Stranded Whale in Cunnigar, Dungarvan...

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0819/whale.html

Poor lil fella! Im in rosslare going to pop over for a butchers....

That's a very sad sight.

Strange too, I think it was nearly this day last year when I had to help with the putting down of a stranded dolphin in the Cunnigar.

Do they strand themselves if there is something wrong with them?

A 35-FOOT SPERM WHALE which washed up on a beach near Dungarvan in Co Waterford yesterday, with little hope of survival, has died there this morning.

The whale, which was stranded on the beach at Cunniger spit yesterday, died this morning around 24 hours after it washed up.

The animal was clearly in some distress and appeared to have been unwell. It had been spotted in difficulty off the Hook peninsula on Thursday evening.

Simon Berrow of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group explained that it is unusual for a sperm whale to be found swimming so close to land, and that once the creature had washed up there was little that could be done to help it.

“Once they’re on the continental shelf they’re way off where they’d normally live and feed. If they’ve been away from there and they haven’t fed, they get dehydrated quite quickly because they take their water out of their food.

“It was inevitable, really – there’s not a lot we can do with a stranded whale that size. We can’t float it, and we can’t euthanise it, because we don’t have enough drugs for a creature of its size.

“The best we could do was to let it die peacefully without being stressed and harassed. In many ways it’s blessed that it died fairly quickly.”

In other circumstances, he added, sperm whales could remain alive for several days.

Berrow expressed some surprise that the whale – which appeared to not yet have reached full adult maturity – seemed ‘quite clean’ and did not show any signs of contact with squid, from which sperm whales would usually feed.

The mammal’s cause of death will likely never be known.


source: http://www.thejournal.ie/washed-up-35-f ... 8-Aug2011/

There was a program on Chanel 4 just the other week call " Inside natures giants " and it was all about a beached sperm whale on one of the English beaches that had died and the whale was dissected to show us how it lived and swam etc.... Very interesting... Pity bout that whale but no way of getting them back into the sea...

'Human scavengers' saw jaw bone off beached whale

MARINE volunteers were horrified yesterday to find someone had sawn off part of a dead whale's jaw bone with a chainsaw.

The 35-ft sperm whale was washed up on the beach at Cunniger spit in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, on Friday before it finally died on Saturday.
A pungent smell was coming from the whale when members of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) went to the beach at 7.30am yesterday to salvage the jaw bones.
They wanted to preserve them for future educational purposes, however, a "human scavenger" had already hacked off 40cm of the massive jaw.

The local authority, meanwhile, spent €5,000 dealing with the whale incident. Council officials said the whale could not be tipped into the sea because of a European dumping at sea directive. They were also concerned that they could not leave the whale on the beach for a prolonged period as it is a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) under EU law.
The IWDG wanted the council to consider skinning the whale and preserving the carcass before putting it on display or donating it to a museum.

But Waterford County Council would have needed special permission to keep the whale on the beach for any period of time -- and it felt the "simplest, quickest solution" should be taken.
The whale was hauled into a skip in under an hour before being transported to a rendering plant in Waterford City early yesterday.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 56041.html

i remember as a child finding the remains of a giant turtle on tomhaggards in wexford i asked my dad could we have the shell he told me to keep away from it "youl get disease from it " an hour later two guys arrived and cut the shell off and left with the shell said it would get a good price at auction.

I received a phone call from a pal after he waded out to the whale and it was still alive, moving its tail and rolling slightly. Some idiot was trying to lift his girlfriend onto its back and was looking for a rock so he could start bashing out a few teeth. He only stopped when he told him that if he did he would send the photos to the papers. Others were seen carving names and graffiti in the skin of the dying animal.

I received a phone call from a pal after he waded out to the whale and it was still alive, moving its tail and rolling slightly. Some idiot was trying to lift his girlfriend onto its back and was looking for a rock so he could start bashing out a few teeth. He only stopped when he told him that if he did he would send the photos to the papers. Others were seen carving names and graffiti in the skin of the dying animal.

a lot of sick people out there

I received a phone call from a pal after he waded out to the whale and it was still alive, moving its tail and rolling slightly. Some idiot was trying to lift his girlfriend onto its back and was looking for a rock so he could start bashing out a few teeth. He only stopped when he told him that if he did he would send the photos to the papers. Others were seen carving names and graffiti in the skin of the dying animal.

There some right animals out there