A mother and its baby whale died Tuesday, shortly after they beached on Jupiter Island.
After the mother whale died, the baby was euthanized because it had almost no chance of survival without the mother, WPTV reported.
Biologists from Miami and Jupiter arrived to Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in hopes of figuring out why the whales beached themselves. Some said it was likely the mother was very sick and the calf followed her to shore.
“The rehab potential is very small,” said John Cassidy from The Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission. “There really isn’t much that we can do for them once they do come up on the beach.”
Helpers did their best to rescue the pygmy sperm whale mother and calf but they appeared to be very stressed.
“We tried to bring the calf back to the mother, bring them back together again reduces the stress level on both of the animals,” Cassidy said.
Although the rescue efforts were unsuccessful, scientist hope to study every part of the whale, expecting to understand what happened and why they beached.
“It’s the circle of life,” said one of the scientists studying the whales. “This to me is very exciting because this is the only time we see this species, they are very few people that have seen this species in the wild alive and happy because they are out in the deep deep waters.”
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