{"id":62238,"date":"2025-08-11T20:05:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T20:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62238\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T20:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T20:05:16","slug":"pregnant-female-among-23-dead-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62238\/","title":{"rendered":"Pregnant female among 23 dead whales"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

The whales may have been dead for several days before being found<\/p>\n

A pregnant female was among a pod of 23 pilot whales found dead after a mass stranding in Orkney.<\/p>\n

The whales were discovered on the Orkney island of Sanday<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

It is thought they may have been dead for several days. Tests are being carried out.<\/p>\n

Emma Neave-Webb, of Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (Smass), said the whales appeared to have been healthy, and that the cause of the incident may never be known.<\/p>\n

Ms Neave-Webb told BBC Radio Orkney she spent Sunday taking samples from the pod.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been on the site basically taking as much information from each animal as we can,” she said.<\/p>\n

“They are fairly decomposed, they have obviously been dead a few days.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been taking measurements. From that, we can get an idea of how healthy the animals are, how well fed they are.”<\/p>\n

She said samples of tissue, skin and blubber would also be analysed.<\/p>\n

“We can do genetics and find out how the different animals are related to each other,” Ms Neave-Webb said.<\/p>\n

“Twenty-three animals is a lot to get through. We do know one of them was a pregnant female.<\/p>\n

“They had all live-stranded from the look of it, it’s quite a remote area. Somebody has been walking there and found them.”<\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/p>\n

Emma Neave-Webb said it was a challenging situation<\/p>\n

She said the samples would tell the researchers about the lives of the whales but it was difficult to tell what the cause of death was.<\/p>\n

“They all looked in very, very good health,” she said. “There’s no animal that was showing any sign of injury, or any signs of disease.<\/p>\n

“They all looked like they were in good nutritional health, none of them looked skinny, so there was nothing obvious going on, so we can rule that out.”<\/p>\n

How unusual is the mass whale stranding on this island?<\/p>\n

Last summer, 77 pilot whales washed ashore<\/a> on the same island.<\/p>\n

About a dozen that were still alive were euthanised.<\/p>\n

The carcasses were later buried at multiple land sites, which were approved after tests were carried out to prevent any possible disturbance to archaeological sites.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got colleagues in New Zealand and Australia and they see this happen quite frequently, unfortunately, so it does happen,” Ms Neave-Webb said.<\/p>\n

“Pilot whales are very prone to doing this, why they come into these areas we don’t know, but they do seem to be very prone all over the world.”<\/p>\n

She added: “We do know that the North Atlantic has a large population of pilot whales.<\/p>\n

“It’s unusual for Scotland, I will say, it is unusual to have two in such quick succession.”<\/p>\n

The latest stranding is at a rocky beach, so access for possible disposal via towing out to water or by tractor would be challenging.<\/p>\n

The whales may be left to decompose naturally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC The whales may have been dead for several days before being found A pregnant female was among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-62238","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\/62238","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=62238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}