Perusing the wiki entry on the subject, I was taken aback that some scholars (I presume, wiki isn’t specific) think some beachings may be suicide, anyone know the latest dope on this theory? Is it sort of an “old wives’ tale?” Has it been pretty much discredited or does it still have some currency?
OR
Considering that the Wiki article doesn’t even mention biologically mediated possibilites like parasites etc., and focuses exclusively on sonar and other man made causes, I’d say it has a fairly obvious agenda.
Out of curiosity I wonder if there are any recorded beachings of whales before the age of sonar.
Is 700 AD in the pre-sonar period?
Oh, and there’s always the straightdope on animal suicide. Those guys know everything 
Thanks for the link, what a fascinating article! God bless the internet!
Interesting article, but none of the examples there seem like classic whale strandings - multiple whales swimming right up onto the beach.
^^^ using the term “classic” there in the sense of “37 pilot whales beaching” which is what tends to draw the sonar theories. I realize that a single whale can beach itself.
Many of the references in that article are to “whales” but don’t say whether the whales were stranded at once or singly.
There is also a reference to “The humpback whales stranded at Shinagawa in 1798” [my emphasis]. Unless this refers to a series of single whale strandings, this sounds like more than one at a time.
So little is known about the causes of marine mammal strandings that it is possible that whales/cetaceans commit suicide. It’s really a pretty huge gray area and there’s lots of hypotheses out there, but some of them are impossible to test while all of them are infeasible to test. Basically, it’s often a case of “your guess is as good as mine.” Most of the cetaceans that strand are either ill in some way or are following others that are ill.
There is a lot of evidence suggesting connections between some stranding events and human produced sounds from some types of sonar and from seismic tests/oil exploration, but there are definitely many strandings that have nothing to do with such events.
I find it ironic that the same government that assumed Manuel Noriega would surrender himself for trial if we bombarded him with loud noises categorically denies it’s possible that loud noises could distress marine mammals.
Sailboat
Well, I just watched a National Geographic special on this subject, and that program suggested that the government did not “categorially deny” it. I thought the Navy was cooperating (as best it could, given its concerns with security, training, and the like) to minimize the use of sonar in areas known to be home to large numbers of whales.