Over 3,400 marine mammals stranding along UK coast over last 6 years

beached whale (credit; ZSL / CSIP)

A new report released by the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) has highlighted that over the last 6 years more than 3400 marine animals came ashore on the beaches of Britain. Whales, dolphins and basking sharks were just some of the sea creatures to wash ashore between 2005 and 2010.

CSIP was first established in 1990 and is funded by all the devolved governments to monitor and investigate reasons why wildlife should end up stranding themselves. The programme records all known strandings and will undertake further investigations including post-mortem on a number of unexplained strandings.

Report examines causes of cetacean strandings in UK.

The new report included stranding incidents that made headline news at the time. These included the northern bottlenose whale that swam up the River Thames in 2006 and the mass stranding of common dolphins in Falmouth Bay Cornwall in 2008. This was the UK biggest stranding event and led to the deaths of 26 dolphins and a larger number were successfully refloated and released back into the sea.

Lead organisation for the study published by the multi-organisation CSIP is the Zoological Society of London. This latest study indicated that the number of dolphin and porpoise strandings were dropping but this was being offset by an increase in whales such as the humpback becoming stranded along the British coastline.

Over 3400 marine mammals strandings in UK between 2005 and 2010.

The total numbers of strandings between 2005 and 2010 were:

3420 marine mammals (Cetaceans),
76 marine turtles,
27 basking sharks.

In the 11 years that the programme has run it has recorded a total of 10200 stranded cetaceans (up to May 2011).

The study showed that the biggest cause of death for stranded wildlife was infectious diseases closely followed by starvation. The reasons for deaths of stranded animals that were subject to post-mortem examinations were:

Infectious disease (163),
Starvation (149),
By-catch from fishing – including entanglement is lines and nets (124),
Live strandings (122).
attacks by bottlenose dolphins (79).

Call for public help to investigate marine wildlife strandings.

The programme has just been awarded another 3 years of funding from the devolved governments and CSIP is asking for hep from the public so that the programme can continue with its investigations.

“Without the help of the UK public over the last six years, we would not have been able to investigate strandings effectively. However, some strandings are still going unreported in the UK, so we are launching a new campaign to encourage more people to report stranded animals to us, helping build on our understanding of the threats that these charismatic species may face in UK waters.” says Rob Deaville, project manager of the CSIP.

The Minister for Environment and Fisheries Richard Benyon said “Whale and dolphin strandings are distressing and we need to understand why they happen and what can be done to prevent them. The UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme is carrying out valuable work on whale and dolphin strandings which will help shed more light on this issue so that we can reduce the incidence of strandings in the future.”

The new publicity campaign includes a downloadable leaflet to help people take part in the programme and new leaflets will be distributed at locations around the UK coastline to encourage the public to take part and become the eyes and ears of CSIP.

The research which is undertaken by CSIP is important for both UK and international marine policy decisions. Downloading the leaflet and knowing what to do if you come across a stranding can make you an effective citizen scientist and help researchers discover why cetaceans can beach themselves for no clear reason.