Posts

Showing posts with the label Farewell Spit

650 Pilot Whales Beach in New Zealand

Image
Pods of whales beach because they are suffering barotrauma in their cranial air spaces induced by rapid and excessive changes in diving pressures caused by (1) vertical thrusting seafloor earthquakes, (2) undersea volcanic explosions, (3) the sudden collapse of an undersea volcanic caldera, (4) the violent impact of a heavenly body with the ocean's surface, (5) the noise from a massive undersea landslide, (6) military sonar, and (7) explosives. Pilot whales spent 40 to 50% of their lives diving deep into the black depths of their undersea world looking for food. They use the most sophisticated acoustic sonar system ever known. Just like a bat flying in pitch black cave, the basics of the odontocete biosonar is the sending out of clicking sounds and reading the returning echoes. The clicks are produced by passing air through phonic lips similar to the human vocal cords and nasal air cavities. This air is supplied to the many nasal complexes from the lungs by the palatopharynge

Seaquakes Cause 65 Pilot Whales to Beach in Golden Bay on 14-18 January 2014

Image
Details of 3 seaquakes that might have caused this stranding: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349210 http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349185 http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349169 The pod of ~85 pilot whales that beached themselves repeatedly between 14-18 January 2014 were injured by excessive pressure changes (seaquakes) above the epicenter of 3 quakes that erupted in the seafloor of the Southern Ocean about 5,000 km upstream from Farewell Spit on 22 December 2013 (see links above). Strong winds caused rough seas, which separated the pod in Golden Bay. Twelve whales went ashore with the shoreward flow of the incoming tide on the morning of 14 January. That night, as the tide started washing out to sea, the rescuers refloated the whales and guided them back into waist deep water and let them go. They swam a few kilometers away, but when the tide started rising and the surface currents began flowing back to the