ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
Pinniped anatomical and physiological adaptations to diving are well recognised and have been described by several authors (e.g. King 1977; Costa 2007).
Historically, marine mammals have been considered at negligible risk from decompression sickness because of their behavioural, anatomical and physiological adaptations for diving.
Lung compression-induced pulmonary shunting and altered peripheral blood flow limits the transfer of nitrogen from pulmonary alveoli into blood and from blood into tissues. Recent work suggests that physiological adaptations that mitigate nitrogen loading during dives are not predetermined responses, but are responses that can be modified, as needed, on a dive-by- dive basis (Hooker et al. 2012). Therefore, disruption of an animal’s dive pattern, with loss of opportunity for recompression, may allow clinically significant gas bubble formation to occur (Dennison et al. 2012).3.
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