Animals Scientists believe the cause to have found why some whales on our beaches cast, to a slow death to die. It was already known that they often do after they were exposed to scheepssonars and a study of 21 experts discovered now why: they get decompression sickness, just as divers.
The research was published today in the scientific journal Proceedings B.
Of whales is known that they are after millions of years of evolution have developed to perfect duikmachines. They can be miles deep and for hours onderblijven, in search of food. Their heart rate slows and oxygen is carefully stored in their body. And yet, they can according to the study, also suffer from stikstofbellen in their blood, just like divers that come to the surface. The cause: pure fear.
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“If they come near of sonars, they become stressed and they swim away as fast as possible from the source of the sound,” says Yara Bernaldo de Quiros of the university of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. “As a result, they change their duikpatroon. Their stress gets the of their diving technique and therefore they get nitrogen in their blood. As if she were a shot of adrenaline.” the
It would be especially sonars with a frequency that the animals scare. That were developed in the fifties for submarines to detect, and are still used for at sea patrols, and military exercises, in particular, from the United States and their NATO allies. the
In the sixties began ships onderwatersignalen to send out and that is the time that beaked whales are certainly in the Mediterranean Sea en masse on the beaches began to throw. (read on below)
