Why Did Pilot Whales Beach in the Florida Everglades?
They stranded due to barosinusitis in the cranial air spaces. Mass stranding whales and dolphins dive deep practically everyday of their lives. Their single greatest threat during a dive is a surprize encounter with a series of rapid and excessive changes in the surrounding water pressures. Undersea earthquakes, volcanic explosions, impact of heavenly body with surface, military sonar, explosions, and geophysical air cannons are all capable to generating rapid changes in the surrounding water pressure and are thus the most dangerous encounters a diving whales can face. The part of their anatomy most vulnerable to excessive pressure changes while diving is their massive cranial air spaces (sinuses and air sacs). The air contained in these air chambers serve underwater as acoustic mirrors, bouncing sound around in a fashion to enable the function of biosonar. Busted, bleeding sinuses will not reflect or channel returning echoes, thereby disabling the ability of pod members to e...