Experts’ plea: Let stranded whales die
Well-meaning rescuers who join efforts to save beached whales may only be prolonging the suffering of creatures who would be better off killed, animal welfare experts have warned following another mass stranding of pilot whales on Australia’s coastline.
The latest rescue operation began when around 90 pilot whales stranded themselves in Hamelin Bay near Perth on Monday. But rescuers were unable to help most of the whales who died on the beach.
Eleven of the creatures were refloated in deeper water after being transported in giant slings aboard trucks. But specialists had to put one of the whales down after straggling near the shore.
On Wednesday, whales watchers reported that nine of the group had become stranded again after heading back towards the coast and were unlikely to survive. Six of the whales are already dead, one of them after being attacked by sharks, local official Jason Foster said.
The location is along a rugged stretch of coastline and it is impossible to bring in the machinery necessary to attempt a further rescue and the whales will be euthanised, he added.
In a statement published Tuesday, the Marine Animal Rescue Coalition, which includes the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the whales would be better killed by lethal injection.
According to autopsies on stranded whales performed by Zoological Society of London, larger whales such as sperm whales and beaked whales are extremely vulnerable to kidney failure because of the weight of their bodies pressing on their organs without the support of surrounding seawater.
Within an hour of becoming stranded the renal damage is irreversible and probably fatal, experts said.
“Euthanasia can be a very emotive issue,” Adam Grogan of the RSPCA told the New Scientist, “but it is often in a stranded whale’s best interests.”