Onlookers and rescuers found three baby sperm whales dead on a beach near Skegness in East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.
Advertisement
Security guards are patrolling beaches onto which four sperm whales washed up over the weekend after the corpses were daubed with graffiti.
Now experts are examining samples taken from the animals, which are among more than 15 whales to die in the southern North Sea in recent weeks.
“When it became apparent our attempts were not going to work, we scaled back the team and about a dozen of us stayed with the whale until it died.” said Mr Copeland, Hunstanton Sealife curator. “We have informed our Receiver of Wreck and the Zoological Society of London”.
“At around 3.30pm yesterday afternoon, the whale was spotted in a pod of up to six whales swimming close to the beach”.
“It is unknown where the rest of the pod are at this stage”, the MCA said Sunday.
It is likely the whales swam south looking for food but got disorientated.
“They probably came in following squid, because that’s what they feed on”, he added.
“The further south they got the shallower the water gets and when they got to Norfolk, which is very, very shallow, it’s quite hard to navigate and they tend to lose their way and actually strand”.
According to Dr Evans, six whales were stranded and died in the Netherlands, while six others died in Germany.
Brian Long, portfolio holder for the environment with West Norfolk council, told the Eastern Daily Press that specialist contractors would be brought in to cut up the carcass and remove the whale.
There are fears at least two of the other whales could become stranded. Tests on the whales found stranded in Holland and Germany revealed that they were healthy animals, with squid in their stomachs. They laid side by side on the beach.
A whale that was beached at Breezy Point in NY in late 2012 was buried in the same spot that it died because it was too big to be moved.
“The general consensus is that it’s a pod (group of whales) that has got lost and they’ve become unstuck through stress meaning that, unfortunately, they have beached themselves”.
Advertisement
“One of them was really stuck and it was still there when I left”.
