Over 20 pilot whales were pushed back into the sea by Sri Lankan navy and city residents after becoming stranded off Trincomalee, the north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka.
A Navy spokesman, Chaminda Walakuluge, said people joined together to push the whales back into deeper waters after they washed up on the Sampur coast near the port. “It was a delicate task to push them back without hurting them,” Walakuluge told AFP. “But there was a happy ending when all of them could be sent back to deeper waters.”
This phenomenon is relatively rare in the waters surrounding the Sri Lanka. The main cause of this is the early monsoon Cyclone Mora in the Bay of Bengal, which made landfall in Bangladesh earlier this week.
Pilot whales are actually a kind of dolphin and travel in large pods, often containing hundreds of members. They are a common sight off Sri Lanka, which has become a destination for travellers hoping to glimpse not just of pilot whales and dolphins, but all manner of aquatic life, including blue whales.
