THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY WHALES MASS STRAND

Sixteen pilot whales, including four calves, were injured by an undersea earthquake on 11 August 2012. They died in a mass stranding on the coast of Fife in Scotland. The pod of 26 was discovered inside a cove on a small sandy beach at the base of steep cliffs in Pittenweem, near St Andrews, shortly after 7am on Sunday (02 Sept 2012). A further 24 pilot whales from the same pod have been seen in the shallows three miles along the coast at Cellardyke. They were being closely observed amid fears they might also beach. A spokesman for Fife coast guard said: "The usual scenario would be that the whale that is leading the group has become ill, or has lost its way, and gets beached and the rest will follow on, although we do not know for sure if that is what happened."  This NONSENSE is wrong.   To understand why I say this read "Whale Stranding Conspiracy." The truth is that all the whales in the pod are lost and swimming along with the flow of the surface currents.

To review the real cause of whale and dolphin beachings, read the column on the right. In general, this pod was injured by two quakes, one a few seconds after the first.  The events occurred along the Central Mid-Atlantic Ridge, upstream about 3,000 miles form the stranding beach. The pressure-related injury damaged their sinuses and knocked out their ability to echo-navigate and to dive and feed themselves. They were swimming north with the surface currents along the Florida Coast.There were two weather systems affecting the surface flow. The shoreward wind picked up and blew the surface waters and the whales into the sand. You can notice in this SST image that warmer Gulf Stream waters washed inward just north of West Palm Beach at 01:58 GMT early Saturday morning. This is when the non-navigating whales were brought in near shore. They moved north with this filament of warmer water and were then washed into the sand by an inflowing tide and a strong wind blowing shoreward.