Deep-diving whales and other marine mammals like these Pacific white-sided dolphins can get the bends—the same painful and potentially life-threatening decompression sickness that strikes scuba divers who surface too quickly Deep-diving whales and other marine mammals can get the bends—the same painful and potentially life-threatening decompression sickness that strikes scuba divers who surface too quickly. A new study offers a hypothesis of how marine mammals generally avoid getting the bends and how they can succumb under stressful conditions.

The key is the unusual lung architecture of whales, dolphins and porpoises (and possibly other breath-holding diving vertebrates), which creates two different pulmonary regions under deep-sea pressure, say researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Fundacion Oceanografic in Spain. Their study was published April 25, 2018, in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“How some marine mammals and turtles can repeatedly dive as deep and as long as they do has perplexed scientists for a very long time,” says Michael Moore, director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI and co-author of the study. “This paper opens a window through which we can take a new perspective on the question.”

When air-breathing mammals dive to high-pressure depths, their lungs compress. That collapses their alveoli—the tiny sacs at the end of the airways where gas exchange occurs. Nitrogen bubbles build up in the animals’ bloodstream and tissue. If they ascend slowly, the nitrogen can return to the lungs and be exhaled. But if they ascend too fast, the nitrogen bubbles don’t have time to diffuse back into the lungs. Under less pressure at shallower depths, the nitrogen bubbles expand in the bloodstream and tissue, causing pain and damage.

Marine mammals’ chest structure allows their lungs to compress. Scientists have assumed that this passive compression was marine mammals’ main adaptation to avoid taking up excessive nitrogen at depth and getting the bends.

In their study, the researchers took CT images of a deceased dolphin, seal, and a domestic pig pressurized in a hyperbaric chamber. The team was able to see how the marine mammals’ lung architecture creates two pulmonary regions: one air-filled and the other collapsed. The researchers believe that blood flows mainly through the collapsed region of the lungs. That causes what is called a ventilation-perfusion mismatch, which allows some oxygen and carbon dioxide to be absorbed by the animal’s bloodstream, while minimizing or preventing the exchange of nitrogen. This is possible because each gas has a different solubility in the blood. The terrestrial pig did not show that structural adaptation.

This mechanism would protect cetaceans from taking up excessive amounts of nitrogen and thus minimize risk of the bends, says lead author Daniel García-Parraga of the Fundacion Oceanografic.

However, he said, “Excessive stress, as may occur during exposure to human-made sound, may cause the system to fail and increase blood flow to the air-filled regions. This would enhance gas exchange, and nitrogen would increase in the blood and tissues as the pressure decreases during ascent.”

Scientists once thought that diving marine mammals were immune from decompression sickness, but a 2002 stranding event linked to navy sonar exercises revealed that 14 whales that died after beaching off the Canary Islands had gas bubbles in their tissues—a sign of the bends. The researchers say the paper’s findings could support previous implications of decompression sickness in some cetacean mass strandings associated with navy sonar exercises.

The team says further research will require the development of tools to analyze how lung blood flow and ventilation patterns change with various stressors during diving.

Task1. Find words/expressions meaning the following.

1.  decompression sickness;

2.  to fail to resist pressure, temptation, or some other negative force;

3.  to confuse and worry;

4.  to happen, to take place;

5.  to gradually become bigger;

6.  more or higher than is necessary or reasonable;

7.  keeping (something) from happening;

8.  to increase, intensify;

Task2 Say whether the following is true, false or not mentioned.

1.  Marine animals never suffer from decompression sickness.

2.  Researchers have long been puzzled by marine vertebrates being able to keep away from decompression sickness.

3.  Certain fish can get something similar to the bends

4.  Decompression sickness can be caused by nitrogen bubbles expanding in blood and can be prevented by breathing helium instead of nitrogen

5.  Scientists found that marine mammals have two regions in their lungs.

6.  Under stress conditions such as loud sounds of artificial origin this mechanism may fail and animals get the bends.

7.  Scientists found that navy sonar exercises had caused damage in some cetacean brains , which caused whales to beach themselves in large numbers.

Task3 Answer the following questions.

1.  What do scuba divers and marine mammals have in common?

2.  How do they manage to they manage to stay under water as deep and as long as they like?

3.  What happens to air breathing animals when they dive deep?

4.  Why are marine mammals different?

5.  Why doesn’t their blood absorb nitrogen?

6.  When can this mechanism fail?

7.  Why does it happen and what can it result in?