Early this week, a majestic 42-feet long blue whale died on the Revdanda coast almost 18 hours after struggling to survive. It is the biggest sized whale to have been beached on the Mumbai coast in recent years. It was reportedly a young female specimen and showed signs of life initially. People from the neighboring areas tried to push it back into the sea. Forest officials contacted marine biologists about it at the time when it was still alive and in distress.
Unfortunately, the authorities were unable to force its enormous body from the shallow sea back into deeper waters. It finally died after 18 hours of struggle and was buried on the Revdanda beach. A few dead dolphins were discovered along Mumbai’s coastline recently. And almost two months ago, a dead whale was seen on the shores of Uran in Raigad. The Cetacean Population Study team of marine biologists also observed live blue whales very near the Konkan coast of Sindhudurg earlier in 2015.
Dolphins and whales are being spotted in and around the coastline with alarming regularity these days owing to sea pollution which drives these creatures to look for food in unexplored places, causing some of them to get stranded. Blue whales feast on krill, copepods and other small creatures that get trapped in its filter-feeder system. If they’re swimming this close to our shores for sustenance, the waters may be much richer in biodiversity than we can imagine.
According to TOI, a dead blue whale sighting was reported at Thane in 1906, while a mother and its calf had washed onto the beach in Ratnagiri in 1912. Man nearly drove these gentle giants into non-existence by the 1970s. It would not do to have history repeat itself. A new paper published in Science Advances claims that the Earth is entering the sixth phase of mass extinction, with the rate of species loss being 100 times greater than expected, and humans are to blame.
What hope do we have left if even the blue whale, the biggest animal ever known to have lived, cannot survive our use and abuse of the planet Earth?