The Whale Tale

In the early hours of Saturday morning, a pod of false killer whales (at first misidentified as pilot whales) beached themselves on Kommetjie beach. There were about 55 of them in total. This kind of mass beaching doesn't happen very often - about once in 10 or 20 years, so we took a drive out there to witness the spectacle.

Quite something to behold - the whales were not all the humungous animals you would have expected - some were smaller than dolphins.

The volunteers and rescue workers battled most of the day to get the whales back into the water and out to deep sea. Those animals that were water-borne didn't stay there for long. They either turned back right there and made for their beach graveyard, or drifted further up the coastline to beach themselves anyway. Many of the land-trapped creatures were stressed, dehydrated and experiencing suffocation due to the great mass of their own bodies crushing their lungs.

The rescue workers were dedicated to their task. We watched their tireless efforts for about 20 minutes before officials started requesting onlookers to evacuate the beach. Euthanizing whales is possibly not the best public display on earth, so they were trying to make it easier for everyone: the onlookers, the whales and the guy that had to pull the trigger. By that time, it was reported that 10 whales had already died on the beach due to stress or suffocation.

As we turned to leave we heard an emotional cry from a concerned spectator calling for another chance for the whales. She so badly wanted to save them.

Today the discussions around the incident are about how the public made the beaching far more traumatic than it needed to be. I actually heard a report claim that some whales suffered due to the fact that there were distressed onlookers in the vicinity. Another complaint was aimed at the media for making a spectacle of the beaching and encouraging people to go to the beach to see the whales.

As for the public: we left before the shots started ringing out, but I can imagine that it would have been a terrible thing to witness. I know of no reports that confirm that any of the whales survived that day. They either perished due to the nature of their predicament, or their suffering was brought to a quick end by some poor soul with a pistol.

 concern is this: This phenomenal event happens so infrequently. It's a natural occurrence. The chances are that most of those visitors to Kommetjie Beach on Saturday will never again see anything like that. Who's to say that the whole event should have been covered up? Hush-hush? I felt a bit annoyed when the workers and police started asking people to leave. Since when did a natural disaster become a privately owned affair?I say nonsense! If people were able to experience that, so much the better! Yes it was tragic. Yes it was emotional. Yes it was difficult. But there is no doubt in my mind that every person who walked away from that beach that day was reminded about the fragility of life. Whether they agreed with the euthanizing of those awesome animals, or were working fervently to release them back into the Atlantic, each individual there that day cannot deny that witnessing creatures of that magnitude give up their lives on that beach is an event that will not soon be forgotten.