If it could, it might just be possible to determine how many 5 year olds equal lightning. We'll have to discount the number a little for the water wings though. Fair is fair.

In the 16 years I worked at Marine Land as a tank scrubber I saw two whales go down to lightning strikes. The electricity projects through their iridescent core via the blow hole. We used to call the roof top tank the shock tank.

catmiami,

If they dive when they feel the storm coming, is two hours enough to wait out the whole thing?

I actually think dolphins getting struck by lightning might make a better conversation, since they're smaller and would be killed easier. Also, the visual of a dolphin getting struck by lightning as I'm seeing it in my head is pretty awesome.

Nice, this single post pretty much destroys everyone's thought patterns for the problem at this point.

Most lightning storms last well under 2 hours in my experience.

Wat? While interesting it is as relevant as how often prisoners buried to the neck in the desert are eaten by vultures versus just regular people being eaten by vultures.

Why? These were captive whales...sitting ducks!

Whales evolved from land animals. Do we get to count these distant land-dwelling ancestors as whales?

Pakicetid




If these guys count, the # goes way up.

BTW, the first time I learned whales evolved from land animals, it blew my mind.

Every time I see a post by OP, I see his name as Josey, which always makes me think of my favorite Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.

So this thread is ironic (don'tcha think).

Except that OP didn't specify such a distinction.

Correct, we just assumed he meant "in the ocean, not tied to a lightning rod like something tied to a lightning rod."

I don't know about lightning, but wales have definitely been thunderstruck:

Yes we did, and shame on us.

I assume OP would have put in a disclaimer if he had imagined a 16 year scrubber had witnessed the sizzling of these two mammals by those corporate bastards at Chlorineland!

Methinks OP looks like a whale

THIS!

Yeah probably, it was just interesting because I don't know anyone was thinking along those lines, which was my point.

Re: How Many Whales Have Been Killed By Lightning In The History of the Earth?


bout tree fiddy

Nobody owns a whale.

This question cant really be tackled without some sort of information on how wide and deep a lethal charge extends in the water when lightning strikes the surface.

I really have no idea what the answer is but I do know that water is a good conductor, so it seems at least possible that a deadly shock could extend over a faily large area of water both on and under the surface.

Does lightning ever kill fish in any body of water? Lakes, ponds, rivers? I've never really thought about it but I have absolutely no idea and now I'm curious.

lightning exists because it wants to be grounded.

so, when lightning hits water, doesn't it travel all the way to the bottom of the ocean, to be grounded? if a lightning bolt exists in air (which is not overly conductive) why wouldn't a lightning bolt also exist in water (which is quite conductive)

I would just assume that it dissapates when it hits the water as it moves away from and below the contact point.

If you had an olympic size swimming pool full of people, some under the water and some on the surface, lightning hitting the pool would kill everyone instantly right? Is there a man made pool big enough for this not to be the case?

I would think so but the question is how big would that pool have to be? Or maybe I'm thinking about it completely incorrectly and the lightning doesn't behave in the way I imagine at all when it hits a body of water.

From Wiki Q&A

If you can hear thunder, the lightning strike has already occurred since thunder is only a sonic boom caused by lightning. In order for you to feel an electric shock an electric current must pass through your body. For a current to pass through your body, your body must complete the circuit from an electrostatically charged cloud to earth/ground (in this example the ocean is the electrical earth/ground). Salt water is a great conductor of electricity/lightning and thus would immediately discharge the lightning strike. Unless the strike actually hits you, you are not in the circuit and would therefore feel nothing from a strike into the ocean - no matter how close. Consider the case of a bird perched on a high voltage supply line (maybe 440,000 volts). The bird is charged with 440,000 volts of electricity alright, but there is no circuit to ground/earth/ocean, thus the bird is not electrocuted and feels nothing.

Cat,

So according to your above post, a group of people in a large swimming pool would not all be killed if lightning struck the water of the pool?

This from Wiki Q&A should shed some light on that...

If your in a pool of water and the lightning strikes most of the charge won't travel through the water, because it is an insulater. It will travel through you the conductor. You are the path of least resistance (especially if your touching the bottom of the pool or the side of it). That is why people are killed in a pool from lightning strikes. Most of the people that survive such strikes were probably floating in the water, not touching anything else but the water (thus not completing a circuit).

I would suggest that most fish in the ocean do not get killed for this reason. Salt water is a very good conductor and as such the salt water pulls the path of the electricity from the lightning bolt around the fish, not through it. I would add this as another reason amoung the others above.