In what may have been the worst mass stranding in Scotland since at least 1995, an entire pod of pilot whales was wiped out after being found stranded on a beach in the Orkney Islands Thursday morning. Of the 77 whales that came ashore, just a dozen initially survived, the British Divers Marine Life Rescue said. However, they were euthanized after refloating efforts failed, the BBC reports. Experts don't know for sure what caused the stranding, but say one whale likely experienced trouble and the rest tried to help. Postmortem examinations are being carried out.
"There are whales everywhere," one member of BDMLR told local media prior to the decision to euthanize, per the Guardian. "There's a long line of them, some of them are still alive. I know from experience how difficult these incidents are and I think we need to be realistic." She called the scene "quite horrible" and said responders were "hugely emotional." The largest-ever mass stranding in the UK occurred in 1927, when 130 false killer whales came ashore and 126 of them died. In 2011, 25 pilot whales died in the UK after 60 to 70 of them got into trouble in shallow water, and last year, a pod of 55 was stranded and just one survived. (More pilot whale stories.)
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