{"id":170105,"date":"2024-11-07T15:07:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T15:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/07\/for-deep-diving-whales-plastic-garbage-may-sound-like-food\/"},"modified":"2024-11-07T15:07:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T15:07:23","slug":"for-deep-diving-whales-plastic-garbage-may-sound-like-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/07\/for-deep-diving-whales-plastic-garbage-may-sound-like-food\/","title":{"rendered":"For deep-diving whales, plastic garbage may \u2018sound\u2019 like food"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>In the ocean\u2019s abyss, deep-diving whales use echolocation to hunt in pitch dark. Emitting sounds that bounce off objects gives the whales a clear picture of their surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But such a superpower might come with a downside, a new study reveals. When hit by whalelike sound frequencies, the strength of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0025326X24010464\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">echo returned by plastic debris is similar to that of whales\u2019 common prey<\/a>, researchers from Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C., report October 16 in <em>Marine Pollution Bulletin<\/em><em>. <\/em>That may trick sperm, beaked and other deep-diving whales into eating deadly garbage.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-wrapper {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  background-image: url(\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/032624_sb_space-sugar_feat.jpg?w&#61;800&amp;ssl&#61;1\");\n  background-size: cover;\n  background-position: center center;\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  padding: 20px;\n  background:rgba(0,0,0, 0.5);\n  color: white;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion h2 {\n  color: white;\n}\n\np.has-text-align-center a {\n  color: white !important;\n  text-decoration: none;\n  font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"dynamic-wrapper\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div id=\"dynamic-conversion\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\"><strong>Tell us about your Science News experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Help us improve by taking our 15-question reader survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>\u201cMore often than any other species of whale, the ones that are deep diving are the ones that we find with lots of plastic in them,\u201d says Matthew Savoca, a marine ecologist at Stanford University who wasn\u2019t involved in the new study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scientists have long wondered whether these whales, some of which dive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/cuviers-beaked-whale-longest-record-dive\">nearly 3,000 meters<\/a>, confuse plastic objects for prey because they \u201csound\u201d similar (<em>SN: 9\/23\/20<\/em>). Such mistakes can be deadly, as \u201cthe plastic fills up their stomachs [and] intestines and can prevent food from passing,\u201d says Savoca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whale biologist Greg Merrill and his colleagues tested the strength of the echoes from nine pieces of plastic junk collected directly from the sea \u2014 including ropes, plastic bags, bottles and other items commonly found in the stomachs of stranded whales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team also ran tests on Atlantic brief squids (<em>Lolliguncula brevis)<\/em>, which are similar to the cephalopod prey of deep-diving whales but easier to find, as well as on squid beaks found in a stranded sperm whale\u2019s stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team positioned the plastic items and prey items one at a time on an underwater rig off the N.C. coast and hit them with sounds at three different frequencies: 38 kilohertz, 70 kHz and 120 kHz. Those three covered \u201ca wide range of frequencies that the echolocating whales are using,\u201d Merrill says. A machine then measured the strength of the echo coming back from each item to determine what a whale might perceive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of the plastic items returned echoes similarly as strong or sometimes even stronger than those of the prey items, the team found. \u201cThat was pretty striking,\u201d Merrill says. This seems to suggest that \u201cthese animals have a hard time perceiving the difference between plastic and prey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those results mirror ones presented in June at the International Conference on Underwater Acoustics in Bath, England. In that case, marine biologist Laura Redaelli and her colleagues performed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ioa.org.uk\/system\/files\/publications\/L%20REDAELLI%20J%20ALC%C3%80ZAR-TREVI%C3%91O%20et%20al%20ACOUSTIC%20MIMICRY%20OF%20PLASTICS%20WITH%20THE%20PREY%20OF%20DEEP-DIVING%20CETACEANS%20AN%20EXPERIMENTAL%20APPROACH.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">similar experiments<\/a> in the lab, using a saltwater tank. The strength of the echoes coming back from \u201cnatural prey was indeed overlapping with those of multiple plastic items commonly ingested by deep divers,\u201d says Redaelli, of the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre-Madeira in Portugal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those findings, Redaelli adds, are \u201cproviding an initial ground to advocate for a change in plastic pollution policies, maybe leading to a modification in their composition to prevent them from being acoustically mistaken for natural preys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While deep-diving whales have been around for a long time, plastic garbage reached their world only in the last decades. \u201cThese items are fairly new in their environment,\u201d Savoca says. As a next step, he\u2019d be curious to see if, through individual learning or cultural transmission, these animals can \u201clearn their way out of this\u201d or whether \u201cthey\u2019re bound by their evolution to sort of fall into this trap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/whales-plastic-sound-food\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the ocean\u2019s abyss, deep-diving whales use echolocation to hunt in pitch dark. Emitting sounds that bounce off objects gives the whales a clear picture of their surroundings. But such a superpower might come with a downside, a new study reveals. When hit by whalelike sound frequencies, the strength of the echo returned by plastic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/102924-gt-whales-eating-plastic-feat.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[132024,1720,8967,3315,3203,2995],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170107,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170105\/revisions\/170107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}