A rare offshore whale that seldom comes close to land washed up on Mustang Island near Port Aransas over the weekend, prompting a response from marine mammal experts who traveled hundreds of miles to help.
The Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network (TMMSN) said a melon-headed whale stranded on the South Texas beach. Heidi Whitehead, the organization’s executive director, told Chron the weekend incident marked just the 24th documented melon-headed whale stranding along the Texas coast since the organization began tracking strandings in 1980.
TMMSN teams responded from Galveston to Port Aransas. Although the incident was outside the organization’s normal response area, Whitehead said the network receives frequent reports of stranded dolphins and whales from the Port Aransas and Corpus Christi regions. She said the Port Aransas area has historically been the organization’s second-busiest response region along the Texas coast, highlighting the need for additional marine mammal response capacity in South Texas.
Throughout the response, TMMSN said it received reports that the whale had repeatedly stranded and had been returned to the water by well-meaning beachgoers…