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| Spectators look at a beached whale in Coronado, March 8, 2016. |
March 9, 2016 - EARTH - The following constitutes the latest reports of unusual and symbolic animal behavior, mass die-offs, beaching and stranding of mammals, and the appearance of rare creatures.
Dead humpback whale washes ashore at Silver Strand State Beach, California
A dead whale washed ashore at Silver Strand State Beach on Coronado Island on Tuesday morning.The 23-foot carcass appeared to be a humpback whale calf that was dead before it washed ashore, according to a San Diego National History Museum employee.
Park workers taped off the area of the beached whale to keep spectators, who were snapping photos, at distance for public safety concerns, including bio hazard.
The whale had been found between the park entrance and parking lot 1.
Park officials told NBC 7 that they had contacted the National Oceanic Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA), which will determine how to move the beached whale.
NOAA was conducting a forensic investigation of the carcass to determine the whale's cause of death. A park spokesman said Tuesday afternoon that the park is working on plans to remove the carcass "as soon as possible," which will cost several thousand dollars for contracted hauling.
WATCH: Dead whale washes ashore on Silver Strand State Beach.
A NOAA spokesperson said the whale would be removed on Wednesday.
A woman visiting San Diego from Utah said it was an unexpected and sad sight.
"I just came down to search for some seashells on the beach and I came across something different," Jeni Galbraith said.
"Just sad," she added. "You don't want to see anything like this."
Tina Matthias of the Living Coast Discovery Center said she suspects the calf became separated from his mother during the El Nino storm.
"Probably got washed up with the storm, unfortunately," she said.
The whale was first spotted by the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday night nine miles off shore dead in the water; since Monday night, witnesses on Coronado have reported seeing it washed ashore. - NBC San Diego.
Rare beaked whale washes up dead in Zeeland, Netherlands
The dead body of a rare beaked whale measuring almost five metres has been washed up close to the Zeeland port of Vlissingen.The body of the mammal, which weighed some 930 kilos, has been taken to Utrecht University where vets will try to determine the cause of death, local news website PZW says.
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© Ferial De Wilde
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© Ferial De Wilde
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The last time a beaked whale washed up in the Netherlands was in 2013, off the coast of Wadden Sea island Schiermonnikoog. The last one to be found in Zeeland was in 1992.
Beaked whales are unique among toothed whales in that most species only have one pair of teeth. There are 22 species of the Ziphiidae family and it is not clear which sort was found in Vlissingen.
- Dutch News.
Three rare whales strand on beach in New Zealand
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| One of three whales which stranded on Ruakaka Beach. PHOTO/Imran Ali |
Three rare Gray's beaked whales discovered dead on Ruakaka Beach this morning will be buried at a sacred site just off the beach.
The whales stranded at high tide, possibly just before dawn, but marine mammal experts were unsure as to why they they swam close to shore as they are usually deep sea dwellers.Orca expert Ingrid Visser, Whale Rescue's technical adviser Steve Whitehouse and Department of Conservation marine ranger Marie Jordan travelled to the site, about 2km south of the Ruakaka Surf Lifesaving Club, to determine what type of whales they were and to make arrangements for their removal.
Local iwi have given their permission for Dr Visser to perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death. - New Zealand Herald.
Rare deep sea long-nose chimaera caught off Newfoundland
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But
this creature is a deep sea fish with a slimy body, green glowing eyes
and ribbed fins that look like feathered wings.
This eerie catch is said to be a long-nose chimaera that branched off from sharks almost 400 million years ago. © Scott Tanner |
Greek mythology has stories about Chimaera, a monstrous fire-breathing lion, goat and snake hybrid and one has been recently caught off the coast of Newfoundland.
But this creature is a deep sea fish with a slimy body, green glowing eyes and ribbed fins that look like feathered wings.
This eerie catch is said to be a long-nose chimaera that branched off from sharks almost 400 million years ago.
The fish was caught during a commercial fishing excursion off the Grand Banks and St. Pierre and Miquelon, reports CBC News.Scott Tanner, the Lunenburg man who pulled the lifeless creature from the ocean, was about one month into the 40-day trip that was fishing for cod and red fish.
'There's lots of other weird stuff that comes out [of the ocean] but that one definitely stood out ... I don't imagine many people have seen one,' he said in an interview with CBC News.
'All the production stopped and everything so everybody could check it out.'
'Even the older guys that are 50, 60 years old, they've seen maybe one in their lifetime so they thought it was pretty neat and I snapped a couple pictures.'
The chimaera weighed between two and five kilograms, but was already dead when it was pulled from the net.
WATCH: Rhinochimaeridae, commonly known as long-nosed chimaeras.
Tanner told News Nation that the sudden change in pressure was most likely the cause of death.
Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax, told News Nation that the chimera's eyes were likely bulging out because of how fast it was pulled from the water.
Long-nose chimaeras are one of three chimaera species in North Atlantic waters, but seeing one is quite uncommon because they live more than several hundred meters below the surface.
