We now know that the horrible reason sonar made of these whales is going to the beach

Since the 1980s, scientists have discovered a link between marine sonar systems and beaked whales that seem to kill themselves – deliberately throwing themselves on beaches. Now the researchers might have revealed the horrible reason.

In short, sound impulses seem to frighten whales until death, acting as a shot at adrenaline in a human being and causing fatal changes in their otherwise perfectly calibrated dive techniques.

By studying the mbad grounding events of recent history, the team has discovered that bottlenose whales provide some sort of decompression sickness (also known as "elbow sickness" or "divers") when they detect sonar. In case of panic, their veins fill with nitrogen bubbles, their brains are severely hemorrhagic and other organs are damaged.

"In the presence of a sonar, they are stressed and swim vigorously away from the sound source, which changes their diving method," said AFP Yara Bernaldo of Quiros of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain.

"In other words, the response to stress outweighs the response to diving, forcing animals to accumulate nitrogen."

The end result is that these poor creatures are dying of pain after getting the whale version of the turns – that's not what we would normally expect from whales so good at navigating in deep water.

Generally, these animals naturally lower their heart rate to reduce the use of oxygen and avoid nitrogen build-up when they dive far below the surface . Tragically, it seems that a sonar explosion cancels these precautions.

The researchers weighed the evidence of some 121 MSFs between 1960 and 2004, focusing particularly on the autopsies of 10 dead whales stranded in the Canary Islands in 2002 after a nearby naval exercise.

It is here that the effects of decompression sickness have been noticed, as has been the case during other stranding events examined by the researchers.

The team notes that the effects of sonar on whales seem to "vary by individual or population" and that "predisposing factors may contribute to individual outcomes", but there seems to be a common denominator between what is "what is the best" and "what do you think? it happens these unsuspecting mammals.

This is particularly true for the Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris– Of the 121 MSEs we mentioned, 61 were Cuvier's Beaked Whales, and the researchers say they seem particularly vulnerable to sonar.

There is also a special type of sonar on which you have to worry: the active medium frequency sonar (MFAS), of the order of 5 kilohertz.

The researchers who are behind the new report now want to see the use of this banned sonar technology in areas where whales are known to live, such a ban is in effect in the Canary Islands since the incident of 2002.

"Until then, the Canaries were a hot spot for this kind of atypical stranding," said de Quiros to AFP. "Since the moratorium, there have not been any."

The research was published in the Royal Society Journal Proceedings B.