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Philippine town’s special cemetery — for whales and dolphins

BULA (CAMARINES SUR) — Whales and dolphins in this central Philippine town have been assigned their own graveyard.

AP file photo

AP file photo

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BULA (CAMARINES SUR) — Whales and dolphins in this central Philippine town have been assigned their own graveyard.

Collectively called cetaceans, these sea mammals have been allotted a burial place at the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Regional Freshwater Fisheries Centre (RFFC) here.

“We have, so far, a dozen cases of dead whales and dolphins found or stranded on the beaches of Bicol, so we thought of burying them properly, and that’s how the Cetacean Cemetery came to be,” Ms Nonie Enolva, a spokesperson for BFAR, said.

She added that a dwarf sperm whale found in Ragay in April 2014 was the first cetacean to have been buried in the cemetery; while the latest were two spinner dolphins found in Tinambac in July this year.

Cetaceans are a widely distributed family of finned and carnivorous aquatic mammals, which include whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Ms Enolva said that when these dead mammals are found, they are brought in to the RFFC for a necropsy by members of the Fisheries Regional Emergency Stranding Responding Team to determine the probable cause of their death.

Some causes of death include the ingestion of plastic and other solid waste, as well as acoustic trauma, a sensory hearing loss caused by dynamite explosions or seafloor drilling.

“They become deaf due to these explosions and eventually lose their equilibrium, so they drown. A deaf whale is a dead whale,” Ms Enolva said. MANILA TIMES

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