WHY do WHALES AND DOLPHINS MASS STRAND?

COMPARING CONSISTENT OBSERVATIONS 

WITH THE CURRENT WORKING THEORIES 

Copyright Notice: The Seaquake Theory to explain why whales mass strand revealed in these pages is the copyrighted intellectual creation of Captain David Williams and took over 30 years to fully develop. As such, this work is fully protected by international copyright laws. Copyright ©  1977 thru 2008. Reproduction and use of any part or all of this intellectual creation in any form, including film, is prohibited. In particular, no part of these web pages may be distributed or copied for any commercial purpose, especially for commercial film purposes. No part of Captain David Williams' intellectual property may be reproduced on or transmitted to or stored in any other web site, or in any other form of electronic retrieval system or used in any film; however, you may link to this web site without permission.  Requests for any other use should be sent in the first instance to Captain David Williams. Reference this webpage as the source when quoting this article.  (Click here to learn the consequence of trying to steal this material)

CONSISTENT OBSERVATIONS

Any theory to explain the mystery of why whales mass strand must be rejected if it fails to account for even one of the consistent observations. To be acceptable, a hypothesis must address all of the following:     

        (1) Offshore odontocete (toothed whales and dolphins) have been mass strandings since the beginning of recorded history and possibly long before; thus, any theory that ties this mystery to modern man must be rejected unless a direct association can be shown between modern practices and historical phenomena.  For example, the Seaquake Theory suggest that the original cause of mass strandings is barotramatic injury to the entire pod caused by sudden changes in ambient pressure generated by undersea earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and by meteorite impacts with the ocean surface. The same sudden changes in ambient pressure is also produced by naval and oil industry explosions, seismic airgun arrays, powerful naval and geological sonar units. Thus, the Seaquake Theory accounts for both man-made and natural causes of mass strandings. Furthermore, the Seaquake Theory suggest that the reason why seaquakes have never been investigated is because the leap from seaquake injury to injury from sonar and seismic air cannons is such a small step. Said different, the main reason the mystery of mass standings has never been resolved is due to a 40-year cover-up by the Navy and the oil industry. 

        (2) Records show only the toothed whales that feed consistently offshore in deep water (pelagic) mass strand themselves alive. More than 90% of live mass strandings are pilot whales or false killer whales, which are not known to frequent shallow water and are therefore not familiar with the coastline. Species known to spend a lot of time in shallow water become familiar with the beach and seldom strand alive.

        (3) Species that mass strand feed primarily on squid often spending much of their time above seismically active mid-oceanic ridge system where the squid breed and lay their eggs. Whereas species not known as mass-stranders do not spend lots of time in seismically-active waters. 

        (4) Species know to mass strand live in tight social groups. Individuals require close social contact and are seldom observed more than several hundred meters from the center of the pod. On the other hand, species that form loose pods, in which two or three individuals are often found several miles from the pod center, never mass strand.

        (5) Live-stranded pod members appear outwardly healthy; however, postmortem examinations reveal dehydration, starvation, and a multitude of bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. It is obvious from medical examinations that all the adult members of the pod are ill, not just one or two pod leaders.

        (6) The nursing young are usually in far better health than the adults, and can often be rehabilitated.

        (7) Mass strandings occur repeatedly along certain shores, while other similar shores seldom record such events. Any acceptable theory must explain why whales strand so often in Tasmania, New Zealand, and Cape Cod.

        (8) Mass strandings most often occur at locations where large geographical land masses extend out to sea opposing the flow of current. Prime examples included Golden Bay and Chatham Islands, New Zealand and Cape Cod Bay in the USA.

        (9) Most major stranding sites around the world show a peak stranding season usually lasting ~90 days. Strandings seldom occur at these repeat locations outside of this limited time frame.

