Experts baffled as rarely seen beaked whales involved in series of strandings
Incidents across northern Europe on 26 and 27 July have left scientists trying to understand why so many of the deep-diving whales have appeared
A series of strandings of one of the world’s deepest dwelling and most rarely seen types of whale in the last few days has left experts baffled over why they might have appeared in such numbers.
Beaked whales are used to deep ocean waters and are so rarely seen that some species have only ever been identified through dead specimens. But on 26 and 27 July there were reports from western Ireland, Orkney in Scotland and the Netherlands of these whales being stranded, raising concerns that human actions could be implicated in the animals’ deaths.
“When you see these divers in the shallow North Sea, you know that it’s going to be a grim end,” said Dr Jeroen Hoekendijk, a marine scientist and photographer who attended the scene of the Netherlands stranding on 26 July. A male and a female were beached between Heemskerk and Wijk aan Zee, north of The Hague, where the sloping shores of the southern North Sea are a notorious black spot for whale strandings.
“When SOS Dolfijn [the Dutch cetacean rescue team] arrived on the scene the two whales were thrashing wildly in the surf,” said Hoekendijk. “They were obviously animals in distress.”
