3 pilot whales rescued after washing ashore in Cape Breton
11 stranded whales spotted Sunday, eight have died
Eleven pilot whales washed up in Port Hood, N.S., on Sunday, says an official with the Marine Animal Response Society.
Executive director Tonya Wimmer said local residents were able to push three whales back in the water. Eight of the whales have died.
There is another pod of whales offshore between the shore and Port Hood Island that they are keeping an eye on, Wimmer said.
"They're swimming around, they're not actively leaving the area but there is apparently some bait in the area, some food that they may be eating," Wimmer said.
"We're hopeful they may leave the area but we're not sure yet."
Wimmer said it's possible the three whales who survived are part of the larger pod offshore.
She said mass stranding events like this usually happen because the whales follow a food source in to the shore and get trapped when the tide goes out.
Some of the people who tried saving the whales said they returned to the shore after being freed.
Wimmer said pilot whales are social and often travel in groups.
"Often what we see is when there's one even left on a beach that's making any kind of calls, the others will come in to try to help it, in a sense," Wimmer told CBC Radio's Information Morning Cape Breton.
"And so that's why with the response, it's actually really important it's done in a very specific way to be able to get them all back in the water very carefully, making sure the animals are kept cool, you know, putting water on them, but not in their blowhole, and then trying to get them all out at the same time because they need to go as a group, which is very hard when you have a group this big of animals this large."
Necropsies
Wimmer said the team will be speaking to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources to see if it is possible to do necropsies on the dead animals.
Owen Campbell, Kieran MacDonald, Aiden MacDonald and Lucas MacDougall were bicycling to the gym with friend Hunter MacDonald to celebrate his 14th birthday.
The boys, all from the Judique area, spotted the whales on the shore around 12:45 p.m.
"We jumped off our bikes and then we ran down the hill and tried to give them some water so it could save them," Hunter said.
Hunter said he and his friends managed to save three of the whales, including a baby.
Hunter said between 30 and 50 people showed up eventually, many with cameras.
As he was running down to save the whales, Owen Campbell said he called his mother to try to get more people to come and help.
"I thought it was pretty crazy," Campbell said.
"A couple years ago, down the Shore Road in Judique, there were about 30 whales that got washed up there ... so a lot of people knew what they're kind of doing."
Campbell said the whales felt like wet leather.
With files from CBC's Information Morning Cape Breton
