Sperm whales have come to our domestic sea! Recently, a sperm whale was found in the waters of Changxing Island in Dalian, which is the first time in china's Bohai Sea that there has been sperm whale activity on record, but this whale was already dead when it was found. In order to eliminate the safety hazard of "whale explosion" and the pollution of offshore waters, Dalian City is ready to make it into a plasticized specimen and display it publicly at the Dalian Museum of Natural History, while conducting marine scientific research around it.
From the picture point of view, this sperm whale is not small, requiring two cranes and a 17.5-meter flatbed truck to complete hoisting and transportation.
As we all know, the Bohai Sea is China's largest inland sea, with a total area of 77,284 square kilometers, the average water depth is only 18 meters, the maximum water depth is 85 meters, and the sperm whale usually lives in the deep sea, rarely active in the offshore waters, the reason why it came to the average water depth of the Bohai Sea and stranded in the sea area of Changxing Island, the scientific community is not very clear about the reasons for this, many netizens said how far they are lost!
It is also understood that this sperm whale is an adult male sperm whale, with a body length of nearly 18 meters, and the weight after salvaging ashore is about 40 tons, because its body appearance has no obvious wounds, so it is difficult for marine biology experts to judge the cause of its death, and can only judge the time of death according to the degree of swelling of the body.
However, the reasons for whale stranding can be roughly divided into two categories, one is caused by their own problems, and the other is caused by the interference of human activities.
However, in most cases, the stranding of whales is mainly caused by problems with their own echolocation system, because the whale's vision is extremely degraded, and can only see a distance of more than ten meters, and in order to adapt to the marine environment, the whale has evolved a high-sensitivity echo ranging ability, it can emit ultrasonic waves with a wide frequency range, through this supernatural round-trip time to judge the distance between themselves and obstacles, the general error is very small, but once they have diseases or are interfered with by humans, Its echolocation will be disordered, and then lost or even stranded and lost.
It is worth mentioning that once the whales are stranded, even if they are rescued in time, it is difficult for most of them to return to the sea again, because the stranding itself will cause some damage to the whales, and the stranded whales also have some disease problems to a greater or lesser extent. For example, in 2017, a stranded humpback whale (also known as the "big wing whale") along the qidong coast of Jiangsu Province was rescued twice, and finally died, which experts initially judged to be stranded due to chronic diseases that caused its navigation system to fail, and when it was first rescued and returned to deep water, it was unable to maintain balance, which shows that the internal injuries caused by stranding are not small.
"The giant in the sea, the road by car", there is no doubt that stranding is the most tragic way to die for whales such as sperm whales, because their huge bodies are really unable to move effectively, and their internal organs are separated from the buoyancy of the water, and irreversible damage will occur under the action of gravity.
And although sperm whales are mammals, like us humans are also breathing with our lungs, so they need to show the surface of the water when they breathe and cannot do it in the water, but they cannot completely detach themselves from the sea, because their skin is fully adapted to the marine environment and cannot withstand the sun and drought, otherwise the skin will peel off like a severe burn.
Further reading: Precious seafood - ambergris
Ambergris contains 25% of the ambergris, which is both the raw material of precious spices, which is usually used as a perfumer, and it is also a valuable traditional Chinese medicine, with phlegm, blood and other effects, because it is relatively rare, so it is worth a lot, the price and gold are slightly more expensive, if you accidentally pick up a piece at the beach, it is really hairy.
However, although ambergris is "fragrant", this is a gray or slightly black secretion secreted by sperm whales, which is strangely smelly when it is just discharged, and it is more fragrant than "musk" after a period of time, which is very magical.
The formation of ambergris is mainly related to the diet of sperm whales, because it mainly preys on squid, most of the body of the squid eaten by sperm whales is quickly decomposed and digested, but the beak-shaped mouthparts, eye lenses and pinnate shells are not digested, after continuous eating and digestion, more undigested substances form "stones" in the intestine, and finally are spit out or excreted with feces.