I'm surprised no one has mentioned this... I thought it was tragic, and seemed very unusual to me...
A devastating mass beaching of electra dolphins in Japan has triggered fears that an earthquake could be imminent.
The Japan Times reports that beachgoers on the coast of Hokota, north of Tokyo, started to find dozens of the dolphins' corpses washed up last Friday.
Children look at stranded dolphins at the shore in Hokota, north of Tokyo.
Officials worked to save the stranded dolphins, but were able to save only three of the nearly 150 that washed ashore.
“Many people volunteered to rescue them but the dolphins became very, very weak. … Only three of them have been successfully returned to the sea, as far as we can confirm,” a Hokota city official said.
Six days before the catastrophic 2011 tsunami,there was a mass beaching of the same species in Japan, leading some to speculate that this latest beaching will be the precursor to an earthquake offshore.
Scientists, however, are not convinced of this explanation. In fact, they explain that it might be an issue with the animals' sonar.
Al Jazeera America reports that one explanation for the group beaching was that the dolphins became disoriented and lost their sense of direction.
“Sonar waves the dolphins emit might have been absorbed in the shoals, which could cause them to lose their sense of direction, National Museum of Nature and Science researcher Tadasu Yamadao said.
Another theory suggests that a parasite could have disrupted the animals' ability to navigate.
In any case, electra dolphins are known to live in deep waters, and their presence on the beach is a sign of a problem in the marine web off the coast.
This article was posted on April 15, 2015. And more recently, the devastating earthquake in Nepal.. I don't know, could this be linked? What do you guys think?
A devastating mass beaching of electra dolphins in Japan has triggered fears that an earthquake could be imminent.
The Japan Times reports that beachgoers on the coast of Hokota, north of Tokyo, started to find dozens of the dolphins' corpses washed up last Friday.
Children look at stranded dolphins at the shore in Hokota, north of Tokyo.
Officials worked to save the stranded dolphins, but were able to save only three of the nearly 150 that washed ashore.
“Many people volunteered to rescue them but the dolphins became very, very weak. … Only three of them have been successfully returned to the sea, as far as we can confirm,” a Hokota city official said.
Six days before the catastrophic 2011 tsunami,there was a mass beaching of the same species in Japan, leading some to speculate that this latest beaching will be the precursor to an earthquake offshore.
Scientists, however, are not convinced of this explanation. In fact, they explain that it might be an issue with the animals' sonar.
Al Jazeera America reports that one explanation for the group beaching was that the dolphins became disoriented and lost their sense of direction.
“Sonar waves the dolphins emit might have been absorbed in the shoals, which could cause them to lose their sense of direction, National Museum of Nature and Science researcher Tadasu Yamadao said.
Another theory suggests that a parasite could have disrupted the animals' ability to navigate.
In any case, electra dolphins are known to live in deep waters, and their presence on the beach is a sign of a problem in the marine web off the coast.
This article was posted on April 15, 2015. And more recently, the devastating earthquake in Nepal.. I don't know, could this be linked? What do you guys think?
Japan isn't really near Nepal, but depending on where they were in the ocean and where the earthquake started, maybe they were swimming away from it? I literally heard about this a few days before the earthquake...
