And boobies.

Also I think both you and your friend are on the low side, based on the super awesome math post with the map.

Agreed about distilled water, but pool water has a lot of stuff in it. Pools are expensive to drain but need to have chlorine (or whatever) added more or less regularly. In addition to chlorine and buffering stuff, we used to add cupric sulfate crystals to make the pool water a pretty blue (and kill algae). I don't recall checking the conductivity of pool water, but I'll bet most pool water is at least a weak conductor. I don't know if that matters if a whale or human is on the top of the water and gets zapped with lightning.

I do remember getting the hell out of the pool or ocean when it was raining, and making sure everybody I was lifeguarding got the hell out too.

Probably not a good idea to play golf during a thunderstorm either. Just my opinion.

Buzz

I've wondered about the sanity of whales that beach themselves. I suppose some whales could be ******ed, relative to other whales.

Buzz

I think that Suzzer massively overestimates the number of whales in costal regions.

eg, Australia has around 25,760 km of coast (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...h_of_coastline)

Apart from migratory movements up and down either coast from time to time, there are very few whales living in this area, and consequently, he massively overestimates the number of whales getting struck by lightning.

His maths is based on the assumption that whales predominantly live in coastal regions, and further, on the hugely overestimate density of one whale per square kilometre. This is hugely overestimated - I suspect that in the 25,760km coastline of Australia (which has above average whale volumes, when compared to the rest of the word) I suspect there is well under 100 whales currently located within 100km of the coast.

Thus:

I think he overestimates the coastal density of whales by well over 250 times.

I think that whales live much less densely than he expects - I think that one per square km is hugely over representing their true density.

Further, Suzzer claims that the lightning strikes per square kilometer of coastal regions is 7 per annum. I think he has misread the chart, because it appears to me that the average is .7 (point seven) strikes per year. Thus, I think the true number of strikes has been overestimated by 10 times.

Further, I think that the assumption that whales are equally likely to get struck by lightning as the surrounding water is incorrect - given their non conductive nature, it seems to me that they are much less likely to be hit by lightning than their surrounds, and that this factor may decrease the incidences of death by many, many times.

So what you're saying is... he overestimated. IYO

This question calls for a reunion of these guys

This is why the correct answer is 7.

Has anyone asked the obvious followup:


How many 5 year olds could a whale beat in a fight?

if every 4th post of yours is this awesome, you will go places here imo

Josem, the point is even if you're right, divide my answer by 250, then by 10 and you still get 100k whales killed by lightning in history. The whole point of my exercise is that you're not going to get the number anywhere near zero just based on the sheer odds lightning strikes the patch of water a whale is surfacing in. Also come to CA and go whale watching. Pacific whales travel from the Artic to breeding grounds in Mexico all the time. Whale watching boats barely have to get a mile off shore. Even if this isn't their full time home, they spend several months on the migration, which is a lot of time near the coast.

Now as far as conductivity that's a better argument. We need actual science or something for that. Although on that note, this is interesting:

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=54

Don:
"Basically lightning stays more on the surface of the water rather than penetrating it. That's because water is a reasonably good conductor, and a good conductor keeps most of the current on the surface."

So, when lightning hits the water, the current zips across the surface in all directions. And if you're swimming anywhere in the vicinity, it'll probably hit you. But below the surface, most of the electricity is instantly neutralized. So the fish are generally spared.

Of course, if the fish happen to be surfacing, they're at risk just like you are. And Dr. MacGorman adds that some electricity does penetrate the water, right at the strike point.


Which might suggest that even if the lightning strikes near the whale it could still kill it, maybe just from burn wounds.

wouldnt the lightning just pass through you if you were swimming near the strike? when you are in the water you arent grounded, didnt read the whole thread, just my thought though

Suzzer,

excellent work in this non-bimbo locating thread!

Josem,

it seems that 1/1000 of event "lightning strike causing death of individual whale", given that the planet is a few billion years old, that whales as a species have existed for multiple millions of years, that lightning strikes occur on the ocean or on beaches multiple hundreds every year, and even assuming only 1/1000 direct lightning strikes cause death, I really think your guess is waaay off.

Suzzer, A+ work. I read the whole post.

I'm sorry I abandoned this thread early on; suzzer's reply might be the most incredible thing I've ever read in OOT.

I think the last part of this is reasonable from suzzer. Lightning tends to strike the highest point, even holding up an umbrella or a golf club can increase your chances of getting hit in an exposed place (this isn't an urban myth, right?). A surfacing whale is a target the top of which could be a couple of metres above the surrounding, extremely flat area, like a lightning rod.

However, according to wikipedia only about 10% of humans struck by lightning die as a result. With whales, this could be higher or lower. On the one hand, their thick skins may conduct the electricity around their bodies. On the other hand, many people who survive lightning strikes are crippled or suffer massive skin burns, which could be fatal for an animal living in the wild, so I think 10% is a good starting point.

When learning about electricity you often see the analogy that voltage = height.

If you are on the tenth storey of a skyscraper, that won't kill you. Or if you're on the fiftieth or the hundredth. But if you suddenly go from the hundredth floor to ground level, that will be fatal.

200-500

epic poast.

one thing though, this is the odds of a whale getting hit. not dying from it. i wonder how often a whale will die from getting hit by lightning. humans can survive it, and we're tiny in comparison. maybe they get hit a lot but it doesn't phase them too much. anyone know?

Suzzer,
Great post.

I think the whale population has been growing a lot slower than you seem to think, which is causing you to overestimate the total number of whales who have ever lived.

If whales live an average of 20 years, 500k new whales would need to be born every year to keep a population of 10 million constant.

Unless you're saying there might have only been a million whales for the first 10 million years of their existence. I guess this is possible. Probably impossible to say. One thing we know though is that predators tend to multiply very quickly (like in the blink of an eye in geologic time) to take up their entire available habitat when faced with a plentiful food source. I think it would be mostly a function of the availability of their food source and the size of the whale. Pretty tough to estimate that going back 50 mil. years.

This is what I'm trying to say. I am projecting human population patterns onto whales without any real reason, other than I think so.

Well 50k years ago there was a bottleneck event where they estimate humans were down to a few thousand individuals - and that everyone alive today descended from a single human female. So 50k years from a few thousand to 6 billion is nothing in geologic time. And 5 of those billion or so have come in the last couple hundred years as technology has allowed us to extract more resources and live closer together.

Whales have been around a long time and the biggest threat to them that I know of is humans. Whaling on a large-scale level has been going on for the last 200 years perhaps?

If anything, there were more whales 200 years ago, and before that the population was probably fairly stable for millions of years. There's no reason to think whales had a "population explosion" in the same way humans did, because there haven't been massive advancements in whale civilization and technology which allowed larger and larger whale settlements.

I lolled