A humpback whale was found dead off the coast of Newhaven on September 29.
Members of the public discovered the deceased Whale as onlookers passed Newhaven port.
The Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) is investigating the cause of death.
SMASS is responsible for researching marine life that has become stranded off the coasts of Scotland to either provide a refloat or identify the cause.
However, a stranding of this magnitude is unusual for Edinburgh. Previously there had only been reports of seals being stranded along the Edinburgh coastline according to SMASS reports.
This stranding came just a few months after the mass stranding that occurred in the Orkneys when 77 pilot whales became beached. The ones that were alvine were unable to be saved.
This follows a trend of an increase in strandings in Scotland. SMASS has identified that in the past decade from 2011-2018 there has been a steady increase in strandings rising from 481 reported strandings per year to 938.
Whilst SMASS has stated that there are cases of natural causes, there is evidence that strandings can be due to “a direct anthropogenic cause” such as entanglement.
SMASS has also attributed non-direct anthropogenic causes to the deaths of marine life such as climate change and overfishing which affects the health of the creatures and increases their stress level. In 2020, SMASS published a case study into marine animal strandings in Scotland, highlighting the impacts of climate change and human activity as potential causes.
“Newhaven, Edinburgh” by EG Focus is licensed under CC BY 2.0.