Whale strandings on the North Sea coast in 2016
An unusually large number of whale strandings on the North Sea coast occurred between January and March 2016. 29 sperm whales perished in the southern North Sea .
Strandings
Several sperm whales ended up in the shallow waters of the Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony Wadden Sea in January and February . Six animals were found on the Dutch island of Texel , two died off Wangerooge , one animal off Bremerhaven , two near Helgoland and two whales near Büsum .
When the water ran out, the animals remained lying on the ground. The weight of their bodies compressed the blood vessels, lungs, and other organs, so that the animals died of acute cardiovascular failure .
Investigation of the animals and possible cause
The 13 whales stranded on Schleswig-Holstein's North Sea coast were examined by the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research (ITAW) of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover .
Various theories assume that the noise generated by offshore industrial facilities , such as oil platforms or wind turbines, can disrupt the animals' orientation. Loud noises can disrupt communication with each other or panic the animals. The examination of the stranded animals showed that they were all in good health and nutritional status. The animals' hearing, which is important for orientation, showed no signs of severe acoustic trauma.
Various organs were infected with parasites, but this was classified as normal for its age.
Four of the 13 whales had large amounts of plastic waste in their stomachs. This can be ruled out as a reason for the stranding and death of the animals, but it does reflect the situation in the open sea. Veterinarians and biologists suspect that the animals particularly affected by garbage would have had major health problems from the remains of the garbage.
Scientists at IFM Geomar in Kiel also examined the stomach contents of 13 animals. During the analysis, they found 110,490 octopus beaks, i.e. the indigestible upper and lower jaws of squids. The squid are the main food of the larger whales. Building on this, the Kielers hypothesized that violent storms in the north-east Atlantic could have lured the whales into the North Sea in January. Uwe Piatkowski said: "The storms drove masses of water to the south and thus possibly also the prey of the whales - the squids." According to this theory, the whales swam after them.
Data from a recent study suggest that the sperm whales came from at least two different groups. Accordingly, one group came from the Canary Islands region and the other from the North Atlantic . All sperm whales were young males between the ages of 10 and 15 years and had an average body length of 11.7 meters (9.6-14.7 meters).
disposal
The costs for the laborious recovery and disposal of the whales were shared between the federal government and the individual states. The mayor of Cuxhaven , Ulrich Getsch , announced on the day of the salvage of a whale in the NDR that he would reclaim the costs of the city fire brigade, the volunteers from DLRG and DGzRS and logistics from the state of Lower Saxony.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chronology: The great sperm whale death , NDR , accessed on August 5, 2016
- ^ Lara Malberger: Sperm Whales: Deadly wrong way into the North Sea . In: The time . ISSN 0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed April 7, 2016]).
- ↑ Whale strandings on the North Sea coast , press release from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, 2016.
- ↑ Theory about stranding: Sperm whales swam after octopuses. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved April 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Joseph G. Schnitzler, Marianna Pinzone, Marijke Autenrieth, Abbo van Neer, Lonneke L. IJsseldijk, Jonathan L. Barber, Rob Deaville, Paul Jepson, Andrew Brownlow, Tobias Schaffeld, Jean-Pierre Thomé, Ralph Tiedemann, Krishna Das, Ursula Siebert: Inter-individual differences in contamination profiles as tracer of social group association in stranded sperm whales. In: Scientific Reports. 8, 2018, doi : 10.1038 / s41598-018-29186-z .
- ↑ Nadja Podbregar: Sperm whales: North Sea stranding examined In: Wissenschaft.de , July 20, 2018, accessed on October 1, 2018.
- ^ NDR: Dead whale recovered - and who pays? In: www.ndr.de. Retrieved April 7, 2016 .