US scientists from an assortment of institutions were recently searching for clues as to why five - or perhaps six Pygmy sperm whales stranded off North Carolina - on the Outer Banks. Researchers spent most of Sunday September 4 conducting necropsies and collecting data to take back to their respective institutions to analyse but commented there was a lot of tissue collected for testing.

The reason the number is unclear, is because the public pushed one of the whales back out into the water and then one washed in, so there is no way of knowing if the one that washed in was the same one put back into the water or yet a different whale. One whale washed ashore in Corolla, another in Frisco and the remainder in Hatteras near Cape Point. Four of the whales were alive when found but were euthanised. Pygmy sperm whales are the second most likely whale species to strand along the Outer Banks. Bottlenose dolphin are the most frequent. Earlier this year, three dwarf sperm whales stranded in the area but in 2005, the largest-ever reported stranding occurred when almost three dozen whales of various species beached themselves along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore just north of Oregon Inlet.