The whale benefits from having the whale lice ONLY when the whale has an injury. The whale lice move to the wound and eat the wounded flesh, thus keeping that healing flesh from getting infected. This is a 3 way beneficial relationship with all three benefiting from one of the others. Also, I believe the author meant to say that gray whales may have up to pounds of barnacles on them, not humpbacks. Consequently, human interference in nature, even with best intentions has proved decimating.
The thought we should have a part of regulating, or changing mother nature is a mistake, so what the occurrence is unsightly? This line of comments on this article are fascinating, how the human animal is so much more bothered by this than the whale is. The burning intensity sounds like a trypophobia disgust response to the mental image of flesh-barnacles. How do people feel about images of dried lotus seed heads? Whales probably are grossed out and pity us poor hairy primates with mites crawling around in the sockets of our hair follicles.
It says that the barnacles are not proven to cause any harm and are in a harmless symbiotic relationship with the whale. The problem presented is not the barnacles on the whale, but that humans are intervening with wildlife and depleting the population of whales, causing not only the whales to become endangered but the barnacles who depend on them for food to become endangered as well. Please do not be part of the problem saying that barnacles need to be removed.
Calm down, leave nature alone, and focus on problems that exist please. I go whale watching and have seen the whales come close and even let humans with broomsticks scrape the barnacles off. They must itch terribly. There is video on YouTube of a whale scraping itself against a boat to try to dislodge them.
I loved reading all these comments. I too am grossed out by Barnacles habitating and thriving on whale skin which is why I searched for some information about them. I think the barnacles are not only unsightly, but, there is a real possibility that they are a nuisance to the whale. I am all for leaving nature alone most of the time but sometimes it is very advantageous for man to help, as nature can be quite cruel…ever see a poor stray dog covered in maggots and ticks? For instance, if there is evidence of whales trying to scrape off the barnacles along the smooth edge of a boat, then perhaps building plastic structures in parts of calm waters where they breed like Baja California might be a wonderful idea…so that they can safely scrape off their own barnacles, or perhaps, if whale watchers were given stiff brooms on whale watching excursions, they could all pitch in to get rid of the barnacles that are not that deep in the skin.
I have watched videos of fisherman cleaning poor turtles covered in barnacles, why not poot whales? I am not disagreeing that there might be some benefit to the barnacles or whale lice, but it might also cause them pain, irritation or harm.
Your email address will not be published. Previous Search. Ever Wondered? How Do Barnacles Attach to Whales? Filed To barnacles biology oceans symbiosis whales. Share Facebook Twitter Email. May 17, at am. Brad says:. May 22, at pm.
GoodMorningGloucester says:. June 23, at pm. March 20, at am. August 22, at pm. KC says:. That meant the differences between layers represented movement, rather than conditions changing locally.
Because different parts of the ocean have unique temperature and salinity profiles, explains Taylor, measuring these isotopes could theoretically allow you to figure out roughly where in the ocean each layer had formed. Killingley and Newman had worked with modern barnacles, not fossilized ones.
And because they already knew where their whales had come from, they never actually used the isotopes in a barnacle shell to reconstruct the migration of its host.
The Burke Museum, on a corner of the University of Washington campus in Seattle, is the oldest and largest natural history collection in Washington State. The newest of the whale barnacle specimens were collected more than four decades ago. Frey brought the barnacles to her office and laid them out on a workbench for me to examine.
They were plum-sized and ridgy, with delicate crevices and teardrop-shaped openings arranged with kaleidoscopic symmetry around their outer rims. On their undersides, calcite walls fanned out like mushroom gills to form the narrow chambers that whale skin had wedged into. Except for the ones pickled in preservative, still attached to a scrap of whale flesh, they all had empty cavities where their crustacean bodies had once been.
Taylor borrowed some modern whale barnacles from a similar collection at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. A network of scientists who respond to marine mammal strandings helped him acquire several more. But to find the wholly intact ancient shells he wanted, Taylor knew he was going to have to look further afield. In early , Taylor, Finnegan, and two colleagues loaded up their excavation gear and flew to Panama City.
They spent another day on the road to the Burica Peninsula, a coastal hangnail that straddles the border between Panama and Costa Rica. Today, the waters surrounding the peninsula are a known winter gathering spot for humpback whales that migrate to California, Alaska, and Antarctica in summer.
One of the paleontologists accompanying Taylor and Finnegan had found a couple of old whale barnacles along the terraced shoreline once before. Still, as the scientists spread out at low tide to comb the rocky beach for exposed fossils, Taylor found himself filled with anxiety. Hours later, right around sunset, Finnegan called him over to look at an interesting formation dating back perhaps , years. There, gleaming in the warm evening light, was a Coronula diadema fossil, almost perfectly preserved.
A fossil of Coronula diadema found in Panama. The scientists found seven more fossilized shells and shell fragments in four days of beachcombing at Burica. They piled them into a padded bag with other specimens, then brought them back to Berkeley for Taylor to inspect more closely.
And four of the fossils still contained uninterrupted growth records, Taylor determined, from the oldest layers on the uppermost rims of the barnacle shells to the newest ones at the base of each wall plate. He used a drill bit as narrow as a human hair to extract a calcite sample about every millimeter along its side.
He carefully labeled each of these microscopic shell sections and walked them over to another lab in the building for analysis. The results came, without fanfare, in an email: a table of numbers representing the oxygen isotope ratios in every layer of the shell that he had bored.
Each fossil showed its own distinct pattern: isotope measurements that spiked and dipped as the barnacle stacked up shell layers during its oceanic travels. The lines on each graph took different paths in the year or so before the barnacles arrived in Panama, where they finally stopped recording when they died. I was. How do Whales Sleep? How Do Whales Sleep?
Whales are air breathing mammals just like us. They must surface to breathe. So how do. Record numbers of humpback calves spotted. There were no humpbacks off southwest B. Removing the Elwha Damn. Why Do Whales Jump. Why Do Whales Jump? A common and inquisitive question that is often asked aboard our tours. Of course to get. This juvenile killer whale, first spotted. What Do Whales Eat? What do whales eat? Whales can be classified by whether they have teeth or baleen. Lice can spread from mother whales to their calves during birth, and nursing.
To get rid of the whale lice, whales rub themselves along the sea bottom or breach. Gray whales feed on bottom sediments and scrape off barnacles and whale lice as they feed. Scarback can be identified by the large scar on her right dorsal hump.
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