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IELTS Reading - Short Answers - 4 - Passage

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35 views2 pages

IELTS Reading - Short Answers - 4 - Passage

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finance.ahsair
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Whale Strandings

When the last stranded whale of a group eventually dies, the story does not end there. A
team of researchers begins to investigate, collecting skin samples for instance, recording
anything that could help them answer the crucial question: why? Theories abound, some
more convincing than others. In recent years, navy sonar has been accused of causing
certain whales to strand. It is known that noise pollution from offshore industry, shipping
and sonar can impair underwater communication, but can it really drive whales onto our
beaches?

In 1998, researchers at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, a Greek non-profit scientific
group, linked whale strandings with lowfrequency sonar tests being carried out by the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). They recorded the stranding of 12 Cuvier’s beaked
whales over 38.2 kilometres of coastline. NATO later admitted it had been testing new sonar
technology in the same area at the time as the strandings had occurred. ‘Mass’ whale
strandings involve four or more animals. Typically, they all wash ashore together, but in
mass atypical strandings (such as the one in Greece), the whales don’t strand as a group;
they are scattered over a larger area.

For humans, hearing a sudden loud noise might prove frightening, but it does not induce
mass fatality. For whales, on the other hand, there is a theory on how sonar can kill. The
noise can surprise the animal, causing it to swim too quickly to the surface. The result is
decompression sickness, a hazard human divers know all too well. If a diver ascends too
quickly from a high-pressure underwater environment to a lower-pressure one, gases
dissolved in blood and tissue expand and form bubbles. The bubbles block the flow of blood
to vital organs, and can ultimately lead to death.

Plausible as this seems, it is still a theory and based on our more comprehensive knowledge
of land-based animals. For this reason, some scientists are wary. Whale expert Karen Evans
is one such scientist. Another is Rosemary Gales, a leading expert on whale strandings. She
says sonar technology cannot always be blamed for mass strandings. “It’s a case-by-case
situation. Whales have been stranding for a very long time – pre-sonar.” And when 80% of
all Australian whale strandings occur around Tasmania, Gales and her team must continue in
the search for answers.

When animals beach next to each other at the same time, the most common cause has
nothing to do with humans at all. “They’re highly social creatures,” says Gales. “When they
mass strand – it’s complete panic and chaos. If one of the group strands and sounds the
alarm, others will try to swim to its aid, and become stuck themselves.”
Activities such as sonar testing can hint at when a stranding may occur, but if
conservationists are to reduce the number of strandings, or improve rescue operations, they
need information on where strandings are likely to occur as well. With this in mind, Ralph
James, physicist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, thinks he may have
discovered why whales turn up only on some beaches. In 1986 he went to Augusta, Western
Australia, where more than 100 false killer whales had beached. “I found out from chatting
to the locals that whales had been stranding there for decades. So I asked myself, what is it
about this beach?” From this question that James pondered over 20 years ago, grew the
university’s Whale Stranding Analysis Project.

Data has since revealed that all mass strandings around Australia occur on gently sloping
sandy beaches, some with inclines of less than 0.5%. For whale species that depend on an
echolocation system to navigate, this kind of beach spells disaster. Usually, as they swim,
they make clicking noises, and the resulting sound waves are reflected in an echo and travel
back to them. However, these just fade out on shallow beaches, so the whale doesn’t hear
an echo and it crashes onto the shore. But that is not all. Physics, it appears, can help with
the when as well as the where. The ocean is full of bubbles. Larger ones rise quickly to the
surface and disappear, whilst smaller ones – called microbubbles – can last for days. It is
these that absorb whale ‘clicks! “Rough weather generates more bubbles than usual,”
James adds. So, during and after a storm, echolocating whales are essentially swimming
blind.

Last year was a bad one for strandings in Australia. Can we predict if this – or any other year
– will be any better? Some scientists believe we can. They have found trends which could be
used to forecast ‘bad years’ for strandings in the future. In 2005, a survey by Klaus Vanselow
and Klaus Ricklefs of sperm whale strandings in the North Sea even found a correlation
between these and the sunspot cycle, and suggested that changes in the Earth’s magnetic
field might be involved. But others are sceptical. “Their study was interesting … but the
analyses they used were flawed on a number of levels,” says Evans. In the same year, she
co-authored a study on Australian strandings that uncovered a completely different trend.
“We analysed data from 1920 to 2002 … and observed a clear periodicity in the number of
whales stranded each year that coincides with a major climatic cycle.” To put it more simply,
she says, in the years when strong westerly and southerly winds bring cool water rich in
nutrients closer to the Australia coast, there is an increase in the number of fish. The whales
follow.
So, what causes mass strandings? “It’s probably many different components,” says James.
And he is probably right. But the point is we now know what many of those components
are.

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