The belugas, four adults and a calf, were found stuck on a beach near the mouth of the Tigil River in Russia's Far East, local news outlet Kamchatka-Inform reported.
The group of whales was rescued from their predicament by several local fishermen, who poured seawater on the mammals and kept them well fed with fish until the tide came back in.
Belugas, sometimes known as the canaries of the sea because of their characteristic high-pitched vocalizations, are small whales, usually light gray to white in color. These marine mammals are found in colder Arctic and subarctic waters in the Northern Hemisphere, mostly to the north of Russia and Canada. Like most species of marine mammal, belugas are intensely social, living, hunting and migrating in large social pods.
The fishermen initially wanted to carry the whales back to the ocean but then realized that the creatures were much too heavy.
Belugas can reach up to around 18 feet long and weigh as much as 3,500 pounds each. These large white whales are protected from the blistering cold of their favored waters by a thick layer of blubber, which can be up to 50 percent of their entire body weight. These whales also have a bulbous compartment on their foreheads filled with fatty tissue, known as a melon, that they use for echolocation.
Whales and dolphins can become stranded both alone and in groups for various reasons, ranging from disease to disturbance by shipping.
"Strandings do occur for natural reasons—any whale that dies at sea might wash up on shore," Patrick Miller, a professor at the School of Biology at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, told Newsweek in March. "As there are increasingly more humpback whales off the east coast of the U.S., which is good news, an increased number of strandings for natural reasons would be expected."
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, many of the stranded whales, around 40 percent, had evidence of a direct human interaction with ship collision or entanglement in fishing gear, Miller said.
Whales make use of underwater sound and have sensitive hearing that has evolved to enable them to make use of acoustic signals in the oceans, Miller continued. "Some species of whales, particularly beaked whales, are documented to strand when they hear intense sounds like sonar," he said.
The exact reason for these belugas' stranding is unknown. Whales and dolphins often die after being stranded because of dehydration, which is why the fishermen threw water over the mammals.
There are thought to be around 130,000 belugas in the world, and the species is listed as "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources' Red List of Threatened Species. Some local populations are struggling, however. A group living in the Cook Inlet in Alaska had a population decline of nearly 50 percent between 1988 and 1994.
The main threats facing this species as a whole include capture for captivity, hunting, chemical pollution from plastic and spills and noise pollution, which can confuse the whales' echolocation.
Eventually, after several hours of keeping the whales wet and hydrated, the tide came in enough that all five of the whales were able to return to the sea, swimming back into the Sea of Okhotsk.
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