•  bangalore
• Wednesday, February 16, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Without in-depth scientific documentation of marine mammal strandings, natural history and animal behaviour, the prediction of seismic events based on behaviour of marine mammals is not widely accepted. Sceptics often dismiss such predictions as conjecture.

'Despite vast amounts of data collected in the U.S., it is impossible to definitively suggest that strandings and natural calamities are connected; marine mammals strand for various reasons,' says Mridula Srinivasan, marine biologist and researcher at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Arunachalam Kumar, dean of the K S Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, on India’s west coast, is convinced however that the beaching of marine mammals is a harbinger of earthquakes. Kumar predicted the boxing day earthquake - which resulted in the tsunami of Dec. 2004 - in a posting he had made on the Princeton University Natural History E-Group three weeks before the calamity.

Analysing the stranding of 90 pilot whales off the coast of Tasmania in Nov. 2004 Kumar wrote on Nov. 29: 'In my observation, confirmed over the years, mass suicides of cetaceans… are related to disturbances in the electromagnetic field coordinates and possible realignments of geo-tectonic plates thereof. By calibrating the epicentres against dates of strandings, I am reasonably certain that major earthquakes usually follow within a week or two of mass beaching of cetaceans….'

On Dec. 26 an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck — and triggered the tsunami that left 230,000 people dead around the Indian Ocean. Sarang Kulkarni, an Indian oceanographer is among the sceptics. 'I don’t buy the theory that whale strandings are indicative of impending natural calamities because how many whale strandings have occurred without an earthquake following?' Kulkarni told IPS.

Nevertheless, 'on the day of the Asian Tsunami the street dogs in Port Blair in Andaman Islands (India) were so timid, submissive and frightened… they followed me from village to village,' admits Kulkarni.

'The recent whale strandings of a pod of whales near the New Zealand coast on Aug. 20 portends a major earthquake on land or undersea within two to three weeks from the date of the event,' Kumar wrote in his blog on Aug. 23, 2010. 'This month end (August 2010) or early next month there should be a quake or massive volcano in the Indonesian archipelago.'

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung, a 400-year-old volcano previously classified as extinct, erupted on Aug. 29 and an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck New Zealand on Sep. 4, 2010. There is no 're-constructible natural history behaviour' to credibly quantify these predictions, according to the United States Geological Survey (USG). On an average, 1,200 to 1,600 whales strand on the U.S. coasts alone, according to a study initiated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Intuitive animal behaviour needs further statistical documentation, stresses Kumar.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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