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Dead pilot whales Skye (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
Oh how sad!
It can't be a pleasant sight for you Steve.
It can't be a pleasant sight for you Steve.
Jane Turner
Well-known member
Are they pilots? I'm not exactly expert on ID out of water (or in it) - but they seem quite long beaked? Perhaps Northern Bottle-nosed?
rockfowl
Mark Andrews
I think you might be right Jane, general body shape and dorsal in wrong position for a Pilot.
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Jane Turner
Well-known member
Front flukes are wrong for Long-fin Pilot at least.... even sadder if they are NBW - the population is under 10K
Paul Penzance
Well-known member
Definitely Northern Bottlenose Whales, apart from the browner colouration, the throat pleats and no indentation in the centre of the tail. Also dorsal fin at rear third rather than front third.
rockfowl
Mark Andrews
Excellent, have come to the same conclusion. Hopefully those that come tomorrow Steve will do a thorough investigation.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Crows have to eat and they are scavengers. Would you have an issue if it was thirty Griffon Vultures or perhaps a few White-tailed Eagles? Carrion is carrion. Fall off a mountain someday and it could be you :t:
John
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Shirley Roulston
Well-known member
Very sad photos. They must have suffered such a slow death. Poor creatures.
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Sikadee148869
New member
I don't understand the whole whale thing. The beaching of whales is sad and all, but really, that is nature just doing its part. If whales beach, they beach. Hopefully the whales will just go into the earth and find their place in the web of life.
Allen S. Moore
Well-known member
Others will know more about this than I do, I know, but aren't whales thought to navigate partly by using sonar and the Earth's magnetic field, disturbances of which can lead to animals beaching? The military have been implicated as a probable cause in some of these cases of beaching, including one a few years ago when tens of dolphins beached in south Cornwall during military exercises which included the use of sonar. If I remember correctly, the report on this was mentioned in a thread on BF.
There are other human activities in the sea which are noisy and which could adversely affect cetaceans, too.
There are other human activities in the sea which are noisy and which could adversely affect cetaceans, too.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
There are a lot of claims but a much lower amount of scientific evidence.
FWIW IMO if loud noises were going to make much of a difference to cetaceans then the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII should have resulted in cetacean-coated beaches from Greenland to Mexico and from Murmansk to Dakar.
In addition the briefest study of modern sub-surface warfare will immediately reveal that active sonar (noise) instantly fixes the transmitting party's position on every opponent's systems. Nearly all modern sub-surface warfare relies in all but the extremity of self-preservation - to quickly fix on targets that have already detected you and are attacking - on passive sonar (silent). Fishing fleets and civilian vessels make much more use of active sonar than the military, for depth-sounding, survey and fish-finding among other purposes.
John
Everyone loves a BFG(big friendly giant) so to me is does seem that bit sadder when a whale does compared to other mammals/species.
Plus if a whale live strands it can be a long slow death that the animal has to suffer before finally dying
Plus they're smart with a theory of the other making it hard for us humans not to empathize with them.
lostinjapan
Well-known member
I can't say for sure whether submarines could be responsible for strandings or not, but would agree that civilian vessels use them in equal measure. t really depends on the type of sonar and the frequency it is emitting in terms of what effect it may have on cetaceans or pinnipeds. Some studies were done on using sonar to detect seals and porpoises around underwater turbines, such as the one in Strangford Lough and it was found that one model was far more abhorrent to seals and to a lesser extent porpoise than 2 others.
I have worked on seismic ships and they can put out noise into the ocean that far exceeds anything sonar can produce and really do cause some species to alter course or steer well clear of the vessel. There has been suggestion they have been responsible for strandings in shallower waters, but again it is difficult to prove.
Sean