        (10) Mass strandings generally occur on gentle shelving beaches, and do not occur on rocky shores or mud flats or in areas where sand is not accumulating unless the stranding occurs in backwater areas inside an inlet. Obviously whales are not going to strand where the water is not shallow enough to stop their forward progress so it could be said that a gentle shelving beach is the only area that would naturally trap whales. Rocky shorelines and beaches that drop off too fast usually have ample depth to allow a small toothed whale to swim, preventing a stranding in these areas. However, there are thousands upon thousands of miles of mud flats and mangrove shorelines where the water is only a few inches deep for many miles out to the open sea, yet whales never mass strand in these locations unless there is a sandy beach or sand accumulation.

        (11) Strandings seldom occur during heavy seas.

        (12) When push back to sea, stranded animals often return to shore, or are found re-stranded further downstream from the original site.

        (13) Beached whales are most often sighted in the early morning by the first visitors to the stranding site indicating that beachings tend to occur at night. On the other hand, strandings that occur inside an inlet or bay, and in backwater areas, generally occur during low tide when the water recedes from under whales.

COMPARING current THEORIES

        (1) The idea that a stranded pod of diving whales were injured many weeks prior to the stranding by excessive and rapid changes in the surrounding water pressure caused when the seafloor suddenly jerks vertically during an explosive seaquake was first presented in 1987 by Captain David Williams in a 106-page booklet commissioned for the US Marine Mammal Commission and entitled, "Auditory Trauma as the Major Factor in Whale Strandings." This theory suggest that exposure to seaquake-generated pressure waves induces barotrauma (pressure-related injury) in the sinuses and middle ears of all the adult pod members, thus preventing the animals from diving to the depth of their prey. The inability to feed in turn leads to various illness and eventually to navigational failure. The distressed pod then huddles together and swims along with the flow of the current until washed into a beach or trapped by the falling tide.

        (2) A new alternate theory was recently advanced by researchers at the University of Tasmania's department of marine biology who suggested that mass strandings in their area are cyclical and caused by westerly winds increasing in strength every 12 years over the Southern Ocean. Marine biologist Dr. Karen Evans said the study, presented to the Australian Marine Sciences Association annual conference in July, shows strandings in New Zealand and Australia have a 12-year cycle, peaking in 2005. She says cyclical westerly and southerly winds pushed sub-Antarctic waters north, drawing colder, nutrient-rich waters needed by whales and dolphins closer to the surface. Basically, Dr. Evans is saying that 12-year wind patterns carries nutrient rich waters inshore which in turn draws more whales into shallow water increasing a chance of accidental stranding. The suggestion of accidental stranding is where this theory fails measurably. Accidental groundings just do not hold with thousands of medical examinations showing the animals have been near death for several weeks before they hit the beach. Still, the idea that mass strandings may increase during periods of increase in wind speed does have some merit. An increase in southwestern surface waves would indeed carry more seaquake-injured pods north toward New Zealand and Australia. There is also an annual increase in surface currents moving toward the beaches in New Zealand and Australia in October thru January. This increase in shoreward surface current accounts for a seasonal increase in strandings during this period. There is also evidence that higher waves on the oceans surface increase the number of seaquakes in the seabed.   

         (3) The idea that mass stranded whales follow a sick leader into shallow water was first proposed in the 1940's by Dr. Leonard Gill, the director of the South African Museum. Even though this concept is quickly dismissed by a stranding event in which small groups of animals from the same pod strand at different times over a period of several days, the idea is still promoted from time to time. Folks wonder where the leader is when whales from the same pod are found scattered along a 20-mile stretch of beach. This theory offers no explanation for season variations in stranding patterns, no reason why there is an increase in night strandings, no explanation for why re-floated pods often re-strand downstream, no reason why strandings do not occur in heavy seas, nor why all the adult members of the pod are usually seriously ill. Besides, suicide over sickness in a leader violates all know evolutionary principals.

