When did people start saving beached whales? Yeah, about the time the oil was no longer used and the blubber & such was no longer considered useable but…when did it turn into a community effort to save the critters that beached themselves? Any known incidents before current times?
Whalenet
marine mammal stranding network
Texas marine mammal stranding network
History of the stranding network in Texas
When I was a kid in the sixties, I can remember things in my Weekly Reader (or whatever that 8 pages of news for kids was called) about pilot whales stranding on the beach and how some people tried to save them but they came back and stranded again, mostly. So it has been going on that long anyway. In Texas, (see the last link above) the effort has been organized since the late seventies. I hope that at least partially answers the question. I know one person in the Texas stranding network - she use to work for me and was constantly running out the door to get some porpoise off the beach.