Whales Are Burning

You'd think whales, with their gigantic brains and all, would know enough to slather themselves in massive amounts of Coppertone SPF 50 before surfacing. Clearly they're not as intelligent as the enviro-whackos would have you believe.

Painful sunburns are usually associated with people, but many whales are now acutely sunburned, with cases escalating in recent years, according to new research.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is the first to demonstrate that sun damage to whale skin is on the rise and is likely tied to increasing levels of ultraviolet radiation resulting from the thinning ozone layer.

"The thing is, whales do not have hair, fur or feathers that could offer some protection, and they are forced to surface in order to breathe," co-author Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse told Discovery News.

"Other animals have behavioral adaptations -- hiding in the shade, for example -- but whales cannot afford to do so," added Acevedo-Whitehouse, a postdoctoral fellow at the Zoological Society of London.

[...]

The researchers believe that the sunburns will worsen over time, due to increased ultraviolet radiation exposure. They tested this hypothesis out on blue whales, a species for which they had data spanning three years. While bite marks and other skin problems remained unchanged over this period, the prevalence of sunburn blisters significantly rose over time.

[...]

Acevedo-Whitehouse said that, in addition to pigmentation, "whales may invest heavily in programmed cell death to counteract DNA damage caused by the sun." Given the large number of documented whale sunburns, this natural defense appears to be no match for the increased levels of ultraviolet radiation.

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Although it's hoped that phasing out of [industrial solvents and chlorofluorocarbons] will allow Antarctic ozone levels to return to 1950's levels by the year 2080, that doesn't provide much hope for whales over the next several years.

[Discovery]