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CNN Live At Daybreak

More Than Two Dozen Stranded Pilot Whales Euthanized

Aired July 31, 2002 - 06:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: In Cape Cod May, experts have euthanized more than two dozen pilot whales after they became stranded for a third time in two days. Experts decided the whales would be too disoriented and exhausted to make their way back out into the open sea.

CNN's Bill Delaney has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What all too briefly seemed good news, more than 20 pilot whales swimming at high tide Tuesday afternoon, after stranding for hours before that for a second day on a Cape Cod beach.

But soon, they again stranded, exhausted, disoriented. With some 20 other whales having already died earlier in the day, officials decided to euthanize the rest, injecting them with Phenobarbital, losing hope the creatures would ever find their way again to open sea.

(on camera): What's dangerous about a second day stranding?

A.J. CADY, CAPE COD STRANDING NETWORK: These animals are already incredibly stressed from the first day and so many more of them died just from shock and exposure or injuries that they've sustained that they just haven't had a chance to recover from.

DELANEY (voice-over): For hours, rescuers kept the whales moist in mud flats near Lieutenant's Island. A last chance to finally go north, though, out of Cape Cod Bay, lost.

Monday, more than 50 of the whales first stranded. Nine died that day in the searing sun. Forty-six, though, lovingly shoved back into the water at high tide.

(on camera): Nobody knows just why whales strand themselves. Scientists have theories. The pilot whales here on Cape Cod could have been chasing a school of fish and been lured into the suddenly and deceptively shallow waters near shore here. And pilot whales are particularly sociable and hierarchical animals. They could have been following an ill or confused leader.

(voice-over): The whales' final stranding near a marsh called Blackfish Creek, named for the 19th century name, blackfish, for pilot whales. Fifteen hundred stranded there in 1884. Smaller numbers this time. No measure of the sense of large loss on Cape Cod and beyond it.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: It's a different story near Boca Raton, Florida. Officials there say three manatees that beached themselves are in little danger. They say it's just normal mating season behavior. The manatees, two males and one female, are now resting in about a foot and a half of water. Maybe it's a hot tub kind of thing.

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