Posts

Showing posts with the label New Zealand

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

Seaquake Strands 200 Pilot Whales in New Zealand

Image
One hundred and forty of the 200 pilot whales stranded themselves on Farewell Spit, Golden Bay, South Island, New Zealand, have died. They were injured by an earthquake south of South Island (see below). About 80 conservation workers and volunteers were trying to refloat the whales as high tide rolled in ,   Department of Conservation area manager Andrew Lamason said  that Farewell Spit is  a big, shallow hook. The whales come in, they get disoriented , and unfortunately we end up with a lot of dead whales.   We've had plenty times in the past where the pods have gone out to sea and turned around and come back again," he added. This disorientation is supposedly cause by the shallow water. The question is if shallow water disoriented them, why didn't they just just stay offshore where they could navigated? Humm? Don't sound right to me . My 40 years of research says pressure changes during the earthquake caused them to be disoriented (see below). I believ