28:  200 Pilot Whales Northwest of Iceland   
Mar 19: Four Sperm Whales Wash Ashore in China   

2011   
Dec  31: world's rarest whales killed by earthquake   
Mar 06: 52 melon-headed dolphins strand in Japan   

2008   
Nov 20: 52 Pilot Whales Stranded in Tasmania

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