Dozens stranded whales rescued

2008-05-22 09:31

Yoff - Senegalese fishermen dragged dozens of stranded pilot whales back out to sea on Wednesday but at least 20 more died on the beach after mysteriously coming ashore.

More than 100 pilot whales, which had bulbous foreheads and could grow to more than four metres long, beached themselves overnight at Yoff, a traditional Lebou fishing community on the Cap Vert peninsula, mainland Africa's most westerly point.

Local fishermen struggled through the night to drag the animals back to sea from the sloping sandy beach, using their brightly coloured open wooden boats known as "pirogues" and attaching ropes around the animals' sleek, black bodies.

"No one slept last night because all the fishermen were called out to help save the whales," said Iba Dieye, a local fisherman from Yoff.

100 big fishes washed up

Another fisherman, Elima Bah, said: "About 100 of the big fish washed up on the beach last night at about 21:00. We worked all night to try to drag them back into the ocean. We got about 80 back into the water with ropes, our pirogues and our hands. But the ones still here are dead now."

Nevertheless, hours after the mass stranding, local adults and children were still trying to haul some of the remaining live whales back into the waves.

During the day, curious crowds gathered around the carcasses of the dead animals. Some snapped photos with their mobile phones, while children played on the carcasses, dousing them with water to create a slippery slide.

Local fishermen said they would need government help to remove the dead whales from the beach. They said they feared the rotting carcasses could cause disease and infection.

Collective suicide

Kabore Alassi, a professor from Dakar's Veterinary School, said: "All animal carcasses should be destroyed and shouldn't be eaten. But this is Africa, and if the area is not secured, people are tempted to cut off a piece of flesh, some for their animals, like their dogs, and some to eat themselves."

Witnesses said some residents dragged off whale carcasses.

Local experts said a similar mass beaching of whales had occurred at the same spot some 30 years ago. Some residents had fallen ill after eating meat from the dead whales.

They had no precise explanation for the mass stranding.

"It's like a collective suicide. Even when you push them out, they still keep coming back," said Ali Haidar, president of the Oceanium marine conservation organisation in Dakar.

"It's something to do with their navigational and orientation systems getting disturbed," he added.

Haidar said that when about 250 whales beached on the shore in neighbouring Mauritania two years ago, experts believed the animals had been disturbed by offshore seismic and sonar exploration by international oil companies.

The sonar systems of submarines patrolling or involved in military exercises could have a similar effect on whales.

- Reuters