BALANGA, Philippines (AFP) – Fishermen and volunteers in the Philippines managed to rescue more than 200 beached whales on Tuesday by guiding them back into deep water, officials said.
Residents of seaside towns west of Manila raised the alarm early in the day when they saw a large pod of melon-headed whales in shallow water.Three of the whales were later found dead and authorities feared others would die unless they could be guided into deeper water.
The head of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Malcolm Sarmiento initially said on local radio and television the stranded mammals were dolphins, but experts told AFP they were in fact melon-headed whales.
Mariel Flores, a veterinarian, said melon-headed whales were "easily mistaken for dolphins because of their size and their teeth, which resemble those of dolphins."
Government marine biologist Rizza Salinas said the mammals, which travel in pods of 100 or more, may have been disorientated by damage to their hearing caused by illegal dynamite fishing in the area.
Another theory was that they reacted to a major underwater earthquake.
Authorities said they had managed to guide most of the stranded mammals back into deeper water and away from the shore.
The whales were said late Tuesday to be heading back into open water, although one was taken to a nearby marine park for observation by veterinarians.
Senator wants probe into stranding of dolphins in Bataan
GMA News 11 Feb 09;
MANILA, Philippines – The Senate’s recent drift into doing probes on a wide range of anomalies may not spare the stranding off Bataan of hundreds of melon-headed whales – also known as many-toothed blackfish, or electra dolphin.
Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri on Tuesday asked experts to investigate the cause of the sudden appearance of more than 300 electra dolphins near the shores of Pilar town in Bataan province Tuesday morning.
Zubiri said the small whales must have acted abnormally for swimming in shallow water, as these are known to be deep-sea species.
The senator suspected the dolphins’ habitat must have been disrupted, forcing them to flee and seek refuge in shallow waters.
Zubiri wanted the experts to look into the possibility that an earthquake study in the South China Sea by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (L-DEO) - a collaborator of Columbia University in the US - caused the abnormal behavior of the small whales.
He said that the L-DEO undersea experiment involves blasting, which might have annoyed the dolphins.
“The earthquake study is a sea floor investigation project in the exclusive economic zone that includes Taiwan, China, Japan and the Philippines for its earthquake research," he said.
Washington-based animal rights group Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association (WaH) had been reported protesting to halt the L-DEO study as it is destructive to marine ecosystem.
Based on a statement of Robin Winkler, founder of WaH, the multi-beam echo sounder air gun, which will be used in the experiment, could produce a noise equivalent to 265 decibels (dB), almost as deafening as the atomic-bomb blast that could scale up to 300 dB.
Zubiri also cited an International Union for Conservation of Nature study saying that the melon-headed whales may have been distracted by the South China Sea study, forcing the dolphins to wander in the shallow waters.
“On top of saving stranded dolphins, we should find the cause for the tragedy in order to avoid them in the future and to be prepared when it occurs again," Zubiri said.
According to Wikipedia, the Melon-headed Whale [Peponocephala electra; other names are many-toothed blackfish and electra dolphin] is a cetacean of the oceanic dolphin family [Delphinidae]. It is closely related to the Pygmy Killer Whale and Pilot Whale, and collectively these dolphin species are known by the common name blackfish. The Melon-headed Whale is widespread throughout the world's tropical waters, although not often seen by humans on account of its preference for deep water. - GMANews.TV