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Cannon Clough
Prenell
UWRT 1103
October 3, 2014

FINAL

Inquiry Question:
Why do whales beach themselves?

My Personal Experience and Interest:

My first experience with a whale
stranding was in Sandbridge, Virginia Beach.
Late one afternoon, when I was about eight or
nine years old, all of a sudden my younger
brother, who was only about four or five at the
time, runs up and asks us all what that big

This is the whale when it finally got

close enough for us to touch. I am at
the front in blue.

thing flapping in the water is. Naturally, we all brushed him away, telling him it was
probably just a piece of driftwood bobbing through the water. Eventually, we all
started to notice what started to clearly become something
much bigger than a chunk of driftwood or a gull. My family,
along with a small crowd of about 20 people at this point,
started to follow the mysterious creature down the beach
as is came closer to shore. We followed it for about half an
hour and walked a good mile and a half down the beach.
We were shocked to see a 25 foot whale come up onto the
This is my younger brother
Cole who first saw the whale
and no one believed him.

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shore of our little old beach. Elders on the beach were trying to force the animal
back into the water thinking that they were trying to help him or her live longer. I
even went up to the massive animal and gave my best effort of a push. Little did we
know, that when a whale comes up on shore like that there is actually a reason and
pushing the whale back in, in most cases is not helping the whale live. Potentially it
could create more of a struggle for the animal on the verge of dying.
My Prior Knowledge: I really do not have much prior knowledge other than my
own personal experience that day in Sandbridge. I remember that day someone in
the small crowd who had obviously studied or knew a lot about marine animals,
clued me in to the fact that everyone trying to push the baby humpback whale into
the water was actually of no use and would not save the animals life. He told me that
it is very natural for animals to beach themselves for reasons such as injury or
sickness and they do it in order to let them die and end the misery of struggle. I also
know that when this happens to a whale and they have to be euthanized the next
day is an interesting sequence of procedures but quite smelly. I can remember after
the professionals stuck the whale with a huge shot they returned the next day and
scientist and specialist were cutting the whale into numerous pieces, bagging its
parts in special bags to have the parts sent to scientists and labs all over the country.
These scientists would then do studies to try to figure out the cause of death for the
baby mammal.

Questions to Answer:

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My personal experieince and the beginning of my researched has evoked so
many questions from my imagination. I want to know why whales have the instinct
to swim close to shore and beach themselves when they need to die when they
typically swim further out in deeper waters. I also want to know what specifically
about Sandbridge attracts whales because this is not the first near shore experience
with a whale that I have had just in my eighteen years of life. Was it a baby hump
back whale or a sei whale that I saw that day? I am also going to focus some of my
study on the actual necropsy that the scientist do and try to learn the process and
how much they can actually learn from it. Through this research of whales and the
mystery of why they beach themselves, I might also be able to find out more about
myself and what intrests me; It could potentially lead me to what I want to study
and eventually what I would like to major in seeing that I am undecided as of now.
A few other questions I would like to uncover in my searches:
1. How far from shore do whales normally swim? ( not when they are trying to
strand themselves ashore.)
2. What exactly do they look for in a necropsy and how does the process work?
3. Who are some well-known scientist that are in this field.
4. Who were the people cutting up the whale that day?
5. What kind of whale was actually on the shore that day?
6. Do they fly the whale pieces in special planes all over the country or do
scientists just put them on their carry ons?
7. How long do whales noramlly live? Live span of a whale?
8. Which species of whales are close to being extinct?

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9. How do whales contribute to our lives as humans?
10. Who first studied the stranding of whales? ( I think the Greeks)

Working Knowledge:
When I first asked google about why whales beach themselves, a few
different sources led me to believe that whales beach themselves for numerous
different reasons and typically only about 50% of cases do we ever know why. A
whale can actually die from its own weight or overheating when it hits the shore. In
the article from the previous sentence I learned a few more things. When there is a
muliple stranding of marine animals of some kind, this often means that the animals
may have died from the same cause, possibly disease or some kind of toxic pollution
in their area. For others, it is by accident that a pod of whales happened to follow
an unfortunately sick or disorinted whale into too shallow of waters and then they
all get stuck. In another articlethat one of my classmates shared with me, "Why Do
Whales Beach Themselves", the author relates these strandings to car crashes
because, a lot of things can go wrong but you get the same result. The list could go
on forever for reasons why that whale all of a sudden came up on shore on that
regular summer day years ago. The last intresting thing I have found thus far was a
Youtube Video that showed people trying to save some beached whales before they
were euthanized. They tried and tried to pour water and wet towels on the whales
but eventually ended up having to help some of them die. This makes me wonder
why in some cases they euthanize them immediately and why sometimes they try to

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save them first. It is an important topic to research because it could potentially lead
to discovery of new inofrmation that could help humans as well. Perhaps there is
something harmful in the water making this happen.