I find Stranded No More to be a fascinating example of the Dunning Kruger effect. They call themselves a “watchdog” group that doesn’t seem to have any practical expertise.
This is a social media “organisation” that does nothing but criticise and point fingers at rescue organisations and refuses to believe that euthanasia is an ethical choice for stranded whales. Their “help” for Timmy was AI generated diagrams of the pectoral fin tow idea stolen from Sea World’s Forster rescue.
But let’s talk about their points:
1) Whales can be extremely sick but still survive - the reason Timmy was able to survive as long as she did due to the chronic stress responses she was experiencing, resulting in periodic bursts of adrenaline that was keeping her alive. A whale that is lying on a sandbank for 2 weeks and continuing to restrand is not healthy.
At this point she was disoriented and likely had internal damage. Her breathing was very raspy and her respiratory rate was very high, indicating an elevated state of stress
2) Timmy’s body condition was extremely poor - just because her ribs weren’t jutting out doesn’t mean she wasn’t emaciated. Her spine was very clear to see, she had lost blubber. Compared to the successful rescue of the juvenile in Forster, NSW, she was in a very bad state
3) Timmy’s “improvement” was based on the assessment of a veterinarian with no experience with cetaceans, let alone baleen whales. The time spent in that brackish water had caused significant deterioration. Again, compare to the Forster humpback juvenile, which Stranded No More and blacklisted vets were pointing to as “proof” Timmy could be saved.
The situations were chalk and cheese and if this whale had shown up in the state Timmy was, ORRCA, Sea World and National Parks would have all likely agreed on euthanasia. It’s not a “cartel”. It’s current best practise based on animal welfare science.
No one wants to euthanise whales!!! This idea that we’re all itching to kill stranded whales is just so ridiculous on so many levels and deeply insulting to the people actually helping whales.
Stranded No More also asserts that efforts to refloat whales are “half hearted” because the expectation is the whale needs to be euthanised. This is also deeply insulting and I’d invite them to go and stand neck deep in frigid salt water all day and let me know if they feel like they could be half hearted about it.
Rapid response to strandings is important - but not by mobilising the general public without any experience or instruction or by refloating without any assessment. That is just stupid and dangerous.
Large whale strandings are extremely emotional and intense. It’s impossible to push an adult or even a juvenile humpback whale into the ocean without some sort of mechanical aid. And if then, the conditions of the ocean can make things dangerous for the whale and the people.
With smaller cetaceans we have a little more flexibility in finding less swell and rough surf. But if the animal is sick and weak, pushing them back out into the ocean is basically drowning them.
It makes me so angry, as someone who is trained in marine mammal rescue response and has assisted in multiple dolphin health procedures, that this “watchdog” is making the jobs of marine mammal rescue response so much harder by implying some sort of conspiracy. And that we just need to keep pushing sick whales back into the water and seeing what happens.
Spoiler alert: people are already doing that! They just restrand! And they may restrand somewhere even more secluded and hard to get to.
We had a beaked whale strand at Bondi recently and a bunch of surfers very roughly threw it back into the ocean. This is a deep diving rare pelagic species. ORRCA lost the chance to assess health, get samples ect. It restranded on a secluded beach and died shortly after.
We know what happens! It’s why euthanasia as a protocol was developed. Because every refloat attempt is extremely stressful for the animal and it’s not fair to them to keep putting them through so much stress just to appease our saviour complexes.
Anyway Stranded No More has no idea what they’re talking about and uses obvious confirmation bias to justify any point they make, pointing to a small handful of cases where healthy whales were successfully refloated (which is ALWAYS the goal, regardless of what they keep saying) - and ignoring the cases of the sick whales or the constant restrandings cases.
