Reports on seven large animals stranding on the East Yorkshire coast first reached the British Divers Marine Life Rescue at 8.30 AM on Christmas day. The arriving rescue team identified the big animals as a group of now ten sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales.
Due to the rough sea, the team was forced to watch the scene from the safe land. The presumably juvenile males reached up to 20 metres in length and would thus not be moveable, even in the right weather conditions. Weighing up to 80 tonnes, this species is known to rarely survive for long without the support of water and difficult to put asleep by human hand.
By the time the evening rolled around, all ten animals had died. Further reports on more whales in the area could not be confirmed.
Sperm whales are a deep-diving species that hunts on large and medium-sized squid which are not abundant in the North Sea. The shallow Eastern British shores are therefore way out of their habitat. The emancipated state of the whales also supports the notion that they had gotten lost on their search for food.
It was the biggest sperm whale mass stranding since the beginning of records in 1913.
The full coverage can be found in the first mentioning and the update on the BDMLR Facebook site.
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