A group of 20 helpless whales that became beached after a cyclone have been rescued.
The desperate mammals had become stranded in shallow waters near the village of Sampur, Sri Lanka, after being washed up in the wake of Cyclone Mora.
Sailors and villagers teamed up to rescue the pod of pilot whales off the island’s northeastern coast on Wednesday.
The navy, with the help of residents, managed to push the whales back in to deeper waters.
‘It was a delicate task to push them back without hurting them,’ Navy spokesman Chaminda Walakuluge said.
‘But there was a happy ending when all of them could be sent back to deeper waters.’
He said it was not clear why the mammals got stranded in the area, but noted that the sea was rough due to the effects of Cyclone Mora in the Bay of Bengal and which hit Bangladesh on Tuesday.
In April 2011, a sperm whale was stranded inside the Trincomalee harbour and two navy boats were deployed to guide the mammal out into deeper waters where it was reunited with waiting whales.
Trincomalee, 260 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Colombo, is a natural harbour and is also a popular tourist spot for whale watching.
Trincomalee is also known as the location where both of the world’s two largest mammals – elephants and whales – can be seen.
The waters around Trincomalee, which was used by Allied forces as a staging post during World War II, have a high concentration of blue and sperm whales while the surrounding jungles have herds of wild elephants.
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