        (4) In 1934, a scientist with the British Museum of natural History, F. C. Fraser--considering a stranding of false killer whales--suggested that inflow of water from the North Atlantic carried the whales to the shallow parts of the eastern coast of England and Scotland. He refers to another scientist who reported a strong southwesterly wind when a large school of false killers went ashore at Mamre, France. Frazer thought these strong winds might have caused a shift in currents, bringing Atlantic waters into the shallows around Mamre. He argues that oceanic species, such as false killers, are not familiar with, and easily strand in shallow waters. He also indicates that the nature of the shore might be critical since the spots where the strandings most often occur are shallow, gentle-shelving, sandy coastlines. Fraser offers a lot of insight in this article, but no real reason for why oceanic species should be so easily pulled into the shallows by the current. W. H. Dudok Van Heel, a scientist from the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research, assumed that Fraser meant that the current brought squid, the favorite food of offshore toothed whales, into the shallows and the whales were simply following their food. But there is nothing in the record that indicates that this is indeed what Fraser meant.

        Frazer never intended this to be a stranding theory---he was only making a valid observation to indicate that mass stranded whales might have been traveling along with the flow of the current prior to stranding, which agrees with the Seaquake Theory.

        (5) In 1962, Dudok Van Heel advanced his own theory suggesting the gentle-shelving beaches presented a sonar problem for the whales. He theorized that a whale's sonar beam would not be reflected back to the whale due to the shelving shape of the beach. Therefore, if a pod of whales, either accidentally or aggressively following their prey, wandered into shallow gentle shelving waters, they could easily strand, especially if they panicked. Those that re-stranded after being set free were used as examples of the continued failure of sonar due to shallow gentle-shelving beach. This theory fails to account for most observations, especially the ill health of the pod members. But this theory still remains popular because it allows those who make a business from pretending to save stranded whales to continue their effort and continue to seek donations from the concerned public. As long as the public believes the whales "accidentally stranded" then they will continue to donate cash to those doing the rescues. Saving stranded whales has become a big business that would collapse tomorrow if the public realized the truth.

        (6) Simon Woodings offered a theory indicating that of reduced effectiveness of sonar as a navigational tool is the cause of mass strandings. He states, "Attenuation of sound and ultrasound by an ocean surface layer of resonant bubbles over a gently sloping beach is proposed as a significant mechanism for disrupting echolocation." This theory, not much different from Dudok Van Heel's, also fails to account for most observations.

        (7) Recently M. Walsh, et al (members of the stranding team at Sea World in Orlando Florida) advanced the theory that mass strandings are the results of some aggressive pathogen that has infected the entire pod days or weeks before the stranding. They add a qualifier by saying, "Without knowledge of the time frame involved or how many animals may have already died at sea, it is unlikely that the true cause of many strandings will be established." They also say, "It should be assumed that some or all members of the pod are ill until proven otherwise."

        The whales are indeed ill and infected with many pathogens, but a disease affecting the entire pod would be far more devastating on the very young, yet the nursing members of the pod are usually the most healthy and the ones that most often survive the stranding. (Organizations like Sea World and the New England Aquarium get millions of dollars in free publicity from "pretending to save stranded whales." Let the TV cameras disappear and these groups will go out of the whale-saving business overnight.)

        (8) Two geo-biologists suggested that the lost pods are following magnetic clues in a form of magnetic "dead" reckoning and accidentally run aground when this magnetic path crosses a shoreline. To make their theory workable, these scientists suggest that toothed whales might be able to use the earth's magnetic field as an aide to navigation and might strand if this system fails. In other words, this theory creates an imaginary mode of navigation and then uses the failure of what was imagined as an explanation for the beachings.

        According to Klinowska, all whale strandings in Britain occur where magnetic field contours are perpendicular (90% right angles) to the shoreline. Since it is a known fact that all mass strandings occur on beaches, then it must hold true that magnetic field contours are perpendicular to the shoreline in areas where beaches are located. What about beaches where the contour lines are at 45% angles or at 30% angles to the shoreline? In fact, if the stranded pods were indeed following the magnetic contours as suggested, then they could just as easily be mislead to strand where the angles were only 10% or 20%.   

