Posted on 07/30/2017 9:32:58 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Ships are huge and loud, yet they seem to take whales by surprise.
When eight endangered North Atlantic right whales turned up dead in the ocean off Nova Scotia this past June, scientists scrambled to find out why. Early data shows several of the whales had blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike, with data still pending on others.
Ship strikes are a major cause of injury or death for whales. But why do they happen at all? The ocean is vast, and huge ships don’t exactly travel at freeway speeds—there should be enough noise, movement, and warning for a whale to get out of the way, right? Why whales may remain in dangerous proximity to ships is tough to study, but over the years, some clues have begun to emerge.
One reason is that whales may not know ships are dangerous. After all, as the biggest animals in the ocean, whales may not understand that there are things in the ocean larger and more powerful than they are.
“It’s not something they’re evolved to deal with,” says John Calambokidis, a research biologist at Cascadia Research Collective in Washington State. “It’s also something there’s very little opportunity to learn from. It’s not like you can get struck two or three times and then you know you should avoid them.”
(Excerpt) Read more at hakaimagazine.com ...
Just like deer running in front of cars.
It’s not something they’re evolved to deal with? Seems as if evolutionary pressure for the past, what, 4000 years of shipbuilding would have weeded out the dummies by now.
It’s just whale ego, they’re not getting out of the way because they think they don’t have to, like jaywalking ghettopotomi.
I have always believed it is because they are sleeping even though they still swim and move while they do so.
Have observed the same behavior in Manatees.
They thought they were the biggest thing in the ocean and don’t need to move over for anyone.
They are like bicyclists on the road in Boulder, CO.
Oh sorry, I thought this was about the check out line at Walmart.
“Have observed the same behavior in Manatees”
But Whales are Hugher.
The obvious solution is to ban ships.
It’s only been a couple of hundred years ships were more dangerous to whales than the other way around. And whales live a long time, not many generations. Evolution is a slow process, at least for species that breed slow.
Careful, you’ll raise the ire of the FR militant cyclists who will deny that a substantial percentage of their number are complete a-holes who block the road and snarl traffic intentionally to demonstrate how pure they are and to mark territory.
Virtue Cycling.
Darwin Awards can be exceedingly quick, though.
LOL. Yeah, don't get me started.
That’s gooood
Boulder has bicycle lanes, but they still ride in the road and most do not obey traffic laws like stop signs.
Actually,, the average slow steaming speed of a modern cargo ship is 24 kts. That’s about 27.6 MPH. Average swim speed of a North Atlantic Right Whale, .7 kts! The difference in speed is roughly analogous to you or me walking across an interstate highway.
Small pleasure boats make the same mistake quite often. Its a giant ship, and you don’t perceive the speed accurately due to the relative size.
The same happens with jets. A 747 airliner flying at 200 kts looks like its barely hanging in the air. The F-16 coming along next, at the same 200 kts, looks like its really moving. Your eye “sees” the time needed for an object to travel its own length and perceives that as it’s “speed”. Looks different though it is the same.
I would guess that a ship relatively fills the area with noise, moves very fast compared to a whale.
You’re swimming in my pool and I have to move for you? Get real!!!!
Laws are for neanderthals in cars and trucks. Well, except for the laws of physics, which do occasionally come to bear upon egotistical cyclists.
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