5 sperm whales washed up on lincolshire beach uk

www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk...

A fifth whale from the same pod has washed up near to where a further four carcasses were found over the weekend.

As reported, three whale carcasses were discovered on Skegness beach on Sunday morning and a fourth was found stranded on a beach at Hunstanton on Saturday.

In a sad turn of events, a fifth whale has washed up near Wainfleet today. HM Coastguard believe the whale is dead.

A statement from HM Coastguard said: "HM Coastguard can confirm that a fifth whale has washed up near Wainfleet.

What is going on ? why are they getting washed up ? i know we have some wind farms based out in the humber near there. i wounder uf they have anything to do with it all ?

a reply to: rikgrimsby

Did the whales wash ashore already deceased?

Also, has a necropsy been performed on the first four carcasses yet? An indication of what caused the death, how long ago the death was, and an examination of the tides to track the whales back to the scene of death, might be suggestive as to what happened.

2 weeks ago 5 sperm whales also beached in Holland and in Germany a couple as well!

They didn't had health issues or where starving due to a lack of food from the looks of it.

a reply to: rikgrimsby

Just goes to show that when Whales beach they do so for a reason not because they got lost as some naturalists like to think , there is a problem out there and it's beholding on us to find and fix it.

I also think it's time we stopped forcing these animals back into the water to suffer when it's obvious they came here to die.

I was sickened to see the news footage of the sightseers taking selfies of themselves next to the dead whales ... sad pathetic animals (the people not the whales)

Sperm whales have a brain that weighs 5 times more than a human, they have the largest brain on earth. For more sperm wha
blogs.scientificamerican.com...

a reply to: woodwardjnr

I do find them one of the coolest looking whales, when I was a kid I just loved looking/reading and wondering about them in my books I had about them.

I hope future kids still can do the same (meaning that they still exist as well)! (not so sure about that!).

originally posted by: rikgrimsby
What is going on ? why are they getting washed up ? i know we have some wind farms based out in the humber near there. i wounder uf they have anything to do with it all ?

12 beached sperm whales die in week of carnage on northern European coast

"These whales have quite simply made a mistake," Thilo Maack, a marine biologist with Greenpeace, told German TV. "They didn't pass Scotland but turned off into the North Sea. That happens sometimes."

Seems like a pod has just made a navigation error and found themselves stuck in the North Sea area.

Why do sperm whales wash up on beaches?

Sperm whales rely on sonar to navigate. They send out sound pulses, which bounce back off distant surfaces, helping them to form a clear picture of their underwater world. This doesn't work on a shallow sandy seabed, like Britain's, and whales quickly become disorientated. "The pod probably followed a shoal of squid into the North Sea around the New Year and then got stuck," says Peter Evans, director of The SeaWatch Foundation. "As they head south the water becomes shallower. Once they end up on a sand bank it's all over for the whale. It causes cardiovascular collapse and their organs start failing."

It sounds pretty logical for a reason, at a guess I'd say maybe one gets in trouble, calls out in distress so others come over to try and help and get stuck too which is why we don't really see just 1 lone whale beached but many

Whales are sound critters, have this huge organ in their head for sending and receiving sonar to navigate and hunt.

If Navies were operating in the area the sonar from ships can rupture their sound organs, usually an autopsy can reveal that they were driven mad or lost their way from ship sonar. Sometimes their organs are burst.

Either that or underwater explosions used for sounding or war games, training, whatever.

Thats one indicator when a bunch of these mammals all die at the same time.

a reply to: intrptr

Oh, so sad for those large guys and gals. Sonar blasts seem a reasonable concern.

I seem to have forgotten how these whales got their names, meaning "Sperm." Is it that they look like a several ton pile of male excretion? Maybe for the albino specimens, like Moby? I'm usually a nerdy trivia guy, but the brain has left the building... oh well.... and I refuse to use Google.. .poor form.

a reply to: Baddogma

The head of the whale contains a liquid wax called spermaceti, from which the whale derives its name.

There you go I googled for you

Very sad news. I'm not so sure I believe the above scientists conclusion, about them getting lost. Aren't they really smart animals? I think something else is going on......jmo......

a reply to: intrptr

Very true about the sonar, it's like screaming right in someone's ear to cetaceans.
There may be more at play here with electromagnetic fields and/or radio waves.
We are just beginning to learn the abilities of these magnificent creatures and I'm afraid they will be extinct by the time we figure out how we're killing them.
That applies to all life forms on the planet, not just whales.

a reply to: rikgrimsby
Start to our year
25th January 2016 - 5 dead whales found washed ashore along the coast of Lincolnshire, England.
8th January 2016 - 7 dead whales found along the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico.
17th January 2016 - 12 sperm whales wash up dead on islands in Netherlands and Germany.
14th January 2016 - 5 giant sperm whales wash ashore dead on Texel Island in Netherlands.
2th January 2016 - 100+ Whales stranded, 45 dead on the coast of Tamil Nadu, India.
www.end-times-prophecy.org...

15th January 2016 - MASSIVE - 10,000+ dead squid wash ashore 'reason Dead squid in chileunknown' in Arauco, Chile.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

wow, 10,000+ dead squids... main food from sperm whales.

www.thebigwobble.org...

Not saying there is a connection but from above link: 330 whales found washed up in a remote inlet in southern Chile. 330??

And:
www.thebigwobble.org...

I don't have much faith in a good future for ocean life that's I know almost for certain- species in the oceans (higher life forms at least) are dying like crazy.... When you or at least when I see dolphins (for example) I can feel them, they are so special, like some close sister/brother... We are all related, sharing the same planet and grown up together for such a long time, they even where here before humankind showed up!.. and they have something we can relate too/share, or at least I can sense that when seeing them...
When there would be no dolphins or whales in the oceans to be found, it's at least for me the same when loosing your brother or sister..

Not far from where I live. The local paper has a photo of a guy cutting out a tooth accusing him of taking home a trophy .

Taking selfies may be weird but going to look out of curiosity isn't. How many opportunities do you have to see a sperm whale? Visitors to Skegness over the past couple of days are comparable to Bank holiday numbers.

Wikipedia has a good page on Cetacean stranding and its causes.

Link

A key factor in many of these cases appears to be the strong social cohesion of toothed whales. If one gets into trouble, its distress calls may prompt the rest of the pod to follow and beach themselves alongside.

If they're beached I doubt they would be able to make their calls. They suffocate due to their own weight from being out of water. Also, sounds travel much farther underwater - depending on how much water they were in would affect the strength and tones of their calls

a reply to: intrptr

I fear that is far more plausible than "they made a mistake"