MUNICIPALITY
OF PADADA |
Philippines |
WHALE TALE
- CZALDY
A rare phenomenon occurred last Sunday November 3, 2002 along the
shoreline between
Palili and Balasinon. About early Sunday morning, a fisherman
noticed something gigantic
caught in his fish trap and it turned out to be a whale. News broke
out like lightning and
people began to come in numbers to see the hapless mammal. I arrived
at the scene five
hours after the discovery and relieved to find the creature alive
but seemed to be weak
and disoriented, he was 3m long and about 400kg. Having no rescue
training on beached
whales was a handicap. Made contact with the International Marine
Alliance through
Jimmy Torres and had the whale acclimatize and brought him to deeper
water thereafter
but always go back to the shallow part. As the tide went high in the
evening, the Bantay
Dagat of Balasinon brought him again to deeper water and there was
no trace of the
mighty creature as we combed the nearby coastal barangays the
morning after.
There's still no conclusive identity of the whale as of press time.
Mr. Gabriel Lim and I
identified it to be either a Dwarf Sperm Whale or a Pilot Whale. We
would like to
encourage visitors on this site with expertise on marine mammals to
help us identify.
As of press time, an unconfirmed story of a sighting of a beached
whale along the
coastline of Sta. Maria was reported but had released it to deeper
water. The veracity of
the account still has to be confirmed. We just keep our fingers
crossed that this amazing
mammal survives.
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General Information:
CZALDY
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Last Modified: 08 NOV 2002
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