Lincolnshire whales likely to have entered North Sea with those washed up on north European islands, says lead scientist

Five sperm whales stranded on the east coast of England were probably from the same pods as the 12 that washed up on coastlines in Germany and the Netherlands, according to the lead pathologist examining the Lincolnshire whales.

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Rob Deaville, project manager at the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, said it was “reasonable to assume” that the pods entered the North Sea together in the hunt for food.

“The question that’s left still hanging is why they came in the North Sea in the first place and whether the French, the German events are all connected in some way,” he said on Tuesday.

“I think it’s reasonable to assume that the pods – because there can be more than one pod – came in at the same time, given the spatial and temporal stranding events. I think that’s a reasonable assumption to make.”

Five of the male sperm whales had not eaten for some time when they became stranded in shallow waters around Skegness and Norfolk over the weekend and later died. Another 12 had washed up on the Dutch island of Texel and the German islands of Wangerooge and Helgoland since 11 January.

UK-based scientists are expected to work with counterparts in Germany and the Netherlands to establish whether there was a link between the pods and why they entered the North Sea.

Pathologists have completed tests on four of the sperm whales – those from Skegness and Hunstanton beach in Norfolk – and were trying to reach a fifth whale that washed up in Wainfleet, five miles south of Skegness, on Monday. It is on a former weapons range where the second world war Dambusters squadron practised their bombing runs.

Deaville and his fellow pathologists from the programme, which is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, would try to reach the whale with the help of the coastguard after difficult terrain prevented them from doing so on Monday.

The whale may have moved overnight due to strong winds and its carcass becoming buoyant with the build-up of decomposition gases.

“They were significantly more decomposed in the end than we anticipated. They had just gone off so quickly,” Deaville said. “The first one did explode as we opened it up and it would have been cooking inside, decreasing the pathological value of what we were collecting. We had to take the decision not to open the other two up for the safety of us and the other people who were there.

“We confirmed that we have five adult male sperm whales stranded alive en masse. They were in pretty good condition when they came in but it was being stranded alive that would have killed them. It would have severely damaged their internal organs and musculature.”

Deaville said it remained unclear why the sperm whales entered the shallow waters of the Lincolnshire coast, given that they are deep-sea mammals and can easily become disoriented if they get into shallow water.

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“That will be something we look into in the coming weeks and months. It’s not something we can answer immediately because it might require further collective investigation of what’s going on out there, climatic factors, there’s lots of things to look at. We may end up with no answer at all, but we may not,” Deaville said.



Thousands of people have flocked to the tourist resort of Skegness since Sunday to see the whales, with many taking selfies in front of the carcasses as marine biologists dissect them.