Five Melon-Headed Whales Are Dead and Six Alive After Hawaii Stranding

Summary: Hawaiian melon-headed whales add up to five fewer after four euthanizations in a 10-whale stranding Aug. 29, 2019, and a lone-stranding death, on Maui.

The Aug. 29, 2019, mass stranding of whales at Sugar Beach, South Maui, included a deceased calf, who washed ashore seven hours later, about one mile from the adults; David Schofield, NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Regional Marine Mammal Health & Response Program coordinator, told Maui Now News Director Wendy Osher that the strandees are believed to be melon-headed whales: MauiNow.com @mauinow, via Facebook Aug. 29, 2019

Hawaiian melon-headed whales are five fewer after a mass stranding Aug. 29, 2019, of 10 Hawaiian melon-headed whales on Sugar Beach, Kihei coastal resort community, Maui, Hawaii, and a lone stranding nearby.

One whale calf beached one mile (1.61 kilometers) away from the Maui beach that bore two compromised, four healthy and four subsequently tranquilized, euthanized melon-headed whales. The two compromised melon-headed whales convinced National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) veterinarians of their capabilities to refloat with the healthy quartet by Aug. 31, 2019. Every three to four years sexually mature seven-plus-year-old females deliver, 12 months after mating with sexually mature 12 to 15-year-old males, 3-foot (0.921-meter) newborn melon-headed whales.

Forty-five-year life expectancies entail mature females educating immature melon-headed whales in resting mornings; leaping above-surface and socializing afternoons; and foraging cuttlefish, fish, shrimp and squid nights.

Physical and sexual maturity furnishes melon-headed whales dark bodies with dark-sided, small heads; rounded forehead organs; large dorsal capes and fins; and pointed, tapering pectoral fins.

Melon-headed whales, grouped as Peponocephala electra (from Greek πέπων, "pumpkin," κεφαλή, "head" and ἤλεκτρον, "amber") get 9-foot (9.84-meter-) long, 460-pound (208.65-kilogram) physically and sexually mature bodies. Perhaps matrilinear social structures have physically and sexually mature male melon-headed whales head out of, and physically and sexually mature females herd with, their birth groups. Melon-headed whales, identified by John Gray (Feb. 12, 1800-March 7, 1875), interact with related false killer (Pseudorca crassidens), pygmy killer (Feresa attenuata) and short-finned pilot whales.

Melon-headed whales sometimes journey with mixed bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus), pantropical spotted (Stenella attenuata), rough-toothed (Steno bredanensis), short-finned pilot (Globicephala macrorhynchus) and spinner (Stenella longirostris) whale schools.

NOAA species profiles and reports know of Unitedstatesian populations of melon-headed whales off New England and mid-Atlantic, southeast and west coastal states and off Pacific islands.

Commercial and governmental activities locate within the 4,593.18 to 5,905.51-foot (1,400 to 1,800-meter) breeding and feeding depths of the larger, non-resident group of Hawaiian melon-headed whales. They menace, at 492.13 to 1,312.34-foot (150 to 400-meter) breeding, feeding and socializing subsurface depths, resident, smaller group of the two populations of Hawaiian melon-headed whales. Commercial and governmental activities net dead, declining, disoriented melon-headed whales when the former nestle into the latter's 656.17 to 3,280.84-foot (200 to 1,000-meter) subsurface feeding depths.

NOAA species profiles and reports observe light, noise and particulate pollution and tuna purse seine nets as obstructing above-surface, surface and subsurface orientations of melon-headed whales.

NOAA species profiles and reports present mammal-unfriendly Caribbean, Indian, Indonesian Malaysian, Philippine and West African drift net fisheries; Japanese driver fisheries; and Philippine directed harpoon fisheries.

NOAA species profiles and reports queue up such eastern tropical high-intensity underwater noise pollution as United States Navy Rim of the Pacific military exercises and sonar. They reveal the Japanese archipelago's heavy metal and human-made concentrations of perfluorocarbons, flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls that render eastern tropical Pacific Ocean habitats marine mammal-unfriendly. The International Union for Conserva

One dead of 150 near-stranded and five dead of 11 stranded Hawaiian melon-headed whales in 2004 and 2019 respectively trouble diverse, sustainable Hawaiian ecosystems and ecotourism.

breaching pod of melon-headed whales (Peponocepha electra) near Kauai, Hawai'i; Thursday, July 7, 2016, 10:17:51; NOAA Photo Library Image ID anim2623, NOAA's Ark Collection; Laura Morse / NOAA / NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) / PIFSC (Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center): NOAA Photo Library, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

The Aug. 29, 2019, mass stranding of whales at Sugar Beach, South Maui, included a deceased calf, who washed ashore seven hours later, about one mile from the adults; David Schofield, NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Regional Marine Mammal Health & Response Program coordinator, told Maui Now News Director Wendy Osher that the strandees are believed to be melon-headed whales: MauiNow.com @mauinow, via Facebook Aug. 29, 2019, @ https://www.facebook.com/mauinow/videos/vb.128039724866/375778019777806/

breaching pod of melon-headed whales (Peponocepha electra) near Kauai, Hawai'i; Thursday, July 7, 2016, 10:17:51; NOAA Photo Library Image ID anim2623, NOAA's Ark Collection; Laura Morse / NOAA / NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) / PIFSC (Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center): NOAA Photo Library, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/noaaphotolib/33910332184/

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