Why do dolphins sometimes get stuck on the beach?

Answer 1

My answer to the centuries-old mystery of why whales and dolphins beach themselves can be stated in only one word: BAROSINUSITIS

Barosinusitis in diving mammals is a pressure related injury in the sinuses and air sacs of their head. The physical trauma is induced by rapid and excessive changes in ambient water pressure. Such pressure oscillations occur above the epicenter of certain shallow-focused undersea earthquakes. But not all quakes generate whale-dangerous seismic waves; only those events that happen in specific places and in a specific manner are dangerous to diving whales.

The sinuses and air sacs of toothed whales serve as acoustic mirrors reflecting sound inside their heads in such a fashion to enable their echo-navigation system to function properly. An injury in this critical part of their biosonar system disrupts echo-navigation, causing the animals to lose their normally excellent sense of direction. It also prevents them from diving and feeding themselves.

Some injured pods recover with a week or so while others are washed into a beach before recovery occurs.

Sharks sense the whales are in trouble, move in close, and wait for the opportunity to snatch any weakened pod member that falls behind.

Injured, trailed by hungry sharks, and unable to navigate or dive, the wounded whales and dolphins huddle together in a tight group and swim downstream with the flow of the surface currents.

The reason non-navigating whales always swim downstream is because there is increased resistance to swimming in any direction except downstream. This increased resistance turns their streamlined bodies and keeps them pointed in the same direction as the flow of the surface currents.

Land masses that extend out to sea opposing the flow serve to trap sand, flotsam, and whales swimming with the flow.

Besides undersea earthquakes, naval sonar, oil industry airgun arrays, and underwater explosives can also induce barosinusitis.

Answer 2

Dolphins usually get beached when they hunt. Most dolphins are able to pull themselves on land to catch their prey. The prey would try to get away and go back in the water while the other dolphins in the pod would wait and catch the food. Usually the dolphin would be able to get back in but if they can't, they can't. The other dolphins can't help out at all. If people find the dolphin before it is to late, they can try to save it. But the chances of it would be slim even if in constant care.

Answer 3

whale are aquatic mammals and need to be in water to survive, even though they have lungs. whales are used to being very cold and wet all the time so the sudden switch of environments is deadly. Imagine being warm and cozy all your life and then suddenly freezing cold and dripping with water! if kept in such shocking conditions, you would die too. what happens to whales when they beach, is that they heat up way too quickly and dehydrate. To save a beach whale in time, it has to be sprayed constantly with water to keep from dehydrating and quickly pushed back into the sea before it get to hot and dies.

There are three main causes.

1 - Dehydration.

2 - Suffocation - normally a whale's bulk is supported by the water it swims in. If the whale is out of water, it becomes compressed due to its own weight. The lungs can become compressed, causing the whale to struggle to breathe, and eventually suffocate.

3 - Drowning - if the tide rises to cover the whale's blowhole, it will drown.

Answer 4

Whales get beached when they are hunting fish or aquatic animals for

feeding on and when the fish or animal swim to the shore, the whales

are still chasing it, and the fish and the whale both get beached, but

because of the fishes light weight, it can easily flop back into the water or

possibly get eaten by a seagull. But because of the whale's weight, it

cannot get back into the water.

Answer 5

Diving pods of offshore toothed whales and dolphins (odontoceti) feed on squid above mid-oceanic ridges where they are often exposed to oscillations in ambient water pressure when shallow-focused earthquakes suddenly erupt in the seafloor below them. On rare occasion these changes in pressure are too excessive and/or too rapid to be counterbalanced by the whales' pressure regulating anatomy resulting in barotrauma in the sinuses and air sacs of each animal's head. Since echo-navigation and echo-location are not possible without intact and functional sinuses and air sacs, a pressure related injury in this system renders the victims unable to use their acoustic navigation system to determine their position and find food. Nor are they able to dive without suffering intense pain. The injured pod huddles together for protection against sharks and swims slowly away from the epicenter, but not in a random direction. Rather, increased resistance (drag) to swimming against or perpendicular to the surface flow will turn the whales headfirst and point them in the path of the least drag, which is always downstream with the flow of the surface currents.

Many barotraumatized pods recover after an unknown period of rest on the surface. Those that do not recover are eventually: (a) guided to a stranding beach by the surface current, (b) harvested by sharks and killer whales, or (c) die and sink to the bottom. Decomposing gases will form in the carcasses that sink in water less than 100 meters deep. After about a week underwater, the gases formed will re-float these carcasses and they will be carried by the surface currents to a beach.

Non-navigating whales, carcasses, and flotsam are deposited on beaches because the current that carried each grain of sand to build the beach in the first place, is the same energy determining the path of everything floating on the surface. Where currents wash shoreward, there are beaches, flotsam, and beached whales; where current does not wash toward the shore, there are no beaches, no flotsam, and no beached whales.

Answer 6

because their dumb