NZ and Tasmanian cetacean strandings (Part I)

Jean said:
Y'never know you could bottle the scent and sell it as "l'eau de whale pong" would fit right in there with last years "l'eau de squid pong"

We are currently battling it out in the wetlab. In competition:
"l'eau de squid beaks" by :oshea:
"l'eau de rattails" by Matt Jones
"l'eau de sharks" by TPOTH

Can report that we are all pretty immune to the stench but :oshea: seems to be leading... chalk it to experience i think. My own concoction requires a tiny bit of time to mature to pugnent ammonia flavour... :twisted:

TPOTH
 
TPOTH said:
Jean said:
Y'never know you could bottle the scent and sell it as "l'eau de whale pong" would fit right in there with last years "l'eau de squid pong"

We are currently battling it out in the wetlab. In competition:
"l'eau de squid beaks" by :oshea:
"l'eau de rattails" by Matt Jones
"l'eau de sharks" by TPOTH

Can report that we are all pretty immune to the stench but :oshea: seems to be leading... chalk it to experience i think. My own concoction requires a tiny bit of time to mature to pugnent ammonia flavour... :twisted:

TPOTH

Add in some asfoetida (I think that's how it's spelt!) Nasty smelling plant material, real puke inducing stuff.....then you'll win you might even crack the famous :oshea: "what smell?" poker face :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

J
 
Jean said:
you might even crack the famous :oshea: "what smell?" poker face :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Already have :lol:
I did "forget" two half dissected sharks we used for the Discovery Channel in the sink one wekend... can guarantee you that the poker face was well and truly shattered on Monday morning :biggrin2:
..or it could have been that "French smell" ??? :cry:

TPOTH
 
TPOTH said:
Jean said:
you might even crack the famous :oshea: "what smell?" poker face :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Already have :lol:
I did "forget" two half dissected sharks we used for the Discovery Channel in the sink one wekend... can guarantee you that the poker face was well and truly shattered on Monday morning :biggrin2:
..or it could have been that "French smell" ??? :cry:

TPOTH

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I find a nicely mature Moroteuthis Tentacle or mantle under the sink gets a reaction from the whole building (mind you so does boiling a seal head to get the teeth out!) :twisted:

J
 
An unfortunate resurrection...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051025/sc_afp/australiaanimalswhales_051025140312

60 pilots whales beached themselves in Marion Bay, Tasmania.

Its interesting to think about how long humans have known about whale strandings, and yet we still only have theories as to why it happens. We really don't know anything about anything. I can't remember it exactly, but David Suzuki, Canadian scientist/activist, said something along the lines that he'd worked with fruit flies for over 21 years and he still didn't know half of what was going on with these "simple" creatures. Really gives you pause as to what we're doing to this here Earth.

Cheers, Jesse
 
A large pod (Pilot Whales) stranded here last week; the majority were fortunately saved.

The NZ Department of Conservation and volunteers have done a marvelous job in salvaging something from this tragedy (over and above saving the majority of them), and saw to it that the stomach's of a number of specimens were sampled, the contents saved and soon-to-be en route to us for more detailed examination. I was unable to get down, as this had been a rather busy time up here.

In the attached press release I note (with interest) that the stomachs are reported to be 'empty', and they were, largely so (sounds familiar doesn't it; we're looking at this in sperm whales and pygmy sperm whales also), but in discussions with those that extracted the contents, there are a few squid beaks and parasites within (maybe from 7 specimens; at least 2 were empty). Previously we had no information on the diet of this whale in NZ waters, which is quite bizarre given their mass-stranding nature. As soon as we get the beaks post Christmas (a terrible time with university and Department/Ministry close downs, but the time I get the most done because there are no disturbances) we'll be able to post something online. We had only anecdotal information that these whales ate fish in NZ waters .... but to the best of my knowledge there were no fish remains amongst the contents.

The following copy/pasted from this link
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3521131a11,00.html

Volunteers bury 24 whales
23 December 2005
By HELEN MURDOCH

Kaumatua Te Aroha (Losa) Holmwood prayed and cried as 24 of the pilot whales that stranded on Puponga beach were buried.


The mass grave lies within sight and sound of the sea at the base of Farewell Spit, the notorious sandy arm which has trapped so many marine mammals in the past.

But while the digger gently shifted the sand dune over the mammals' grave yesterday, 100-plus whales saved by a mass of volunteers swam powerfully out to sea.

"The whales have feeling for each other, if one gets sick or hurt they follow it in to shore," said Holmwood.

"Then all the people come out and nurse and bathe them so they can get back out to sea, but unfortunately these ones did not go back."

The incoming tide lapping piles of excavated sand off Puponga beach, in a second rescue effort, was the only sign yesterday of this week's massive effort to save some 120 long-finned pilot whales which stranded high on the intertidal shore on Tuesday.

Across from the beach, in the campground of Farewell Gardens Holiday Park, British visitor Kulbir Dhingra marvelled at his unexpected brush with the mammals.

AdvertisementAdvertisementHe and his family arrived to find Puponga packed with cars and people.

"I've never experienced anything like it, we spent the whole day helping. They are very gentle and respond when you pour water over them," Dhingra said.

"It was an amazing vibe and I felt like I was doing something useful and important.

