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You'd think, then, that direct human interactions might be the logical site of blame for the Alaskan whale deaths. But Bree Witteveen, a whale expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who has been following the story closely, believes otherwise."Deaths resulting from entanglement would show obvious signs," Witteveen told VICE. "And [they] are not likely to result in so many carcasses in such a small time frame.""Sonar," she continued, "may also be a cause. To our knowledge, however, the [most recent] Navy sonar exercises in the Gulf of Alaska were not initiated until nearly three weeks after the carcasses began to be sighted."NOAA's current lead hypothesis is that a harmful algal bloom triggered the deaths. Known regionally as "red tides," these events are linked to rising temperatures, which allow life-choking microscopic creatures to proliferate, many of which produce toxins consumed directly or indirectly by whales in tight social formations, leading to the potential for mass deaths."Some [algal toxins] mimic neurotransmitters in the brain and cause seizures and death of brain tissue," Spencer Fire, an expert on algal blooms and their effects on whale populations at the Florida Institute of Technology, explained to VICE. "Some interfere with normal nerve function and can cause respiratory paralysis. Some cause gastrointestinal problems."Related: Japan Is Going to Kill Thousands of Whales No Matter What Other Nations Say
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But Fire cautions jumping to conclusions too quickly. Indeed, the lone sample taken from a whale carcass thus far has only cast doubt upon the algal bloom hypothesis. Toxicology on that flesh, explains Witteveen, came back negative for cesium, ruling out a fringe hypothesis that the whales had somehow been killed by continued fallout from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. But it also came back negative for domoic acid and saxitoxin, the region's two algal toxins. That doesn't prove that algal blooms weren't responsible for the whales' deaths, at least partially, considering the test was conducted only on a single whale. But it certainly doesn't bring us anywhere closer to figuring out an answer to this mystery.Canadian scientists have apparently started a necropsy on two more whales, which may provide us with some answers to the mystery. Yet any results will take months to assemble. It'd help if we had more evidence to work with, but most of the carcasses are floating along a vast and inaccessible coastline, where bears are getting to them before researchers, consuming their scientifically valuable flesh. Officials are hoping that average folks will be able to help them find more dead whales to test, but caution against touching any of them. Until then, we'll have to rely on what little evidence we have in the search for conclusions that may never come in full. In the meantime, we might collectively want to turn some attention toward that massive oceanic algal bloom, because even if it isn't responsible for this tragedy, it does sound like a disaster waiting to happen.Watch On Motherboard: Inside the Grind: The Fight for Whale Hunting in the Faroe Islands