““How do you make an efficient system to deliver oxygen to the muscles?”
In the first of the three studies, a team led by zoologist Michael Berenbrink of the University of Liverpool, UK, studied a protein called myoglobin in deep-diving mammals. Myoglobin is the main oxygen-storing molecule in muscle and gives muscle tissue its red colour; diving animals such as whales have so much myoglobin that their muscles look black. This is odd, says Berenbrink, because at such high concentrations the myoglobin should clump together and become useless.
So his team looked closer at the amino-acid sequence of the protein, and found that myoglobin in aquatic and diving mammals has a far greater positive charge than that of their land-based relatives. Berenbrink thinks that this could permit the higher myoglobin concentrations seen in aquatic mammals, because the protein molecules electrostatically repel each other.”—
http://www.nature.com/news/making-the-most-of-muscle-oxygen-1.13202