![]() Marine scientist Vanessa Pirotta says there are plenty of theories, from misadventure to navigation errors. The biggest stranding on record involved more than 1000 pilot whales in New Zealand in 1918. Or animals can strand in groups, as commonly happens with pilot whales and other orcas such as killer whales. A sperm whale might wash up with a belly full of plastic. Whales can strand alone, often sick and unable to keep swimming. (And a warning: this content may be distressing) What are the likely causes of strandings? So how do strandings happen? What goes on during a rescue? And are we getting any better at saving whales? You can hear it in their voice, the distress.” “Like we would, some whales will choose their relatives over their own survival they’ll try to reach them. “When one whale gets into trouble, it calls,” he says. Some survived others returned to strand again alongside their beached pod.įor the whales themselves, marine biologist Olaf Meynecke describes a mass stranding like this: imagine trying to find a door in a pitch black room while hearing your loved ones screaming for help on the other side. Five long days of gruelling rescue efforts sent more than 100 back out to sea. In September 2020, more than 500 pilot whales washed up in Tasmania’s remote and treacherous Macquarie Harbour – the largest stranding in Australia’s history. Now, as humans deplete fish stocks and make noise of our own in the oceans, as water temperatures rise and ocean currents change, these events seem to be happening more and more. Why whales beach themselves is still largely a mystery, even after centuries of recorded strandings. “For whales, they start at their ears.”īut sometimes, something throws off this well-honed sonar and leads the whales astray, to where they were never made to go: land.Ī rescue team at Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania on September 24. The voices of humpbacks are so powerful that one note could travel the globe, says expert Wally Franklin, who has been studying whales for 30 years up north at Hervey Bay. Whales have been recorded calling to each other between Britain and the Carribean. But instead of GPS, they navigate with sound through echolocation, even in the empty darkness of the deep. Like humans, whales and orcas move through life alongside family and friends. Sometimes others will come in from safe water to join their dying pod. When whales are stranded on a beach, they keep calling to one another. Rescuers say the noise is the hardest part. "So we had a little bit of fun with the script at the writing.Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size "You want to report the story and let your audience know what happened, but at the same time, you want to let your audience know that you think it was a pretty weird event as well," he explained. Linnman's three-and-a-half minute news report, which begins with the journalist describing the "stinking whale of a problem," is infamous for its generous use of alliteration. "I also believe the state highway department is expert at blowing up hard rock things, making highways and such, and here they're dealing with a big, huge soft blubbery blood and oil-filled whale," he said. Instead, he and his colleagues believed they simply didn't use enough of explosives. Linnman says the man in charge, assistant highway engineer George Thornton, never acknowledged that using dynamite to get rid of the whale failed. The explosion only destroyed a portion of the whale. WATCH | Paul Linnman's news report as it aired 50 years agoĪssistant highway engineer George Thornton, right, was in charge of the project. "That stuff is dense, it's heavy - and it was absolutely frightening." "We realized things weren't necessarily going well when we started hearing chunks of blubber hitting the ground around us, which you can also hear in the video," he said. While he has never been to war, Linnman says he imagines what happened next was akin to being in combat. When the dynamite was ignited, things only got worse, Linnman recalled. I mean, this thing had been rotting for a few days and the smell is beyond description," he told CBC Radio's Day 6. ![]() ![]() "As soon as we got out of the car and were still a good distance from the whale, and behind sand dunes, the smell hit us. ![]() More than a dozen spectators gathered around the beach that day in November 1970 to watch the explosion unfold, including Paul Linnman, then a reporter for KATU News in Oregon.įifty years on, it's an experience he's never forgotten. When Oregon state highway officials decided to blow up a beached whale with a half tonne of dynamite, it went about as well as one might imagine.
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