The spooky fish has a long nose, menacing mouth and a venomous spine atop its gelatinous body.
Although this creature looks like something from of a nightmare, it feeds on shrimp and crabs and is completely harmless to humans.
Like all chimaeras, the long-nosed species is a distant relative of sharks and rays and is one of the oldest species of fish in the world.
They also have cartilaginous skeletons, but until their relatives they have one external gill opening that is covered by a flap.
Its beady eyes are designed to find food along the dark sea floor, which only glow if they are exposed to light.
Sometimes called the ghost shark, it has a whip-like tail and can grow to around three feet long.
Their pectoral fins are wide and flat, similar to wings, which makes them seem as if they are 'flying' through the water.
Another report of the alien looking fish came from northern Canada back in 2013.
Caught near the northernmost province of Nunavut in Davis Straight, it was first believed the odd fish was the similarly freakish goblin shark until researchers confirmed it was the long-nosed chimaera.
'Potentially, if we fish deeper, maybe between 1,000 and 2,000 metres (3,000 to 6,000 feet), we could find that's there's actually quite a lot of them there,' University of Windsor researcher Nigel Hussey told CBC. 'We just don't know.
Hussey, who is credited with finally identifying the fish, says the mystery comes from the strange creature's rarity.
'Only one of these fish has previously been documented from the Hudson Strait,' Hussey said. - Daily Mail.
Scotland's beached whales suffered from heavy metal poisoning
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Beached whale in the Firth of Forth, Scotland, being removed using earth-moving equipment, September 2013.© Patrick Down via Flickr (CC BY-NC)
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High levels of toxins mercury and cadmium have been found in all organs of the whales recently beached on Scotland's North Sea coast, including the brain. The research shows that rising mercury levels in the oceans leads to toxic stress in the long-lived marine mammals.
A pod of whales stranded in Fife in 2012 had high concentrations of toxic chemicals, some of which had reached the mammals' brains, scientists have discovered.
The pod of long-finned pilot whales were stranded on a beach between Anstruther and Pittenweem in Scotland, on 12th September 2012.
Out of the 31 mammals which beached only 10 could be refloated and 21 - 16 females and five males - died.
Scientists from the University of Aberdeen, in collaboration with the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, found mercury at levels high enough to cause severe neurological damage in humans. They also demonstrated for the first time that the toxic element cadmium can cross the blood-brain barrier.
"This pod of whales provides unique new insights because we were able to look at the effects on a large number of whales from the same pod and how this varied according to age", said author Dr Eva Krupp, an environmental analytical chemist from the University of Aberdeen.
"We were able to gather an unprecedented number of tissue samples from all the major organs including the brain and as a result we can see for the first time the long term effects of mammalian exposure to the environmental pollutants."
Unique insights into mammalian response to environmental pollutants
Their report, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, shows a clear correlation between the increased levels and the age of the mammals, suggesting toxic stress increases the longer the mammals live.
This could demonstrate that this species of marine mammal are less susceptible to mercury poisoning than humans, but that they cannot entirely discount the possibility that it is a factor leading to whales navigating off course.
"We can see clear evidence that mercury is being transported through the blood stream to all organs where it accumulates over the lifespan", explained Dr Krupp. "As well as an increased concentration of mercury in the brain as the whales become older, we see a similar effect with cadmium, which has not been previously reported.Pollution may be responsible for whale strandings
"It is known that cadmium can penetrate the blood brain barrier in the new-born or developmental stages but it was not thought to do so in adults. Our findings are significant because we can demonstrate for the first time that cadmium is in the brain tissue and that its levels increase with age.
"Although the body has a natural defence mechanism in the form of the element selenium, which detoxifies these harmful chemicals, we found that the majority of selenium is not available for the synthesis of essential proteins in older animals. This indicates that the longer mammals live, the less able they may be to cope with the toxic effects."
Dr Krupp collected and analysed samples from the whales together with PhD students Cornelius Brombach and Zuzana Gajdosechova. Analysis of samples revealed that the level of mercury in the whales increased in correlation to the age of the mammals, which ranged from under a year to 36 years.
They found very high concentrations of mercury in the brain of all the whales older than nine years and in three the concentration was higher than levels at which severe neurological damage would occur in humans.
Previous scientific studies have shown that mercury concentrations in the oceans have notably risen since the industrial revolution and through goldmining activities, which may in turn lead to an increase of mercury levels in marine mammals.
"So far, we have no indication that the mercury and cadmium levels in the brain cause disorientation, which in some cases can lead to strandings, but there is a potential for higher stress in these iconic animals due to rising toxic metal concentration in the oceans", Dr Krupp added.
"More research is needed to investigate whether this is a factor in strandings, particularly where other explanations such as illness or weather events cannot be found."
The stranding of five sperm whales along England's east coast during January this year may give them just the chance they need to explore this crucial question.
Source
The paper: 'Possible link between Hg and Cd accumulation in the brain of long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas)' is by Zuzana Gajdosechova et al and published in Science of the Total Environment. - The Ecologist.
