Five pilot whales beached themselves Monday on Florida’s coast, and several agencies were feverishly working to try to save them.
The whales were spotted near the shore of Redington Beach in Pinellas County sometime in the early morning. and Carlee Wendell of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium told WFLA-TV that responders have been on the scene since about 6:30 or 7 a.m.
It’s not clear why the whales beached themselves, but authorities described them as “distressed.”
“They have come to shore, [and] they don’t do that unless something is wrong,” Wendell told the station. “However, these are social animals that live in groups of up to 10 to 100. So it’s a possibility that if one of them is sick, the others would follow. So we’re trying to assess their body condition, give them general health assessments and figure out what’s going on with them.”
Photos posted to Twitter by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office show the mammals under three tents to protect them from sunburn.
Cool towels are also being used to protect them, according to Wendell.
“We do our best to make sure they are comfortable as possible in what is, of course, an uncomfortable situation for them,” Wendell said. “We do provide shade to them, and thankfully, we did have a lot of beachgoers who were willing to lend us their tents for the day.”
Authorities from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are aiding the aquarium team and the sheriff’s office.
“They’re currently making a decision about what will be best for the animals,” Wendell said. “A number of factors go into that, and essentially they will make the call as to where these whales go, what happens to them. We’ve got the best team out there that we could.”