"And so many people came from so far away – the community effort was incredible."

The family's decision to go to yesterday's burial was simple, he said.

"We had to get closure on it."

The Golden Bay Department of Conservation whale co-ordinator Simon Walls, meanwhile, looked exhausted, but happy so many whales could be saved.

He has managed three major rescue operations in as many days.

The main effort to refloat the stranded whales was a marathon effort, with 300-plus volunteers and DOC staff from as far away as Nelson working together and patiently waiting for the tide.

"People are the powerhouse of a refloating. We just co-ordinate things behind the scenes," Walls said.

By 5pm they had got the whales bunched together in chest-deep water. Then they had to wait for the stressed mammals to recover enough to start swimming.

"If you put your head under the water it was buzzing with whale communication," Walls said. "It seemed to take forever to rally and find a sense of direction, then they literally got into a formation, formed a line about a kilometre long and started to head out."

Boats stayed with the pod until the wind raised the sea to a rough chop, then a splinter group of 50 curved back to shore, about 5km south of Puponga, he said.

Volunteers who were still at hand moved rapidly to the new site and quickly turned the whales around, using belly slings and sheer muscle, herding them back out to sea.

Early yesterday morning the whales were spotted by plane moving back towards shore, this time near the Rototai bar, on the southern side of Golden Bay.

DOC workers moved quickly and stopped them and turned them in a metre of water before they beached.

Dissection of the dead whales showed their stomachs were empty, said Walls.

Walls said the stranding scenario could not have been much worse.

The whales were very high on Puponga's long intertidal beach, inside the shelter of Puponga Point and the tides were very poor. The site of the stranding was a long way from urban populations of volunteers, he said.

"Still we didn't lose any people and we didn't lose too many whales. It's better than the bad old days when stranded whales were just shot, or totally ignored."
 
Off to another stranding first thing morrow morn; 5hr drive. A 15m male sperm whale has stranded off Mahia Peninsula (for those that know where this is) today; the supposed season to be jolly is a season to be sombre, from a whale's perspective. I'm surprised that we haven't had a stranding just west of where we're based this year (I should be happy).

An update soon!
 
Well, the update is that they buried it before I could get there, so we lost out on that opportunity to get another stomach content. It had been dead for some time by the sounds of things. It's always a difficult time of the year when DOC (Department of Conservation) find themselves under-resourced in terms of personnel. Sad!
 
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Stranded whales shot dead in NZ
Sad, sad, sad

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Whale stranding cases 'increase'
"Strandings of cetaceans (the group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises) have increased from 360 in 1994 to 782 in 2004, the report finds.

Since only a fraction of dead whales and dolphins will eventually arrive on beaches to be counted, the actual number of cetacean deaths is almost certainly much higher.

"We believe that the numbers of animals we see stranded probably represents 10% of what is being killed out there," Richard Sabin, of the Natural History Museum, London, told the BBC News website."

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Navy denies Tasmania whale deaths
 
Sad indeed. I wonder...it appears that there seems to be a lot of strandings all of a sudden. Is there traditionally a "season" when strandings are particularly high, or is all this just coincidental?

Cheers to the volunteers for doing all that they can!
 
There have been 15,000+ recorded whale strandings in NZ since around 1860. Of these over two-thirds have been pilot whales...its nothing unusual. (who called them 'pilot' whales anyway??) Any "season" for strandings coincides with increased public use of the beaches in summer, hence more observations. Because of the insulating nature of whale blubber, internal decomposition is rapid, leaving only the blubber (a.k.a. 'globsters') after only a few days. A 40 foot sperm whale will completely rot and disappear within 10 days.
Interestingly, as recently as the 1960s there are front page photographs in the local newspapers of the day showing "macho" sharpshooters with thier dolphin "trophies", which they managed to shoot from the beach. The dolphinariums/marineworlds have done a remarkable job in re-educating the public into worshipping these animals.
 
Thanks for helping to put this into perspective Chris. Interesting reading.
 
Here's an interesting story; I got a bit of a shock when I read it this morning, as it was based on a brief conversation with a reporter several days ago.

The content is fine, except it is a pilot whale, not Mesoplodon. I would have liked to have seen the article beforehand, before released, but alas, this did not happen. At least we're getting the story out, and the reporter has done some homework. More to follow no doubt, in weeks to come, when we conduct the autopsy.

Click here

To see a CT pic of the beast concerned click rl]. It was just a little too long to fit through the CT scan, so the flukes and rear part of the vertebral column are missing.
 
We've just returned from a wee trip down south, where we got snowed in for 2 days in a place that grows carrots somewhere in the middle of North Island (NZ), all roads in and out were shut (slips, snow, ice, blizards ....), in order to get this partial dead whale's stomach contents. Emma has much better pics on her camera (she's working on stomach contents of these brutes), so I'll get her to post them shortly.

It was COLD!!

Even though there's no snow on the ground around the 'headless' whale (don't ask; in the name of science, and not us), it was cold there; the carcass was 5 days old, although we managed to secure the entire alimentary tract. Fantastic stuff therein. More to follow.

It is a Pygmy Sperm Whale - rarely stranding in this particular area (more common elsewhere.

Pics of Emma, snow at lower and slightly higher altitudes, before the road was closed!
 

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