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Simply..don't look further....

5/10/2017

7 Comments

 
..if you are squeamish!

Living in the wilds has it's gruesome side.

A dead Northern Bottlehead whale has been washed up on the shore nearby.

Picture
Picture
Picture

Rare in these waters it is thought to have got it's tail entangled in crabpot lines (though there are alternative theories about military exercises and sonar causing whales to suffer from decompression sickness and there has been a big exercise here lately...). It's lungs were full of water.

First word was that men in huge rubber aprons wielding big knives had been seen on a particularly narrow stretch of the single track road. Experts from the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme were on site but the carcass at almost 7 m long and on a rather inaccessible shore couldn't be lifted, thus the knives. The head has been taken for examination to The National Museum of Scotland, along with samples of stomach contents and entrails. Squid beaks. In the orange boxes.

It is an awe inspiring and very sad sight (and a truly awful smell).

We see seals, porpoise and dolphins, and I know a local boat fishes for prawns (which are sent to Spain!) and when the sea birds are diving you know there is a shoal of fish, but there is so much unknown in the waters of the loch. I did not know there were squid, and I am awestruck at the thought of creatures of this size and larger - this was a juvenile - out there in that other world by day and tonight by the light of a full moon. I wonder how far into the water the moonlight penetrates.

Do the whales look up and take note?
7 Comments
Julia
6/10/2017 01:53:54 am

This was interesting Freda. We should not shelter ourselves from the reality of life, and death, here on this earth..and living in a city, it is all too easy to lose connection with that reality. ..poor whale...he/she is just one of the millions of creatures who cannot navigate our world today..and yes, indeed, I wonder if they see the moon? What a good question...i shall wonder about my loons now..do they notice?

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Freda
6/10/2017 03:04:31 pm

I have to say I've found the whole thing fascinating Julia - from the people working with it - female marine researchers and vets, local farmer with hoist, to the varying reactions of neighbours one of whom thought it abhorrent to let children see it...takes one out of oneself and

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Mary
6/10/2017 02:48:37 am

Sad. I live within a quarter mile of the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay; a very large area of water in which all sorts of creatures abide. Most of them struggle from too many pesticides being used on the shores (e.g. farms) which has greatly harmed the habitat, or from the large ship traffic that goes up and back to the port in Baltimore. Can't quite remember anything this large being washed ashore in recent memory.

Reply
Freda
6/10/2017 03:05:44 pm

You sent me to Google Maps to see where you live - a very watery area indeed.

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Mary
7/10/2017 03:18:04 am

I'm about 35 miles due south of Annapolis. The county where I live is essentially a peninsula with the Bay on one side and the Patuxent River on the other.

Lotta link
6/10/2017 12:13:42 pm

Oh how sad Freda. (I am squeamish but still had to scroll down!) It's lovely to know that they are in the loch though. I don't know if they see the light of the moon but I guess they know it in ways we will never experience as their whole environment is subject to its gravitational pull and they'll know its phases intimately by the feel of the tides. I read somewhere that there are more strandings of marine animals during the new and full moon phases. I came eye to eye with a humpback whale once in the Pacific (I was in a boat and the whale surfaced just a few feet away) - it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

Reply
Freda
6/10/2017 03:07:35 pm

How exciting Lotta. I did once see one leaping right out of the water though at quite a distance. I am glad to hear that there are now about 40 protected sea areas and increasing...

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