A Whale has died after stranding on a beach in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Whale, identified as a young Sowerby’s Beaked Whale, Mesoplodon bidens, was found on a beach near the mouth of Brunstane Burn on the afternoon of Tuesday 13 October 2020, while still alive, but died shortly thereafter, despite attempts by volunteers from the Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals and British Divers Marine Life Rescue to refloat it.
Sowerby's Beaked Whales are found throughout the North Atlantic and North Sea, although they are reclusive Animals which tend to avoid boats and other Human objects, making them rarely seen. As such their population structure is not really known, and they are classified as Data Deficient under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. This is the third stranding of a member of the species recorded in the UK this year, with British Divers Marine Life Rescue recording two strandings in August, one in Suffolk and one in Hampshire, which implies a reasonably healthy population in UK waters (although individual strandings are sad, the fact that strandings are occurring implies that Whales are present. Sowerby's Beaked Whales are protected by the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas, the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Contiguous Atlantic Area, and the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Conservation of the Manatee and Small Cetaceans of Western Africa and Macaronesia. Historically the species was sometimes targeted by Norwegian Whalers, but this has not been the case in recent history; though these Whales are thought to be at risk from entanglement in fishing gear.
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