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Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.
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121433
Kleindinst, Thomas N.
Right Whale bone specimen at New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Still Image
12/08/2003
graphics/Whale_Bones/Whale bone_4303.jpg
Used in Oceanus magazine Vol. 49, No. 2, Pg. 13.
Image of The Day caption:
Scuba divers can get sick ascending too quickly from a deep dive. But can whales? To find out, biologist Michael Moore and colleagues at WHOI looked closely at a lesion in the rib of a dead sperm whale that beached on Nantucket in 2002. Their research, published in 2011 in Proceedings of The Royal Society B, concluded that the injury was likely caused by nitrogen bubbles that formed when the whale rose too rapidly from high-pressure depths. The bubbles, though tiny, obstructed blood flow and led to bone damage. More research on the health and conservation of whales and other marine animals can be found at WHOI's Marine Mammal Center.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 44, No. 1, Pg. 4:
A spherical lesion in a rib of a dead sperm whale was likely caused by nitrogen bubbles that formed when the whale rose too rapidly from high pressure in the depths. The bubbles block blood flow and damage bone.
Photo by Tom Kleindinst, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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