Whale Strandings and easy food locations for concussed marine mammals

Why do whales strand at locations like Farewell Spit, Tasmania's west coast, Bass Strait and other weird locations around the world? Easy food. I realized that these locations are where whales are heading to and seeking out because they are already injured. A concussed animal is basically going to do two things. Die, float then sink or seek shallow water to feed until recuperated. They come out of their feeding grounds already in bad shape. Sometimes only a handful of individuals might be injured and the others we never see because they are already dead. The pod navigates poorly and anything out of the ordinary, that most times they could manage like a storm, sends them ashore. A cachalot that depends on diving deep for its food would be in great difficulty if it just couldn't do this, and seeking shallow water would be the only option. Black Dolphins would essentially do the same, following shoals of fish into locations they would never bother with if fighting fit. Given exhaustion, lack of food, stress, and having to keep juveniles nourished; this would be an incredible strain on the pod. These are families, intelligent creatures with bonds that are not easily severed willfully. At all these locations whales navigate through all the time safely. Blue Whales have even been seen rolling around on the sand in Victoria before continuing on their journey. It's not the shallows killing on mass as such, it's the last port of call for desperate animals. A concussed mammal would be hard to diagnose. In all honesty, they would look like healthy individuals. There could be one or two with ordinary natural health problems, however, this would be expected in large pods of mammals. My biggest question is how damaged? Do they get better? Can they get better? And what if any long-term effects do they carry with them.

So why certain times of year, and not others? It is due to the fact that let's say an incident happens. You could have many scenarios that could go from killing a pod outright to only a few individuals injured or surviving. They wander because of a concussion. This is probably why you see different species wash up together because injured individuals might very well be left alone sometimes, lone survivors or abandoned to circle aimlessly. Whales have been stranded at the same time as marlins and other fish species. There is a lot to unpick in these strandings. Why are sharks all over some stranding and not others? Has the event killed sharks? Leaving the carcasses to wash ashore. Sharks do wash ashore with strandings, large ones at times, showing these sky incidents are truly indiscriminate in the way they kill. It's usually an oversight not to notice these other fish because a large whale or dozens of them are more visually noticeable. Whales need to breathe and fight to do so, which keeps them on the surface, and if running yourself ashore to breathe is the only option open to you, then so be it. A fish on the other hand could simply suffer down in the depths, eventually being snapped up for food. However, as I said large species of fish have been washed ashore in split strandings, not clumping events.

So back in the Southern Ocean, you have dolphins or whales that can't dive properly but sustain themselves long enough before heading north. This journey is instinctive and necessary for pod survival. If they could stay down south, the group as a whole would never be stranded and individuals that are sick would naturally die never to be seen again but wouldn't take the whole pod down with them. This changes when they need to move north. Then bad navigation, seeking easy food, a slow steady decline they themselves are probably/maybe oblivious to and it all unravels. This is why whales usually don't strand heading south. Remember the Southern Ocean is their home for a greater part of the year. Bolides have been quiet to the north and apart from your yearly natural wash-up deaths, no great stranding has occurred. This however is changing and as a consequence, this sky harassment could see large split strandings, not pod clumping. This is a crucial point also, the panic stranding shows that pods flee into shallows, and it seems an instinctive thing to do. With a concussion, it's the same but for totally different purposes, however, the instinct is there. Whale strandings that we see are but a small glimpse of a much greater story being written down in the Southern Ocean. The stranding is a consequence for an animal already under considerable suffering.