Janelle Irwin Taylor
Five Pilot Whales beached themselves on Redington Beach early Monday morning. Onlookers reported the whales just north of Madeira Beach before 7 a.m., according to officials.
By 2 p.m. officials at the scene reported two of the whales were going to be removed by stretchers from the water and transported to a rehabilitation facility at Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
The other three were un-beached and officials were preparing to release them into the Gulf of Mexico.
All five whales have been tagged so marine life experts and scientists can monitor their activity.
It’s not clear how the whales made it so close to shore. Pilot Whales do not typically navigate the Gulf of Mexico, according to officials on scene. The animals are social by nature and travel in pods. That an entire pod beached themselves in what officials describe as a “mass stranding” could indicate one of the whales was sick, beached itself and the others followed.
Veterinarians on scene decided to take two of the younger whales to a rehabilitation facility in Tarpon Springs because they were not doing as well as the other three and were fatigued from the stress of being stranded and from humans interacting with them.
The scene in a mostly residential part of Redington Beach drew hundreds of onlookers throughout the day. Local roads were clogged with traffic from visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the five whales. Cars were parked along one lane of the four-lane road and neighborhood streets were lined with cars parked in front of homes.
News helicopters were circling the area catching aerial images of volunteers tending to the animals.
Officials partitioned off a section of the beach to keep worried visitors out of the way. They also erected tents over the whales to keep them cool.
According to officials, these types of mass strandings are extremely rare. Mass strandings have only occurred about a dozen times since 1990, according to officials.
