Posts

TWO QUAKES CAUSE NEAR BEACHING IN CAPE VERDE ISLANDS

Image
August 2012:  The Cape Verde mass stranding of 17 pilot whales took place on Santa Maria Beach (Sal Island 16.590N; 22.900W) during early morning hours on August 24, 2012.  The rescuers were able to push the whales back into deep water and they swam off with the surface flow. These whales were easily rescued because the depth of water at this beach drops off rather quickly due to beach erosion by currents that run parallel to the shoreline at Santa Maria Beach. In other words, this beach is not your stranding-typical, gradually-slopping beach. You can see the water quickly gets deeper near the whales in the pictures. You can also see that the whales are swimming from left to right indicating that the current was flowing west (to the right) and along the shoreline. The two quakes that injured this pod occurred along the Central Mid Atlantic Ridge, just north of the equator at: 4:49N; 32:73W. The first event was a shallow, thrus...

Seaquake-injured Pilot Whales Strand on Scotland Beach

Image
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. ...