Trained marine medics from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) raced to Orkney on 11 July 2024 after the alarm was raised that 77 pilot whales had stranded. Sadly when they arrived they found only 12 animals still alive.
“On arrival, the Medics found there to be about 77 animals high up the beach, having evidently been stranded for several hours already. Sadly, only 12 of them still alive at this point,” says the BDMLR on its website.
When a mass stranding like this happens, BDMLR volunteers triage the surviving whales to save as many as possible. But these aquatic mammals can deteriorate quickly when they find themselves on land.
Despite their best efforts, the remaining pilot whales had to be euthanised for welfare reasons. The hours spent out of the water had caused “crush injury from their own weight and the high likelihood that they have inhaled water with the incoming tide,” says the BDMLR, adding that they were sinking into the soft sand which meant they couldn’t refloat themselves.
Pilot whales live in pods of between 10 and 100 individuals. They are highly social and have close bonds with their pod mates. This may be the reason they are particularly susceptible to mass strandings – because the pod is so tight-knit, they all stay together when one whale is sick or gets lost, which can lead to them all getting into trouble and stranding.
The reason for this mass stranding – one of the worst in Scottish history – is currently unknown.
Experts from the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) will now try to conduct post-mortems on as many of the whales as possible to try to find out the cause. The BDLMR adds that “there are no obvious indications as to why they all stranded today, and it may be some time before full results are available due to the huge task of conducting these examinations.”
Melissa Hobson is a trained BDMLR volunteer
Image of stranding @ BDML