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Sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for England

In association with The National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Executive

Introduction

The Natural History Museum has been monitoring whale strandings since 1913.

In 1324, a statute was passed which gave the Crown qualified rights to cetaceans stranded on, or caught in the waters of England and Wales. Similar rights were claimed for the Crown of Scotland. The animals were described as 'Fishes Royal'

In 1913, by agreement with the then Board of Trade, these rights were transferred to the Natural History Museum in London, at that time known as the British Museum (Natural History). Since then, in monitoring cetacean strandings, over 8000 animals have been recorded, some of the species being new to British waters. Initially, information was stored on a card index. Latterly, information is collated and entered on computer. The resulting database is used to produce distribution maps and analyse information about the biology and ecology of the different species.

The National Stranded Whale Recording Scheme is now the centre of a co-ordinated investigation, funded since April 1990 by the then UK Department of the Environment, subsequently by the Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions, and now the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, into the biology and ecology of cetacean populations around the British Isles and is a contribution to the UK's programme of research on the North Sea and its response to ASCOBANS (the Agreement on the conservation of Small Cetaceans Of the Baltic And North Seas). Investigations are carried out in association with the Institute of Zoology at Regents Park, London (London Zoo) which has responsibility for co-ordinating autopsies.