Fauna Journal Entry
Beached Whales Saved in Australia (December 1, 2008)
Rescuers were able to save some of the pilot whales that beached in Tasmania. National Marine Mammal Laboratory.
Rescuers freed eleven beached pilot whales in Tasmania, an island off the southern coast of Australia. The workers used giant slings to load the huge mammals into trucks, then drove them to a nearby deep-water beach to release them. Sadly, fifty-three other pilot whales were already dead when volunteers arrived on the beach.
The rescued whales were tagged with satellite tracking devices to follow their movements. At least five of the whales joined with a larger pod in the safety of deeper waters. The pod was swimming eastward along their seasonal migrational route. This is the first time satellite tracking has been used to follow beached whales in Australia.
Whale strandings are common in Australia and New Zealand, which the mammals pass while migrating to and from Antarctica. The cause of the most recent stranding remains a mystery. It may be linked to the fact that pilot whales are very sociable animals. They often swim together in large pods that can include dozens of whales. A pod may have chased its prey too close to the beach. Another possibility is the leader or another pod member became sick or disoriented and the others followed it to shore.
Some past strandings were blamed on parasite infections that disabled the whales' sense of direction. In some parts of the world, strandings have sometimes been linked to underwater sonar tests. Sonar sends powerful sound waves pulsing through the ocean that can injure marine mammals' ears or disorient them.
