150 whales die in stranding in Australia

[Nostalgia]

AP – In this photo released Monday, Nov. 24, 2008
by the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industry and Water

HOBART, Australia – A group of 150 whales that became stranded on a remote coastline in southern Australia were battered to death on rocks before rescuers could save them.

Officials from Tasmania state's Parks and Wildlife Service rushed Sunday in four-wheel-drive vehicles to the remote site at Sandy Cape after the long-finned pilot whales were spotted by air a day earlier.

A helicopter crew that arrived late Saturday found about a dozen of the whales injured but alive, said Warwick Brennan, a spokesman for the service.

Other officials and volunteers arrived by four-wheel-drive vehicle on Sunday and worked frantically to save those remaining, but they died, Brennan said.

The coastline is strewn with reefs and jagged rocks, making it much more dangerous for the stranded whales than if they had landed at a sandy beach, said Rosemary Gales, another wildlife service official.

"Because of the physical beating they take from stranding on rocks and surf, compared to sandy beach strandings, animals die more quickly," said Gales.

Officials in small boats steered about 30 whales that were part of the same pod as those stranded away from the bay where they went ashore. They were apparently responding to cries of distress from an injured whale and were in danger of becoming stuck too, Brennan said.

The operation comes one week after rescuers saved 11 pilot whales among more than 60 stranded on a beach in northwestern Tasmania, which is an island.

Strandings are not uncommon in Tasmania, where the whales pass by on their migration to and from Antarctic waters. It is not known why whales get stranded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081130/...tranded_whales

[Nostalgia]

Is mass beaching of whales and dolphins followed by a subsequent earthquake?
January 07, 2005

A Mangalore-based medical college professor thinks so. About a month ago, on December 4, Dr Arunachalam Kumar from Kasturba Medical College posted an item on a Princeton listserve regarding the mass beaching of 80 whales and dolphins in Australia. The item he posted on the listserve was this:

“It is my observation, confirmed over the years, that mass suicides of whales and dolphins that occur sporadically all over the world, are in someway related to change and disturbances in the electromagnetic field coordinates and possible re-alignments of geotectonic plates thereof.

“Tracking the dates and plotting the locales of tremors and earthquakes, I am reasonably certain, that major earthquakes usually follow within a week or two of mass breaching of cetaceans.

“I have noted, with alarm, the last week report of such mass deaths of marine mammals in an Australian beachside. I will not be surprised if within a few days a massive hit (earthquake) hits some part of the globe.

“The inter-relationship between the unusual ‘death-wish’ of pods of whales and its inevitable aftermath, the earthquake, may need a further impassioned and unbiased looking into.”

Since then, an earthquake and a tsunami have come and gone. The Princeton listserve is now hopping with discussions around Dr Kumar’s predictive posting.

From Mangalore, Dr Kumar says, “I noticed the connection over the last few years. I put it up on the Princeton listserve. Since the tsunami, many have shown interest in this theory. Of course it’s not something I have proved scientifically, because I am only a college professor, but it would be interesting if someone followed it up.”

Dr Kumar says an earthquake follows within 10 days of the mass beaching of whales, which in this case happened November 29; the first submarine tremors were reported by December 16 or so.

He says, “If someone were to compare dates for the last 10 major earthquakes and whale stranding, they will find a link. Whales and dolphins migrate thousands of miles along the geomagnetic wave, using it to align themselves.

"If they’re beaching, it means their direction-finding capacity has gone wrong, perhaps, due to seismic activity.

"It may derange the cerebral compass that these dolphins possess, and causes stranding, followed by earthquakes, volcano and/or a tsunami. It could be a warning to us, unfortunately, they are paying the penalty.”

Other people on the listserve have theorised that mass beaching of whales could be because they develop hearing problems due to the rumble of the earthquake.

But Kumar says that logic does not follow as the beaching occurs before the earthquake.

http://davidmoorhead.com/resources/a...nstsunami.html