The team had a great time at Lyme Regis, although the weather could have been warmer.

Many thanks to all those hundreds of visitors who came to our stand to talk about whales and dolphins along the Dorset coast. Our collection of parasites collected from post-mortemed animals was avidly examined by many young boys, while the girls (young and old) were generally less impressed by them.

On Friday it was schools day, we had many groups from local primary schools. Below is a group of kids preparing to carry away a stranded (inflatable) dolphin that they have just bagged up ready to go off for postmortem. Our volunteer Sarah seems to have everyone under control.

Saturday and Sunday were open to everyone and we had lots of locals and visitors asking about animals they had seen along the Dorset and Devon coastline. All were amazed at the number of stranded animals on the NHM and CSIP databases and the variety of dolphins, porpoises and whales that have stranded.

We look forward to next years Lyme Regis festival when we will celebrating 100 years of recording the cetaceans that come ashore around the UK

Not really any more information on this story Peru mass strandings currently around 600 animals. but it's an interesting interview with CNN showing the current situation.

I can't get the video to embed as it's CNNs own format but here is the link: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/22/world/americas/peru-dead-dolphins/

I've just downloaded my copy from Amazon, looks very intersesting.

 

The Sounding of the Whale is a remarkable book, an astounding piece of research that presents subtle, original arguments in a stylish and readable (if sometimes mannered) prose. Burnett's subject is the development of whale science in the 20th century, which takes in the work of zoologists, paleontologists, biological oceanographers, ecologists, neurologists and mathematicians, among others. The individual scientists are brought to life and their work is beautifully contextualised. Burnett shows us the many ties that bound whale scientists, disastrously, to the whaling industry. He also does a wonderful job of placing the science of cetology in its institutional settings, both academic and political

 

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/12/david-blackbourn-graham-burnett-whales?newsfeed=true

 

There are some very confusing and contradictory stories coming through about the mass strandings going on in Peru. I have done some digging and this seems to be the best source for information https://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/marmam/2012-April/004248.html

I’ve highlighted some of the main points below:

Numbers are always uncertain in these cases but it sounds like several hundred animals have washed up in the last month, with still more coming in. The strandings have taken place on the southern border of Illescas National Park, in Piura state.

There are 2 species involved, Long beaked common dolphin (Delphinus capensis) and Burmeister’s porpoise(Phocoena spinipinnis).  Unoffical figures put strandings numbers as high at 3000 animals (these figures may be taking a larger area and/or time frame in to account), although these more offical figures show less with dolphins have taken by far the largest hit of around 600 dead animals, with numbers of porpoises being much lower at around 20 animals. They are all in various decomposition states but they all seem to have washed up with in the last 5 weeks.

The necropsies performed on site show two main causes of death (although they are waiting for further results, so this isn’t conclusive yet), most of the results seem to be leading towards a potential epidemic outbreak of morbillivirus brucella (which has been linked to many mass stranding events, including in Europe in the 90s) with some animals showing signs of acoustic impact and decompression syndrome.

In related but other news, the Cape Cod strandings Cape Cod strandings finally easing seems to still be dwindling on (even though the end of the mass stranding has been announced), but sadly still no results.

So far no patterns have emerged, but the many lab analyses will take months to complete, we may yet find one.

 

 

 

Source: http://www.ifaw.org/us/news/stranding-update-no-patterns-depleting-resources-yet-teamwork-still-prevails

You may remember way back in 2010 there was a campaign to rescue Tom and Misha from living in quite diabolical conditions in a small pool in a tourist town in Turkey. Thanks too Born Free Foundation and Turkish NGO Underwater Research Society they were successfully recovered and I'm pleased to report that their rehabilitation is going really well and the team are now hopeful that release will be possible! 

Jeff explains; "We have had and still do have many obstacles to overcome but, throughout, Tom and Misha have proven to be willing participants. We have been working hard to prepare them for life outside their sea-pen. Building up their fitness and stamina has been a crucial component. Their muscle strength was very weak when they first arrived and they were desperately underweight and lethargic as they had been confined to a ridiculously small and inadequate captive environment. They have since gained weight, their bodies are toned and they are clearly much fitter and stronger".

Some of the techniques adopted by the team were first tested during the rehabilitation of  the orca Keiko, star of the Hollywood hit ‘Free Willy’. Jeff recalled, "We ‘cut our teeth’ on Keiko, which was a hugely expensive and ambitious project.  We learned from that experience and this enabled us to go on and successfully release Springer, another orca ."

 

Jeff added, "Tom and Misha are different again, not only because they are a different species but because they have spent years in captivity and have lost a lot of their natural instincts, which is what makes this project so unique and pioneering. One of the challenges has been to change their focus from ‘above water’ and people, to below water and their natural habitat. If we can get Tom and Misha back to the wild, in my view, it will be one of the great release projects of all time."

