Around 56 short-finned whales have got stuck along the coast of Everglades Park, Florida. Out of these, six have already died, four have been euthanized and the rest are struggling.
The whales were first spotted by Brian Sanders, a charter boat Captain at the park, while he was returning from a fishing expedition,Tuesday. The whales are stranded in a remote part of the coast surrounded by a number of sandbars and 20 miles away from their actual habitat, according to an Associated Press report.
The park officials sent a rescue team on Wednesday night to move back these whales into deeper waters but the squad was unsuccessful.
"Will be lucky if we're able to even save a couple" said Blair Mase , the marine mammal investigating coordinator at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a statement."We want to set the expectation low, because the challenges are very, very difficult."
One more team was sent on Thursday morning to save the whales. The park officials as well as the biologists are not sure of the chances of survival of these whales as they don't know since how long these whales have been stuck in the shallow waters.
"I don't think we have a lot of time," Mase said.
The diseased whales have been sent for necropsies to determine the cause of deaths and what caused them to get stuck in the shallow Everglades waters
These whales exhibit strong social ties. The biologists suspect that the mass stranding may be a result of this. "These are very, very social animals," Phillip Clapham, the director of the whale research program at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, reports Mashable."They remain together as family units. If the lead animal gets in trouble, probably everyone else is going to follow them and be in trouble."
Last year around two dozen whales were found stranded along the coast in Avalon State Park, Florida.
