SCIENTISTS HAVE taken skin and tissue samples from some of the 33 long-finned pilot whales which died after a mass stranding off Donegal.
The carcasses of the 33 mammals were discovered early on Saturday on the back strand of Rutland Island between Burtonport and Arranmore island.
The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) believes they may have been a pod which was in difficulty off northern Scotland a week ago.
A pod of about 30 pilot whales, described as being in a distressed state, was monitored last weekend on South Uist in the Scottish outer Hebrides by the British Coastguard and Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA).
There were concerns that the pod might beach, but the animals moved away from the area. The SSPCA reported that there were no signs of physical injury, but noted there were younger animals among the group.
Arranmore-Burtonport fast ferry owner Seamus Boyle told The Irish Timesthat one of his crew spotted the carcasses around the back of the uninhabited Rutland Island from his own boat at about midday on Saturday.
“We had been watching them since last Monday,” Mr Boyle said. “We hadn’t seen them since Thursday, however, and so we believe the stranding happened some time between then and the weekend.”
“At first we thought they were false killer whales, but a skipper here, John Gallagher, who has fished all over the world, identified them as long-finned pilot whales,” Mr Boyle added.
“They were not long dead when my crewman found them, as there were marks in the sand from their tails,” Mr Boyle said.
IWDG strandings co-ordinator Mick O’Connell said that mass strandings of pilot whales were “not uncommon”, but “infrequent” in Ireland.
In late July last year, a pod of pilot whales was stranded, but the whales were refloated alive, in Tralee bay, Co Kerry.
This occurred just several weeks after a live stranding of 17 bottlenose dolphins near Fenit. Four of those dolphins subsequently died.
Some 30 to 40 pilot whales stranded alive, and most were refloated, on March 23rd, 2002 near Castlegregory, Co Kerry.
A joint IWDG/Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) team led by GMIT lecturer Ian O’Connor worked with National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers to take samples from the mammals yesterday. The team reported that most of the whales were large, with only one calf.
At least three or four whales had significant notches in their dorsal fins, and the team hopes to use this photographic evidence to try and match it with the pod spotted in South Uist last weekend.
Skin samples will also be sent to the Irish Cetacean Genetic Tissue Bank run with the IWDG at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.
The group also made contact with a British research body which has been investigating the impact of noise on whales and dolphins and its links with strandings.
