Whale, Two Things I Didn't Know

Whales get sunburns, some more easily than others, and some whales, North Pacific humpbacks in particular, may be coming off the endangered list.

First the humpbacks, since the ban on commercial whaling nearly 50 years ago the population of humpback whales in the North Pacific has grown to 21,000 (up from 1,400 in the 1960s). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wants to first reclassify the whales in question as a distinct population and then take them off the endangered list. That last group to leave NOAA’s endangered list was the Caribbean monk seal in 2008. It came off the list because it was determined to be extinct so the outlook for humpbacks is much more positive.

On the topic of whale sunburns, UV radiation in sunlight causes some whales’ skin to react like human skin. The whales researchers took skin samples from did not include the aforementioned humpbacks. I also hope the whales were peeling so the skin removal wasn't too stressful, but rather a relief since any human that has gone through the peeling stage of sunburn knows the itching can drive you crazy. There were three whale species sampled, blue, sperm, and fin during their regular migration from the Arctic Ocean to the sunny Gulf of California. The pigment melanin increases as you tan and the of all the whales the pitch black fin whale showed the smallest increase probably because they had the most to begin with. Rather than go into the mitochondrial DNA stuff and how it is the thing in our skin cells that suffers the damage when human skin is sunburned, let me sum up by saying that the researchers also looked at genes that help combat cell stress in humans and compared them to those in the whales and found that the sperm whales had the highest expression of them perhaps to act a second line of defense since boosting melanin production might not be enough to counteract the burning UV rays at the ocean’s surface. Bottom line here is that whales are like the ocean’s UV barometers and can help scientists know how much UV radiation is going into the oceans over time. There is also hope that by studying whale sunburns better sun protection products can be developed for humans.

Whale, now you know two things I didn’t know.