Wildlife workers in boats struggled Wednesday to coax nearly four dozen pilot whales out of dangerous shallow waters in Florida’s Everglades National Park, hoping to spare them the fate of 10 others that already have died.
Four of the whales had to be euthanized Wednesday, and six others already had died, said Blair Mase, the marine mammal stranding network coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. At least three could be seen on the beach, out of the water.
Park spokeswoman Linda Friar said rescuers were trying to surround the whales with boats about 75 feet from shore and nudge them out of the roughly 3-foot-deep salt water back to sea.
“They are trying to herd the animals out to sea,” she said. “They are not cooperating.”
Workers tried to nudge the whales out to sea a day earlier with no success. Believed to be short-finned pilot whales, the animals are stranded in a remote area that takes more than an hour to reach by boat from the nearest boat ramp.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said via Twitter that survival rates were typically low in such instances.
“This scenario is very challenging because of where they are,” Mase said. Officials typically have access to heavy equipment to rescue stranded whales, but that isn’t an option where the whales are now.
Furthermore, the area is so shallow that it’s difficult to get the mammals enough water to propel them back to sea. A team of biologists was still assessing the whales Wednesday.
“Pilot whales are common stranders. They tend to do this,” Friar said. When rescued, she said, “they tend to rebeach themselves. This area of the park is probably the most challenging for something like this. When the tide goes out, there’s hundreds of yards of very shallow shoals.”
Officials don’t know how long the whales have been stranded or how they got there. The whales were first sighted on Tuesday afternoon in a remote part of the park near the Gulf of Mexico.
Pilot whales usually swim together in large pods of 25 to 30 animals, and tend to follow a dominant male leader, so it’s not uncommon for multiple whales to get stranded at once.
At least one other group of whales has stranded in the park in the past 10 years.
“It’s not uncommon,” Friar said. “But it’s not something that happens a lot.”
Mase said the whales are known to inhabit deep water, “so they are very out of their home range.”
Adult pilot whales weigh 2,200 to 6,600 pounds, with females averaging 12 feet long and males averaging 18 feet long, according to NOAA.
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