Beached whale was many miles from home

The 14ft female juvenile, which washed up at Fraisthorpe, near Bridlington last weekend, had to be put down after rescuers tried in vain to help it back to the sea.

Experts from the Zoological Society of London, who have taken samples for testing, say it was a Sowerby’s beaked whale.

It was the seventh such reported stranding this year and follows a number of whales beaching on the East Coast, including a fin whale last autumn at Spurn Point and a 33ft female sei near Skeffling, on the banks of the River Humber, which could be because of local topography acting as the “perfect whale trap”.

Rob Deaville, who leads the UK-wide Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, said: “Not an awful lot stood out at post mortem which is why we are rushing back with samples to do follow up tests. It hadn’t fed for some time, there were parasites in the stomach and bile in the intestinal tract.

“Its normal habitat is deep water close to the Continental shelf, west of Ireland and North West Scotland, not shallow coastal waters. Strandings of Sowerby’s beaked whales are uncommon. It may be they come into the North Sea which is an unfamiliar habitat and can’t feed because they have very specialist feeding behaviour, feeding on a species of squid you probably wouldn’t find in the North Sea.”

Mr Deaville said it was a difficult to single out any one of the many factors at play in strandings – including natural disease, increased risk of exposure to man’s activities, or simply because there are more whales about.

He said: “The Humber estuary is interesting – if you look at the topography there is a hook that comes out and it is quite shallow – it might be acting as the perfect cetacean trap, with the tides rushing out fairly quickly and the whales left high and dry.”