Pygmy whale released with a satellite transmitter implanted

The 1.74-meter long female whale was found stranded on a beach in Kaohsiung County in Jan. The baby whale was lost and was bitten by sharks before it was stranded. It was very weak with many wounds, parasites in its stomach and a high white blood cell count.

A team of more than 700 volunteers led by Wang Chien Ping, a professor at National Cheng Kung University's Department of Biology, took care of the whale days and nights. It could not swim and eat on its own. It was on drips and was fed 6.5 kg of food in eight meals a day. After three weeks, the whale was recovered. However, as it was under human care for a period of time, it did not want to hunt for its own food anymore. It was trained for an extra month to swim and hunt so that it could be released back to the oceans.

Meimei was the first stranded whale to survive among 13 whales that the center had rescued over the past decade. A satellite transmitter was implanted on its back fin so that the biologists can track and study its activity after it was released.

Pygmy sperm whales are amongst the smallest of all whales and are not much larger than many dolphins. They are about 1.2 meters at birth and 3.5 meters at maturity. They are active in the temperate waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. They are rarely sighted at sea so not much is known about their behaviors.

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