Current Events; Whales and Sunscreen?

Sunburns are generally something humans usually get but recent studies have shown that now whales are also getting sunburns, these cases have also become more frequent over the years.
Proceedings of Royal Society B was the first place where this study was published. It shows how the damage of the whale’s skin due to the sun is on the rise. This is most likely because the ozone layer is thinning which is increasing the levels of ultraviolet radiation. They get sunburned because they have to come to the surface to breathe yet there is no hair, feather or fur to protect from the rays. Hiding in the shade is how some other animals have adapted to this predicament yet whales cannot do this. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, a postdoctoral fellow at the Zoological Society of London and her colleagues have looked at this problem, and together they have preformed skin biopsies and photo surveys in the Gulf of California on blue, fin and sperm whales. In this region, which is near the tropical latitudes, the dosages of skin cancer radiation are much higher than in the mid-latitude zones. With stainless steel dart skin samples from 2007 to 2009, all the skin cells collected were sunburn cells/ abnormal cells these are cells that have been DNA damaged by ultra-violet light. This was found even on the lowest layer of skin. Due to the over exposure of ultraviolet radiation researcher believe that these sunburns will worsen over time. For this hypothesis they tested on blue whales while bite marks and the other skin problems remained unchanged the blisters from sunburn became noticeable. Darker whales such as sperm or fin whales tend not to get as sunburned as lighter whales do, similar to humans. Yet some of these whales spend more time on the surface making them still prone to sunburn. Scientists have only recently become aware of this, since this year marks the 25th anniversary of when the hole in the ozone layer was discovered. Even though e hope that the ozone levels will return to the 1950’slevel by 2080. Yet this is a lesson from the ozone hole on how quickly our planet can change or how we can change it.
This article interested me because it made me ask questions, how do whales get sunburn? Since we just finished our one world essay presentations which really talked a lot about effects of humans on the environment this is another very good example of how we affect our world.