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Every year, hundreds of whales, dolphins, or porpoises are found lying on beaches along coastlines around the world, unable to get back into the ocean. This is known as stranding. Stranded whales are often called beached whales.
Most stranded cetaceans are already dead or very ill, but some are alive and apparently healthy.
A single stranding is when just one cetacean strands on a beach. Single strandings are most often the result of illness or injury, when a cetacean dies of natural causes and is washed ashore. However, sometimes the cetacean is alive when it strands and dies soon afterward.
When a group of
cetaceans is stranded, it is called a mass stranding. These often result in the death of the whole group. Occasionally stranded cetaceans can be saved by being refloated. Cetaceans in a mass stranding that are refloated one by one tend to re-strand themselves, possibly because of their attachment and concern to the group.
Only 10 species
of cetaceans mass strand regularly and another 10 species do so
occasionally. Most mass strandings are of toothed whale
species such as sperm whales, beluga whales and pygmy sperm
whales.
When beached whales are found, people try to help them. The whales must be kept wet and cool, and when the tide comes in, people try to get the whales into water as deep as possible, supporting them until they are floating and able to swim.
It is not known why cetaceans strand. Some scientists think that they do so intentionally to rest or seek safety of land or to rub their skin. Others believe that they get confused signals in shallow water, or that an ear parasite makes them get lost.
Find out more about whale strandings, or beached whales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beached_whale
If you use any part of this,
acknowledge it in your bibliography like this:
Whales
(2002).
[Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au
Updated October 2007