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Thirty-Six Pilot Whales Beached Along Caribbean's St-Martin Coast
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003
Source:
myTELUS
© The Canadian Press, 2003
MARIGOT, St-Martin (AP) - Thirty-six
whales beached themselves on the coast of St-Martin and died within hours
despite the efforts of people who tried to push some back out to sea.
The short-finned pilot whales were believed to have beached themselves Monday
night, and by noon Tuesday all were dead. The animals were found before dawn by
a man on his way to a dump in the French Caribbean territory, which shares an
island with Dutch St. Maarten. Other residents and tourists followed, gathering
around the whales, which were up to five metres long.
Some people were able to push two whales back into the water, but they returned
and beached themselves again, appearing exhausted, said Paul Ellinger, of the St.
Maarten Nature Foundation. He said it seemed the whales had become disoriented.
"What's clear is that they got off course. What caused them to go off course?
We'll have to check," Ellinger said. "It could be all kinds of reasons; the
temperature of the water, their sonar system. It could have been anything."
Biologists were keeping three carcasses to investigate.
The whales covered the beach along the shallow Grand Cailles Bay, the mouth of
which is fringed with coral reefs. The whales bore wounds apparently sustained
when they ran aground.
Short-finned pilot whales usually swim in pods, and when a leader goes astray
the entire pod often follows, Ellinger said.
French police arrived Tuesday morning and barred other people from the spot.
Workers, meanwhile, were ordered to dig beach-side graves to bury the remaining
whales.
It was the first time in recent memory that so many whales have beached
themselves in St-Martin, Ellinger said. "Last year there was one."
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