Wildlife Team Saved 11 Stranded Pilot Whales

AFP

Sri Lanka: Eleven pilot whales that had become stranded Saturday morning near the shore on Sri Lanka’s west coast had been saved, Wildlife Officials informed.

Local fishermen alerted authorities when they saw the pod after midnight close to the resort village of Kudawa and a navy unit assisted in the rescue operation.

“There were 14 of them and three were dead on coming ashore,” Wildlife Officer Eranda Gamage said.

“They had to be taken into the deeper seas to drop them there so that they would not come back to the shore. The navy took them in their boats and dropped them, ”Eranda Gamage added.

Pilot whales, also known as blackfish or pothead whales, can grow to be six metres (20 feet) long and a tonne in weight. They are highly social and have been kept in oceanariums, where they are sometimes trained to perform, and the U.S. Navy has attempted to train pilot whales to attach devices to stray torpedoes.

In addition, pilot whales are one of the species that will mass strand, a phenomenon in which an entire school beaches itself. Despite decades of scientific inquiry, scientists have been unable to agree on a cause for this behaviour.

120 pilot whales were saved by Sri Lankan rescuers in November 2020 after a strenuous overnight operation that also included the navy of the island nation.

Following the huge beaching on the country’s western coast at Panadura, south of the country’s capital Colombo, three pilot whales and one dolphin perished from injuries.