        According to Klinowska, strandings are also correlated with irregular changes in the magnetic field caused by sun.  She would have us believe that mass stranded whales use the total geomagnetic field of the Earth as a map. An imagined geomagnetic timer in the brain allows the whales to monitor their position at night verses day and progress on this map as the geomagnetic field changes when the sun comes up. They are not using the directional information of the Earth's magnetic field as we do with our compasses. Rather, they supposedly use small relative differences in the total local field that changes hourly, which explains why they need the imaginary timer.

        Klinowska arrived at this explanation after an alleged detailed analysis of the records of strandings in Britain.

But two groups working separately in Newfoundland and New Zealand have failed to duplicate Klinowska's work. Other scientists who repeated the same geomagnetic studies failed to confirm the stranding patterns suggested. Still the press continues to report use of geomagnetic sense in whales regardless that most studies show this idea to be merely imagined. In other words, there is nothing to support a failed geomagnetic sense of direction as why the whales ended their lives on the beach yet the press still continues to hang on to this irrational idea simply because they have been bamboozled with the use of fancy terminology in support of scientific nonsense. Basically, it boils down to only one thing, if a scientists says its so then the press will usually print it whether it makes sense or not. 

        Klinowska said, "The total magnetic field of the Earth is not uniform. It is distorted (along the seafloor near mid-oceanic ridges) by the underlying geology, forming a topography of magnetic 'hills and valleys.' My analysis shows that the animals move along the contours of these magnetic slopes, and that in certain circumstances this can lead them to strand themselves." Klinowska never tracked any whales to show her analysis; she simply assumed the pods moved along the contours because it fit her idea of a failing compass.

        But rather than assume the pods move along the magnetic contours, it seems far more rational to assume that they are moving along the mid-oceanic spreading ridges following the squid, their favorite food. It just happens that the magnetic patterns flow along this ridge. If the patterns flowed at right angles to the ridge, the whales would then be swimming along at right angles and these geo-biologists would adjust their theory accordingly.

        Klinowska also said, "In the oceans, sea-floor spreading has produced a set of almost parallel hills and valleys. Whales could use these as "undersea motorways" but might swim into problems when they came near the shore, because the magnetic contours do not stop at the beach. They continue onto the land, and sometimes so do the whales." This statement is shown to be pure nonsense in Iceland, which has one of the largest populations of the species known to mass strand in the world. The seafloor spreading ridge moves from the ocean floor through the very center of Iceland as does the geo-magnetic contour lines yet Iceland is not known as a mass stranding area. The same thing holds true in other areas where the mid-oceanic spreading ridges run directly onshore.

        In addition, why would the whales struggle with the magnetic contours as a means to follow the mid-ocean spreading centers since these areas are seismically speaking one of the noisiest places on Earth. Using magnetic patterns to track such noise would be like man uses a magnetic signature to tell when a freight train passed by.

        If the geo-magnetic contour lines are leading the pods to strand on the beach, then how does one account for no mass strandings where we know the lines run straight into the shore and where we know there is a large population of the species known to be mass stranders?

        Klinowska insists that, in addition to stranding because of land-intersecting contours, unpredictable daily changes in the earth's magnetic field can upset the whales' imagined timing mechanism, causing them to lose their true position on their magnetic dead-reckoning maps. "Magnetically speaking, they become lost." But why would the whales use magnetism in broad daylight when all they had to do was glance at the shoreline. In other words, these geo-biologists have imagined a timing mechanism in the brain of the whales and then imagined that the mechanism is always going on the blink.

        Joseph L. Kirschvink, of the California Institute of Technology, has plotted hundreds of beachings of whales and dolphins along the U.S. East Coast. He finds that whales tend to run aground at spots where the earth's magnetic field is diminished by the local magnetic fields of rocks and grains of sand. These coastal magnetic lows are at the ends of long, continuous channels of magnetic minima that run for great distances along the ocean floors. Kirschvink believes that the stranded whales and dolphins were using these magnetic troughs for navigation and failed to see the stop sign at the beaches and ran aground. The magnetic troughs in this view are superhighways for animals equipped with a magnetic sense. If Kirschvink is correct, the magnetic sensors of the whales and dolphins are extremely sensitive because the deepest magnetic troughs are only about 4% weaker than the background magnetic field.

