Over the past few years, there have been numerous strandings of dolphins, whales (and turtles) reported around India’s coastline but, to date, there has been no collective database documenting when strandings occurred and in which areas, therefore valuable information has been lost.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change recently released its Marine Mega Fauna Stranding Guidelines, aimed to improve coordination between various independent governments, rescue teams responding to marine strandings, research and management and data sharing which will assist with the long-term conservation of the various marine species and their habitats.
In January 2016, 80 short-finned pilot whales stranded along the coast of southern India. Many were refloated, however, several hours later additional whales were discovered stranded a few kilometres away, and with no tagging/markers, it was impossible to confirm whether they were the very same whales which had been previously refloated. In a country that has a coastline of 7,500km, this is the first time that a policy has been rolled out for stranded marine mammals. This is something which Marine Connection welcomes, as not only will it give a standard operating procedure for handling stranded cetaceans and management actions for improved coordination, but will mean that all stranded dolphins and whales will be marked for future identification if they were to re-strand within a short period of time.
Further details about the Marine Mega Fauna Stranding Management Guidelines can be found here