 

Source: http://www.bornfree.org.uk/campaigns/marine/hisaronu-dolphins/update-march-2012/?&utm_source=express&utm_medium=press&utm_campaign=Hisaronu

 

Also if you have a bit of spare cash, even a fiver, you can donate here: http://www.bornfree.org.uk/shop/acatalog/Dolphin_Rescue.html

 

 

179 animals in 39 days, that's a lot of work! Things seem to be easing up a bit now though, thank goodness!

“We saved more of them than we normally do,” she said. “Of the 179 only 71 were found alive and we successfully released 53 so that’s a 75 percent success rate. That was really high. In a great part that’s due to our fantastic volunteers and our ability to get to the animals quickly.”



Read more: Dolphin rescuers glad the tide of Cape Cod strandings is over - - Wicked Local Eastham http://www.wickedlocal.com/brewster/news/x587877869/Dolphin-rescuers-glad-the-tide-of-Cape-Cod-strandings-is-over#ixzz1oROEaORK

 

A bit of an ongoing story here, back in November a dolphin was rescued near Alabama, the area has seen a massive increase in strandings recently, see my previous posts here: Further on the Gulf Coast strandings.

Well it appears the dolphin, named Chance is still alive and seems to be healing well although still has a long way to go. Sadly the write up doesn't tell us much about the strandings which have now been declared a "Unusual Mortality Event."

GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A nearly dead dolphin found in Alabama in November is recovering at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and yielding data that may help explain 630 dolphin strandings that have occurred in the northern Gulf of Mexico since February 2010.

 

Moby Solangi, director of the institute, said he is not at liberty to talk about details of what has been discovered as the dolphin named "Chance" has been nursed back from the brink of death after being rescued Nov. 24 from near a marsh at Fort Morgan.

 

"What we can say is it has revealed some significant information," Solangi said.

 

"Finding this live dolphin was like finding the black box from an airplane after a crash," he said.

 

 

 

Source: http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2012/01/dolphin_found_in_alabama_is_yi.html

 

Massive fingers crossed for Chance and I hope they can work out whats happening and put an end to it soon!

Following the report by the Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme (CSIP) published before Christmas several people have contacted the museum via twitter/facebook asking if the fall in the number of recorded strandings is due to decline in the number of cetaceans in UK waters? and whether man is responsible for the fall in numbers?

For those who have not read the report, one of the main points was there has been a 22% fall in the numbers of animals stranded between 2005 and 2010 compared with the number recorded 2000- 2005. Unfortunately we are only able to record dead animals and are not able to relate this number to the actual number of live animals around the UK coast. The number of stranded animals in 2011 looks to have increased over the 2010 numbers, does this mean a recovery for UK animals?  - No. One years data or even 5 years are not enough to show trends.

Now that whale and dolphin watching has now become a tourist activity, with places such as Cornwall and the Scottish Isles having commercial boats taking people to look at cetaceans, more people are aware of the sealife around the UK coast and there are websites to record sightings  eg Seawatch. Please do record any sightings, as no one knows how many animals there are swimming around our shores. There are several groups trying to identify individual whale and dolphins by photograhing their dorsal fins and tail flukes. For example the Seawatch Foundation run a Photo a Fin campaign to gather information.  http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/events.php?uid=254

However it is difficult to correlate the number of strandings with the number of live sightings. Many factors influence if information is gathered about dead animals, the main one being if someone actually reports that an animal has stranded to us. Most people assume that 'someone else' will do something about a dead cetacean, there are only a few occasions that a stranded animal is reported to us by more than one member of the public, so we believe many more go unreported. There is now a freephone to call (0800 6520333) to report any cetacean stranded in the UK

The reason for CSIP is to gather information about strandings (which the Natural History Museum started in 1913). With more data we can look for longer term patterns in the number of strandings and causes of death for animals which are taken for post mortem. We can then hope to influence the decisions made by goverments in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff about the marine life around the UK

The question of whether man activities causes the death of some cetaceans is not in doubt. There is evidence that manmade underwater noise causes cetaceans to panic and die due to embolisms - similar to the bends in human divers. One of the CSIP investigators co-authored a paper on the mass stranding of beaked whales in the Canary Islands in 2002 which was linked to navel sonar activity. It is rare to be able to link any death with one particular sonic activity. However most deaths caused by man are due to bycatch- animals which have died due to fishing eg caught in nets an ddrowned. Between 1991 and 2010 almost 600 animals have been had their cause of death identified at post mortem as bycatch. There is research underway into underwater 'pingers' to deter dolphins from going near fishing boats. CSIP are currently investigating the levels of toxic chemicals eg PCBs in dolphins. These manmade chemicals are known to accumulate in the top predators eg Dolphin and Killer whales and while may not cause death directly will impact on the general health of an animal. Man's activities also affect the other animals that CSIP investigate - seals, marine turtles and basking sharks.