        Kirschvink suggest that different species of whales follow different levels of magnetism. However, using the concept of different species preferring differing strengths of magnetism tends to force the stranding sites to fit the data.

        Efforts to duplicate Kirschvink indicate no such geo-magnetic stranding pattern. Besides, a system of navigation that leads healthy whales to their death does not fit evolutionary processes. For healthy animals to swim blindly into a beach due to "wrong way" geo-magnetic clue, other known forms of navigation (vision, sonar, taste and etc) would all have to fail. In addition, a failed geo-magnetic compass offers no explanation for seasonal variations in stranding patterns, no reason why there is an increase in night strandings, no explanation for why re-floated pods often re-strand downstream, no reason why strandings do not occur in heavy seas, nor why all the adult members of the pod are found seriously ill. In addition, magnetite crystals (found in birds, fish, and insects) necessary for a magnetic sense of some sort, so far have not been found in whales and dolphins.

        (9) In another bit of scientific frazzle-dazzle, Klaus Vanselow and Klaus Ricklefs compared sperm whale strandings in the period from 1712 to 2003 with solar activity, especially with sun spot number periodicity and found that 90% of 97 sperm whale stranding events around the North Sea took place when the smoothed sun spot period length was below the mean value of 11 years, while only 10% happened during periods of longer sun spot cycles. The paper they published in the Journal of Sea Research (Volume 53 (2005) 319– 327) is just as confusing as the articles published suggesting whales strand because of some sort of compass failure. This is simply not science. Rather it is nothing more than mumbo-jumbo nonsense.  They suggest that variations of the earth’s magnetic field, due to variable energy fluxes from the sun to the earth, may cause a temporary disorientation of migrating animals. The only problem here is that the whales usually strand at night when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth. The real mystery here is how such nonsense ever gets published in the first place.

References:

Birby, C. (1935) Two Hundred False Killers Hurl Themselves Ashore, Illustr. London News 187, 1124

Dudok Van Heel, W.H. (1962) Sound and Cetacea, Netherlands Journal of Sea Research, Chapter 11 pp 473-507

Fraser, F.C. (1936) Recent Strandings of False Killer Whale, Pseudorca crassidens, Scottish Naturalist, July-August, 105-114.

Geraci J.B., D.J. St. Aubin, (1979) Biology of Marine Mammals: Insights Through Strandings, U.S. Dept Commerce PB-293 890

Green, L. (1945) So Few Are Free, Howard B. Timmins, Cape Town, South Africa.

Kirschvink, J.L. et al (1986) Evidence From Strandings For Geomagnetic Sensitivity in Cetaceans. Journal of Experimental Biology (120) pp 1-24

Klinowska, M. (1983) Interpretation of the U.K. Cetacean Stranding Records. Rep. Int. Whaling Commission 35:459-467

Klinowska, M. (1985) Cetacean Live Stranding Sites related to Geomagnetic Topography. Aquatic Mammals 11(1):27-32

Klinowska, M. (1987) No Through Road for the Misguided Whale, New Scientist, p. 46, February 12

Lein, J. (1990) Personal communications, Whale Research Group, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Newfoundland Canada

Reynolds, J and D. Odell, (1991) Marine Mammal Strandings in the United States, Proceedings of the Second Marine Mammal Stranding Workshop, NOAA Technical Report NMFS #98

Smithsonian Institution, Division of Mammals Computer Database, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC

Walsh, M.T. et al (1991) Medical Findings in a Mass Stranding of Pilot Whales in Florida. NOAA Technical Report NMFS 98: Marine Mammal Strandings

Walsh, M.T. et al (1991) Mass Strandings of Cetaceans, chapter 39, page 673, CRC Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine: Health, Disease, and Rehabilitation, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

Weisburd, S. (1984) Whales and Dolphins Use Magnetic 'Roads,' Science News, 126:389