![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0022fb94-614.jpg\"\/)
\nDr Berrow said nothing could have been done to save the whales after they became stranded (Photo: Cathy and Angela Kelly via IWDG)<\/p>\n
A True’s beaked whale and her calf who became stranded and died in Co Mayo could have beached due to “acoustic trauma”, according to the CEO of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group.<\/p>\n
Acoustic trauma can cause great harm to whales due to loud man-made sounds in the ocean, particularly when naval exercises make use of active sonar.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9\u2019s Morning Ireland, Dr Simon Berrow, who is also a lecturer at Atlantic Technical University Galway, said the stranding in Kilcummin Back Strand on 27 July happened around the same time as similar incidents in the Netherlands and Orkney in Scotland.<\/p>\n
“When you put them all together, it could just be a coincidence, or it could indicate that something has happened.<\/p>\n
“Typically, when these deep-diving species live-strand, your first thought is it could be acoustic trauma,” Dr Berrow said.<\/p>\n
He added: “These species are deep divers. They\u2019ll go down to 1,000 or 2,000 metres on every dive so they\u2019re designed to dive deep routinely.<\/p>\n
“And often they\u2019re getting washed up with signs of the bends, which is an incredibly unusual thing, so it tends to be attributed to acoustic trauma when the animal has surfaced too fast.<\/p>\n
“This is generally associated with typically naval exercises because the navy – not the Irish navy \u2013 would use a thing called an ‘active sonar\u2019 which is the same frequency as the whales use to communicate and they\u2019re incredibly sensitive to these frequencies.<\/p>\n
\nDr Berrow said nothing could have been done to save the whales after they became stranded (Photo: Cathy and Angela Kelly via IWDG)<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re not saying that\u2019s the case but when you\u2019ve an unusual event over a wide geographical range you kind of flag and think \u2018what\u2019s going on? Is this just a coincidence or a little bit indicative of something sinister going on\u2019,” Dr Berrow said.<\/p>\n
According to Dr Berrow, the stranding of the two True\u2019s beaked whales was only the second confirmed sighting in Irish waters ever, and the 20th stranding of that species in total since 1899.<\/p>\n
He said nothing at all could have been done to save the whales after they became stranded.<\/p>\n
“The logistics of refloating these whales are quite challenging, you need people, you need people who are trained, it can be quite dangerous.”<\/p>\n
Dr Berrow added that while the calf refloated on its own, it was found dead a few days later.<\/p>\n
“It probably died fairly quickly and that\u2019s probably a good thing because with the adult mother dying the calf would have starved to death,” he said.<\/p>\n
An investigation is under way to determine what happened to the whales.<\/p>\n
However, Dr Berrow is unsure whether it will get to the bottom of what happened due to the complexity of conducting the post-mortem and a lack of expertise in Ireland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A True’s beaked whale and her calf who became stranded and died in Co Mayo could have beached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-47569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}