Whale pod died trying to help their matriarch

Whales that washed up on the Fife coast last week thought to have been following their sick leader

A pod of pilot whales that stranded on the Fife coast last week may have been led to their deaths by a sick elderly female, the initial findings of their necropsy revealed yesterday.

The female is thought to have been a matriarchal figure in the pod of five animals first spotted struggling in shallow water near Culross last Tuesday.

At the time, the largest male, a 5.37m long, two-ton adult, seemed to be trying to keep one of the females afloat.

The following day, three of the whales live stranded at Torryburn and on Thursday the female was one of two that washed up dead at North Queensferry, while two males had to be put down.

Tests have now shown the adult female, which measured 4.56m and weighed almost one tonne, had bacterial infections and abscesses throughout her body that may have been present for months and caused her death.

The other whales are thought to have been trying to help their matriarch when they became stranded in mud and suffered fatal internal injuries.

The fifth pod member has not been seen and it is hoped it was able to return safely to sea.

Dr Andrew Brownlow, veterinary pathologist for the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS), who carried out the necropsies, said: “Pilot whales have a very matriarchal structure.

“They tend to follow a lead female in the pod and it is possible that one of these lead females was poorly and got into trouble.

“Because she wasn’t behaving normally, as she was so sick, she’s ended up stranding on the mudflats in North Fife.

“In that process of stranding, the other animals came to help and they too got in to trouble as they all went in to the shallow water.

“When you are an animal that weighs over two tonnes, as one of the males did, when you are left high and dry and the water has receded, that brings about a cascade of pathological processes that will kill the animal no matter how healthy it was.

“The process of stranding for an animal that size is invariably fatal and the two males stranded possibly three times. As a result the only thing we could do for them was to euthanise them. So much damage had been done to them that there was no way they would survive.”

Although the results of some diagnostic tests could take several weeks, examinations of the carcasses suggested the worst affected female had produced up to five calves in her life and may have been over 30 years old when she died.

However, there was no evidence of acoustic trauma, that noise played a part; no evidence of entanglement, toxicity or trauma from boats; and none of the whales had ingested any plastics.

“The process of stranding for an animal that size is invariably fatal