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Speaker 1: Jub mission with Jones and Amanda. It's such a distressing

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Speaker 1: sight to see all those stranded whales. Three hundred and

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Speaker 1: eighty pilot whales have died in Australia's worst mass stranding

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Speaker 1: off the west coast of Tasmania. Why do they do it?

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Speaker 1: I think we know that they navigate by sonar and

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Speaker 1: something goes skewif in the sona and pilot whales. It

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Speaker 1: happens to them because they stick in family groups. So

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Speaker 1: one goes in, they all go in. Why can't we

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Speaker 1: help them? And why does it happen so often? We thought?

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Speaker 1: We talked to Associate Professor Karen Stockin. She's at Massi

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Speaker 1: University in New Zealand, an expert on whale and dolphins strandings.

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Speaker 1: Also know where that dolphins did it. I thought dolphins

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Speaker 1: pretty smart for that stuff. She's on an International Whaling

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Speaker 1: Commission expert panel on this very issue. Good morning, professor,

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Speaker 1: how are you?

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Speaker 2: Good morning?

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Speaker 1: Why does it happen? Am I right in thinking that

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Speaker 1: the head of the pod in somehow their sona, their

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Speaker 1: navigation goes skew if and they're all led to danger.

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Speaker 2: Been there and I mean there's lots of different reasons

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Speaker 2: while strummings happen. You have everything from single stranding events

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Speaker 2: where you might have just one injured or diseased or

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Speaker 2: just very old animal that has issues with navigation that

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Speaker 2: will come ashore right the way through to what we

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Speaker 2: call unusual mortality events, so you might have a large

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Speaker 2: group of animals or even a smaller group, but basically

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Speaker 2: unusual on the premitives. It's neither a species that typically

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Speaker 2: is caused a shore or in an area, so it's

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Speaker 2: out of habitat if you like. And in those circumstances

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Speaker 2: we're usually looking for, you know, potential human impacts or

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Speaker 2: even natural impacts that may have caused any issue, such

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Speaker 2: as for example, toxal algal blooms as an example, so

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Speaker 2: they're unusual. What we have obviously in Tasmania at the

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Speaker 2: moment is not necessarily unusual in the fact that although

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Speaker 2: we are obviously surprised by the sheer size of this event,

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Speaker 2: it is a very big event on the Australian as

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Speaker 2: well as on the global scale. But it is nonetheless

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Speaker 2: of species that's very well known with a propensity to

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Speaker 2: strand in those waters of Tasmania. So hence why we

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Speaker 2: were mindful of that fact. But in terms of what

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Speaker 2: causes these events, I mean, we are aware that obviously

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Speaker 2: these animals are foraging, so they are obviously looking for

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Speaker 2: their prey, and their prey is affected by many different things.

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Speaker 2: There can be changes in ocean current systems, circulations, There

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Speaker 2: are natural oscillations of change around temperature, so the whole

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Speaker 2: alminio langminio effect, and the fact that you get some

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Speaker 2: years or the warmer than others and that does change

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Speaker 2: the currents, and it does change how close to assure

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Speaker 2: some of the necessary prey may well be. So whether

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Speaker 2: this is a foraging expedition gone wrong, whether it's a

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Speaker 2: debilitated individual amongst all those pilot whales that has had

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Speaker 2: navigational issues and has come ashore bringing the rest of

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Speaker 2: the pod with it, is sadly something that will probably

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Speaker 2: and likely get to the bottom of, but we do

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Speaker 2: know it happens regularly. Nonetheless, is this a sign that

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Speaker 2: whales stocks on the rise? I think it's very difficult

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Speaker 2: to really put those two things together. In fact, some

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Speaker 2: of the work that was done by a colleague of

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Speaker 2: mind from Mats University as part of her PhD dot

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Speaker 2: Emma Betty her work showed on the mass stounding events

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Speaker 2: in New Zealand. In many aspects, some of the life

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Speaker 2: history parameters of the examined whales would suggest, if anything,

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Speaker 2: it's indicating loss of wales from the population by these events.

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Speaker 2: So it's not necessarily an indicator that the stocks are healthy,

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Speaker 2: although of course you would argue that there's got to

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Speaker 2: be enough of them that they're actually stranded. But what

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Speaker 2: impact that has on the broader population. We're still just

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Speaker 2: starting to scrape the surface on that, and that's why

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Speaker 2: these life history studies are really important. When you've got

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Speaker 2: an animal that's undergoing increased or reproductive outputs, that basically

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Speaker 2: suggests that it's got more of yours in the environment,

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Speaker 2: and that typically is more a case of there's more

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Speaker 2: available resources to it as a result of there being

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Speaker 2: less whales feeding upon it. So it's a density dependent

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Speaker 2: factor that we're talking about in those instances, which I'll

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Speaker 2: be interested to see if that's the case off Australia

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Speaker 2: as well.

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Speaker 1: And just briefly, why is it so hard to save them?

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Speaker 1: If we push them back out often they come back

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Speaker 1: in again.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, again, there's a couple of factors here. I

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Speaker 2: mean First of all, when you're dealing with the smaller dolphins,

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Speaker 2: you obviously don't have as many of the logistical challenges. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: moving a three ton pilot whale is not something that

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Speaker 2: can be easily done, and not when you've got hundreds

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Speaker 2: of them actually stranded aground. So there's the physical logistical

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Speaker 2: aspects of what makes it challenging. But likewise, with these

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Speaker 2: larger events, you also have that social cohesive bonds that

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Speaker 2: we've been talking about, and the fact that they're very

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Speaker 2: vocal animals, especially when they're distressed. So if you're in

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Speaker 2: the process of refloating some animals, then you've got vocalizations

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Speaker 2: of others going off still on the beach. It's not

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Speaker 2: uncommon for some of those animals to literally turn tail

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Speaker 2: and come straight back into either the same or neighboring beaches.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, challenging, definitely challenging for the team that are

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Speaker 2: on the ground there.

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Speaker 1: So distressing to see, isn't it. Well, doctor Karen, it's

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Speaker 1: great to talk to you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us, no worries, thank you, Well,

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Speaker 2: there you go. Gives us some insight pleasure. With James

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Speaker 2: and Amanda