An Orca Washed Out On The Beach of De Panne (Belgium) in October 2023

On 29 october 2023, on a beach only 10 km north from one of the two areas of investigation of SHARK RESEARCH Opal & Silver Coasts (EU), a male Orca (aka Killer Whale) washed out at De Panne, a belgian resort on the flemish coast, only 10 km from the french-belgian frontier.

Although this whale is not part of the study field of the SHARK rogram on the one hand, and not in the french area of allowed investigation on the other, a short but aporopriate of this regretful should be done by the program, in order to know what were the causes of his death : illness, tireness, lose of his tribe, boat noise perturbation, changes of the physical et chemical fetaures of the sea water in the Biscaye Bay for example, etc. In fact, such an investigation could be of a great help of the SHARK RESEARCH program.

In fact, according to many science publications, or science-based web sites and books, this coast is not a part of the Orcas migration road. Sometimes, other sea mammals washed out too, on the belgian coast as well as the french coast (North Sea, English Channel).

Killer whales are predators of sharks (they kill them), but it is not absolutely wrong to say that Sharks could swim in the vicinity - not to close however .. - of these kind of sea mammals.

SHARK RESEARCH Opal & Silver Coasts (EU) does know that the main ocean physical and chemical parameters strongly influence the behavior of the se species worldwide, namely, the couple (T,S)(T : Temperature, S : Salinity).

Ocean and sea (surface, water column) are warming fairly quickly at the planet Earth and geological scales - the "forcing" -, oxygen decrease also almost everywhere in the oceans, carbon dioxyde increases in the other way...

Consqently, it is very likely that, at this time and surely in the next future, fishes and sea mammals will migrate more and more in the northerner (resp. southerner) part of the North (resp. South) hemisphere. It is a matter of survival for them, in particular in a context of overfishing...

Hereafter, some videos relating these regretfull washout.