Whales Run Aground by the Sun

Our contemporary world presents a gauntlet of hazards that might lead to whales beaching themselves. Things like ear-splitting naval sonar, entanglements with industrial fishing gear, collisions with ships, illness, and pollution are often cited as culprits. But whale strandings have a history that predates our Anthropocene assistance—the fossil record shows that strandings have been happening for at least the past 6 million years. It’s a phenomenon that vexed even Aristotle, who wrote in his Historia Animalium that “it is not known why they sometimes run aground on the seashore: For it is asserted that this happens rather frequently when the fancy takes them, and without any apparent reason.”

But an emerging body of research around the violent churnings of our sun might provide a new theory as to why some whales might stray fatally off course. Solar storms might be throwing whales off their bearings, says Jesse Granger, a Duke University biophysicist who studies how animals orient themselves.