Shocking: 3000 dead whales, dolphins and porpoises in just 3 years.
After months of asking the UK Department for the Environment, Defra, to share the data for cetacean strandings, at last some information is emerging.
I’ve been calling on Defra to share the data for some time, and now I’m pleased to see that the 2019 and 2020 reports have been published. At the time of writing this, we are still awaiting the 2021 and 2022 data, but already the figures are terribly alarming and beg many questions.
3000 Deaths In Just Three Years
Tragically, more than 1000 whales, dolphins and porpoises were stranded around the UK in 2018 - and it was a similar number the following year with 980 cetaceans reported to the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) in 2019.
But in 2020, there was an unprecedented number of cetacean strandings with the highest figures ever recorded in the UK by the CSIP since its inception - a shocking 1102 cetaceans, comprising at least 16 species.
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