Physiology of Freely Diving White Whales, Delphinapteras Laucas.

The performance of trained white whales was assessed during swimming and diving trials. During diving sessions, the whales made repetitive dives to a test platform that was suspended from a boat to depths up to 300 meters. In all studies blood samples were measured for changes in Po(sub 2), Pco(sub...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Costa, Daniel P.
Other Authors: CALIFORNIA UNIV SANTA CRUZ
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1997
Subjects:
Biology
Medicine and Medical Research
Acoustics
*RESPIRATION
*BLOOD PLASMA
*BIOACOUSTICS
*SEALS(MAMMALS)
*WHALES
*DOLPHINS(MAMMALS)
*LACTATES
TEST AND EVALUATION
FREQUENCY
TRAINING
OXYGEN
PLATFORMS
SAMPLING
LUNG
PHYSIOLOGY
AEROBIC PROCESSES
DIVING
SWIMMING
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
HEMATOCRIT
WHITE WHALE
DELPHINAPTERUS LEUCAS
Delphinapterus leucas
White whale
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA365297
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA365297
Description
Summary:The performance of trained white whales was assessed during swimming and diving trials. During diving sessions, the whales made repetitive dives to a test platform that was suspended from a boat to depths up to 300 meters. In all studies blood samples were measured for changes in Po(sub 2), Pco(sub 2), pH, hematocrit (Hct), and plasma lactate and glucose concentrations. Respiratory frequency increased with increasing dive time. Aerobic dives are constrained by the total oxygen stored in the muscle, blood, and lung and the rate it is utilized. ADLs have only been experimentally determined in two species of pinnipeds and the bottlenose dolphin. In this study, we determined an ADL of 9-10 min for white whales. These are the first empirically determined measurements of ADL for a cetacean other than the bottlenose dolphin.

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