>I was wondering if their had ever been a study done on beached whale herds
>and the effects of lighting. I actually had a dream about this and I know
>it sounds crazy, but what if a bad lighting storm could effect their
>natural sonar. I was thinking if the leader of the heard was thrown of
>course maybe the rest of the heard would follow.
>
>I think it would be interesting to track them through different storms to
>see if the effects if any occur. Or may it has already been done. I am no
>scientist but I would be interested to know.....
There have been no formal studies that I am aware of in that regard.
Anecdotal observations are a possibility. It would be a rather simple
thing to correlate mass strandings with severe weather. I suspect
that a mass stranding occuring near a severe weather event would be
obvious and considered as a cause, but I have heard of no
correlations.
Now to your thought. First, let's isolate the possible whale species
for your hypothesis.
Since baleen whales do not have sonar (and they do not beach in
groups), that leaves us with toothed whales. The two major groups of
toothed whales are deep divers and dolphins. The deep divers dive
deep (duh), and can stay deep for long periods of time. Dolphins stay
closer to the surface, but can move fast.
Now to the physics of a T-storm. (I guess your concern is more over
thunder rather than lightning as thunder is sound, lightning is
visible.) The rumble typically occurs well above the surface of the
water and never in water. Sound waves of that type travel well
through air and are likely to reflect off of the waters surface with
only a part of a thunder's energy actually entering the water.
If you saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan" you might recall the
opening sequence in which the loud explosions of guns and cannon at
the surface were quite muffled under water. The sound of thunder
would be similar.
So, to pull it all together, toothed whales might hear an approaching
storm and move away from the source of the thunder. Also the energy
of the thunder would be insufficient to penetrate the water with
enough force to do any damage to a whale's sonar.
Interesting idea though. Keep dreamin'
Cheers,
Pieter Folkens
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