Carrey, a volunteer marine mammal medic who works full time with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, recently received a distressing text message asking for volunteers to help 55 stranded pilots. whale on a beach in northwest Scotland.
Immediately, her husband agreed that spending the day pouring water on the trapped whales, making sure their blowholes were clean of water and sand, and doing everything they could to get them ready to refloat is the right way to spend their anniversary, he said.
The couple grab a bag of snacks as they rush to start the more than two-hour drive from their coastal town of Scarista on the Isle of Harris to North Tolsta on the Isle of Lewis.
The island is about a seven-hour drive from Edinburgh.
When they arrived, only 12 whales were breathing — eight adults and four calves.
The pod of 55 pilot whales was first reported by British Divers Marine Life Rescue earlier on Sunday. Dan Jarvis, the organization’s director of welfare and conservation, said most of the pod died shortly after washing ashore.
It’s always difficult to refloat live stranded whales because of their size and weight, but it was especially difficult in this case because the current was working against them, Jarvis said.
Still, a group of volunteers, marine charity workers, coast guard officers and others successfully floated a whale. Investigations are ongoing to determine how the whales became stranded on the island and the cause of their deaths.
Officials now have a working theory. One of the dead whales appeared to have vaginal prolapse, suggesting she may have had difficulty giving birth. Experts think that could be why the entire pod is stranded.
“Pilot whales have strong social and emotional bonds with each other,” Jarvis said. “If one of the whales gets in trouble and gets stranded, the others will follow and get stranded.”
Pilot whales are widespread and notorious for mass stranding, he said.
However, he added that all the evidence must be analyzed before reaching a definitive conclusion. The Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme is leading the investigation. It is also possible that the pod got sick because of human interference. Only the post-mortem results, which will take several weeks, will conclude the cause of death.
This could be “the biggest fatal mass stranding event we have experienced in Scotland for decades,” the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme said on Twitter. Jarvis said whale strandings were on the rise in Britain. Experts examine why.
Whales can become stranded on the beach for a variety of reasons, including poor health or injury, young mammals separated from their mothers or older ones separated from the pod.
Once stranded, the whales cannot return to the water and – weighing approximately two tons each – cannot support their own weight, Jarvis said.
Their skeletal structure began to crumble and wounds also began to develop from the sand.
Volunteers and whalers have to wait for the tide to recede so the mammal can re-enter the sea. When the tide shifted, two whales were washed away, but one of them returned to shore.
Only one survived, Jarvis said.
It was while waiting for the tide to change that Carrey, 54, and other volunteers played their part.
He was told that human voices soothed the mammals. When he ran out of words for the three whales he was taking care of, he first started humming and then singing them.
Carrey spent five hours with the whales on the beach, through strong winds and rough seas. Before 4 p.m., it was decided that the remaining whales could not be refloated from the shallow shore and the extreme wave conditions, and that they were euthanized.
“I sing Scottish Gaelic songs to them,” he said. “And when it was decided that we would stay, I went to say goodbye to each whale.”
For Carrey, the “intensely emotional day” was a “heartbreaking experience,” one he hopes he’ll never have to see again.
“I haven’t slept much since we got back,” Carrey said.
He said the whole island felt dark. “People are very close to nature here. These whales are swimming in the water that we see every day,” he said.
This isn’t the first mass stranding Carrey has witnessed near his hometown, but it’s the first one where he’s volunteered to help.
Last year, Carrey took a one-day marine life medicine training course on the Isle of Harris, where he learned how to help save marine mammals. Without these basics, taught by British Divers Marine Life Rescue, he could not help the whales in their last hours.
“I was trained for exactly this situation. I prepared my go-bag in the trunk of my car,” he said. “But I never thought that I would be able to help save a pod of 55 pilot whales.”
Carrey’s husband hasn’t gone through the training yet, so he can’t be hands-on with the whales, but he does his part by helping to photograph and measure the whales at the end of the day when the officials start the their investigation.
For Carrey, it’s a wedding anniversary he’ll never forget, he said.