Over the last couple of weeks the NZ Herald ran some excellent articles on new scientific discoveries and their significance for our lives. It was great! So it was rather sad to see this rather uncritical piece on Ken Ring's claim that whale strandings can predict earthquakes – and heartening to see a quote from Peter Griffin, calling Ring's suggestion what it is: pseudoscience. Peter's also gone into more detail on his own blog, but there's a couple of things I'd like to add.
Whale strandings happen relatively frequently, alas! They are not all close in time to major earthquakes and, as Peter points out in his post, any supposed 'predictions' based on them are incredibly vague – not what you'd call an effective early warning system! Back in 2010, at the time of the Canterbury earthquakes, this was Ring's explanation for his putative link between strandings & quakes (comment #89):
The whales have as usual stranded around an earthquake-rich time, because the earthquakes under the sea get them when they chase krill etc along the ocean floor in the undersea trenches. The shell shocked whales then float up and the tide brings them in.
So back then it appears that he thought that whales responded to tectonic events (pretty useless as advance warning). I asked for additional detail at the time (comment #94):
Krill are a key food item for baleen whales, but not toothed whales. Yet baleen whales seem to strand relatively infrequently . Sperm whales (which are toothed whales) do dive deeply – after squid, not krill – but there are no reports of mass sperm whale beachings round NZ in the recent past: something one might have expected if your 'large earthquakes cause strandings' idea had something in it. (Most sperm whale strandings are of solitary animals.) Why no mass strandings along the Canterbury coastline?
I got more bad science in response:
I don't know what indivdual species prefer to chase and eat, or where they chase them, all that is largely immaterial. Many species gravitate towards the ocean floor, especially when the moon is in northern declination and downward currents are instigated, which is when many strandings seem to occur. There is all sorts of feed there.
And so the conversation went on (I doubt there's much to eat on the deep ocean floor if you're a big whale)…
The point is, all this is fairly easy to find using a quick google search. It would have been rather nice if the Herald had done this.
Also, I see KR saying on Twitter that
Earthquakes cause whales and dolphins to beach themselves. There is some rather irrefutable science behind it.
Please can someone with a Twitter account (all right, Kimberley, I'll sign up!) ask just what that science is?
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© says:
To Krill A Mockingbird
by Ken Ringtone
~
David Williams says:
My 50+ years of research shows no connection between mass stranded whales and coming earthquakes. Just the opposite is true. Seafloor earthquakes occur 3 to 4 weeks prior the whale beachings. The hydrostatic pressure pulses above the epicenter of a shallow undersea quake damage the sinuses of a pof of diving whales. Since the air contained in these sinuses serve underwater as acoustic mirrors, ruptures cranial air spaces disable the echonavigation the pod relies on the find its way around the oceans. With no sense of direction, the pods are guided by drag forces downstream into the path of least resistance. Since the energy guiding the lost whales is the same energy that builds beaches, the lost pod is usually directed to sandy area. See more… http://www.deafwhale.com
Alison Campbell says:
The hydrostatic pressure pulses above the epicenter of a shallow undersea quake damage the sinuses of a pof of diving whales
Is there evidence of this damage? Otherwise this remains hypothetical.
David Williams says:
Ruptured sinuses due to exposure to a series of rapidly changing diving pressures above a seafloor earthquake causes injuries in the cranial air spaces. Because the air in these sinuses reflect, focus, channel, and generate echolocation clicks, ruptured sinuses disable the biosonar system causing the pods to become lost at sea. Such lost pods always swim with the flow of the current in the path of least drag. The current that carries each grain of sand to build a beach is the same energy directing lost whales thereto.
The evidence is in the fact that all mass strandings occur with the tidal and wind-driven currents are washing shore. More proof is in the fact that lost whales will not swim away from the beach unless the tide and currents are flowing back out to sea.
Alison Campbell says:
“Ruptured sinuses due to exposure to a series of rapidly changing diving pressures above a seafloor earthquake causes injuries in the cranial air spaces.”
This requires a citation or two to support it.
Toothed whales produce their clicks using structures called phonic lips, & the clicks are then focused by the fatty structure known as the ‘melon’. Scientists aren’t certain how mysticete (baleen) whales make their sounds, although the larynx may be involved; it’s not clear whether the sinuses are implicated.