Tales of Whales and Plagues

                                         TALES OF WHALES AND  PLAGUES

It is what I hoped would not happen. More whales died. "Pilot whales Tasmania: Almost 400 die in Australia's worse stranding" - that was the headline to the article on the BBC website this morning September 23, 2000.

"Strand" means to leave a sea creature aground on a shore. Hundreds of pilot whales were found beached on Tasmania's west coast on Monday, 

Fifty whales were saved by late on Wednesday. Another 30 remained. The article said, "The stranding, one of the largest recorded globally, eclipses a previous national record of 320 set in Western Australia in 1996." On Monday the first rescuers saw about 270 whales stranded, but on Tuesday they saw another 200 nearby as they flew over the area in a helicopter.

The huge creatures, 22ft (7m) long and weigh up to 3 tonnes, travel in large close-knot communities. "They're remarkably calm," a person who was helping with the rescue said.

Are there many pilot whales in the world now? Scientists believe there are about 1 million long finned and some 200,000 short finned pilot whales in the world.



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If you believed that plagues happened only in Biblical times, think again! 

In an article on BBC Future Planet,  freelance journalist David Njagi, born and practicing in Kenya, wrote on "The Biblical locust plagues of 2020." A great article!

Njagi said  the invasion of locusts that came into farms in rural Kenya from Decemnber 2019 have been the worst seen in Kenya for 70 years. Locusts, he writes, have swarmed in large numbers in dozens of countries including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia,Eritrea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Oman and Saudia Arabia.

"When swarms affect several countries at once in very large numbers it is known as a plague."

In the article Njagi mentioned Esther Ndavu, a farmer in Kenya, who said to him: "This locust invasion is more than a challenge. It is a matter of life and death because it has left us hungry and confused."

However, "the locusts are not likely to go away soon." That is the opinion of Ezra Kipruto Yego, the Sustainable Development Goal Coordinator of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He sees "a possible link between climate change, extreme weather events and locust swarms in East Africa."

Can the plague be stopped?

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