So what’s the effect? Hearing loss?
There are no noise-cancelling headphones to stop the U.S. Navy’s 235-decibel pressure waves of unbearable pinging and metallic shrieking. At 200 Db, the vibrations can rupture your lungs, and above 210 Db, the lethal noise can bore straight through your brain until it hemorrhages that delicate tissue. If you’re not deaf after this devastating sonar blast, you’re dead.
Fun fact, sperm whales can generate a sonar click at 230dB. Decibels are a logarithmic scale so increasing by only a few dB is basically double the volume.
A sperm whale may swim past you, think you’re interesting and give a little click to scan you, and basically stun or kill you instantly.
Wow. For real ???
You learn something new everyday.
But yeah, I never saw divers getting stunned/ killed even when diving near whales.
It could be that it never happened, but that’s like such a high variance to have never happened.
Is there any example? I’ve never heard an organism (fish?) killed by whale sound wave like this
I couldn’t find any report of a death but here is a credible source that it’s possible. Sperm whales are particularly rare of course, and intelligent enough to probably know it’s deadly, so it’s no surprise it’s rare.
One. Ping. Only.
There was a diving team outside.
