Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Marine Science => Topic started by: tamsinbell on 04/10/2018 13:37:48

Title: Does sonar affect whales?
Post by: tamsinbell on 04/10/2018 13:37:48

Paul asks:

"How does sonar affect whale ear bones?"

What do you think? Post below...

Title: Re: Does sonar affect whales?
Post by: Colin2B on 06/10/2018 18:31:07

Quote from: chris on 06/10/2018 13:06:26

bump

Thanks for the reminder.
There have been numerous studies showing that military sonar can affect whales and cause them to swim away from the sonar, stop feeding, surface rapidly or even beach. In at least one case beached whales were found to be bleeding from eyes, this might have been due to rapid surfacing and barotrauma rather than a direct result of the sonar. Having said that, military sonars can put out an extremely high sound pressure level eg 200dB and that could damage ear bones if the whale were close enough to the source, but I have never seen autopsy reports mentioning damage.
Whalers discovered that they could force whales to surface using 3kHz sonar.

Title: Re: Does sonar affect whales?
Post by: chris on 07/10/2018 09:18:15

We talked to Danielle Green, marine biologist from Anglia Ruskin, about marine mammal beachings and strandings; she made specific mention of anthropogenic noise as a favoured cause:
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/why-do-beached-whales-sometimes-explode