Why The Whale Came

When I was very young, I had a strong love for the film Free Willy. So, naturally, when my dad asked me on a grey evening in March 1997 if I wanted to go to Queensferry to "see the whale", I jumped at the idea. When we arrived at the viewpoint in South Queensferry, I expected an orca celebrating its freedom with joyful leaps. What I saw instead, off in the distance, was a sperm whale struggling in the shallow water on the north side of the Firth of Forth, with boats alongside him spraying him with hoses. It wasn’t majestic or inspiring. It was just sad.

Sperm whales are a large species, the largest of the toothed whales, and can be found in open oceans all over the world. They are deep-diving animals, reaching incredible depths of up to 3 km, where they hunt giant squid. They are certainly not suited for a shallow estuary like the Forth.

Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) mother and calf (photo credit: Gabriel Barathieu).

After he was refloated near North Queensferry, the sperm whale, affectionately named Moby, headed further inland. A rescue team of boats, including BP tugs and the Maid of the Forth, formed a line across the estuary, revving their engines to deter Moby and send him back out to sea. After some to-ing and fro-ing, where it did appear that he had finally left the estuary, Moby eventually stranded on Airth foreshore, where he sadly died on 31 March 1997. He was the first sperm whale to be stranded in the Forth in over 200 years.

There are a number of factors that can cause a whale to strand. Illness, weather, chasing prey, being chased by predators, entanglement in fishing gear, and shipping noise and traffic are all things that can have an impact on whales. Moreover, looking deeper at human impacts, commercial whale watching, naval activities such as sonar and underwater explosions, oil and gas exploration, pollution, and the impacts of climate change can all contribute to strandings. In particular, whales are highly susceptible to noise pollution, with the noise from shipping and offshore activities driving animals away from their usual habitats and into less favourable ones, and the noise caused by explosions and sonar has the potential to temporarily deafen whales, impacting their ability to navigate properly.

In Moby’s case, after a post-mortem, it was determined that there was nothing that any of the rescuers could have done to keep Moby from stranding; he was always going to die. He had been suffering from an infection of the blood from which he wouldn’t recover. It is possible that this illness had an impact on his natural behaviour and was perhaps even an influencing factor for him entering the estuary in the first place.

A part of Airth foreshore, Moby's final resting place.

Unfortunately, strandings of whales and other cetaceans are becoming more common. In the last few years, strandings in the UK have reached record levels, with a number of mass strandings and a greater variety of species being reported. The UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) reported that the average number of strandings a year in the UK rose from 570 in the years 2010 to 2014 to around 890 a year in the years 2015 to 2019.

The Firth of Forth is no exception, with reported strandings becoming more frequent and larger species coming inland just like Moby did all those years ago. Northern bottlenose whales are not often seen on the Scottish coast, with only around 20 recorded sightings since 2000. However, in July 2023, two of these whales stranded on the shore at Culross, Fife, and passed away a day later, with no obvious cause for their stranding reported. Then, in October of the same year, a sei whale died after stranding at South Queensferry. This large species generally prefers deeper waters offshore but can occasionally be observed around Scotland coming closer to the shore to feed [8]. This particular individual was likely driven onto the beach by prevailing winds during Storm Babet.

A sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) mother and calf.

So, why the increase in strandings? CSIP findings indicate that human impacts on the marine environment are having a significant effect on marine animals, including whales. They have stated that, out of around 4,050 post-mortems conducted on cetaceans stranded in the UK between 1990 and 2018, 782 were found to be as a result of fishing gear entanglement or being caught as bycatch. Moreover, there is evidence that pollution influences the frequency of strandings, with chemicals such as organochlorines and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) being highly toxic to cetaceans. Even though they have been banned for decades, these chemicals persist in the environment and have entered the world’s oceans. As they move through the food chain, they become more concentrated and, as a result, more toxic, meaning they can have a much greater impact on large animals like whales.

On a more positive note, the number of strandings may be increasing simply because there are more whales. With concentrated conservation efforts and an improved awareness of our impact on the environment, whale populations that were previously threatened are starting to recover. For example, in 2008, the humpback whale was listed as “least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, replacing its earlier assessments of “endangered” and “vulnerable”, illustrating an improving outlook for the world’s whales.

I paid Moby another visit much more recently. His skull is a permanent fixture in the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland. Standing so close to it revealed the sheer scale of what looked so small and distant on the shore all those years ago; it was massive. It brought home the magnitude of what was lost that day. There’s something meaningful in the fact that, even now, people still feel such a connection to Moby and his story. It’s admirable that, in what turned out to be a hopeless situation, people tried their hardest anyway. And that that which we couldn’t save, we now honour in memory.

Moby's skull in situ at the National Museum of Scotland.

In the face of increasing environmental threats, that determination to try is as relevant as ever.