Save the whales! Don't watch them

[dArKeR]

Paris - The fast-growing activity of whale-watching can interfere with communications between cetaceans, and this could have an impact on their survival, biologists fear.

If there are too many vessels, there is too much background noise from engines - and this requires the animals to "sing" longer in order to make themselves heard by other members of their group, the experts say in Thursday's issue of Nature, the British weekly science journal.

They compared recordings of calls made by killer whales living in the inshore waters of Washington state that had been made at three periods, from 1977 to 1981, from 1989 to 92 and 2001 to 2003.


http://iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=qw1083175564202B224&set_id=1