whale stranding not likely on Cape Cod until after January 15

Beaches on Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Gulf of Maine, and Cape Cod should not expect pods of stranded whales until after 15 January 2009.

Pod strandings in the area are caused by violent undersea earthquakes near Iceland; however, this year the seafloor in area has been mostly free of such events.

Earthquake search reveals the following:

FILE CREATED: Wed Dec 17 02:43:45 2008
Circle Search Earthquakes= 3
Circle Center Point Latitude: 65.000N Longitude: 25.000W
Radius: 1500.000 km
Catalog Used: PDE
Date Range: 2008/11/01 to 2008/12/17
Magnitude Range: 1.0 – 9.0
Depth Range: 1 – 600
Data Selection: Historical & Preliminary Data

CAT YEAR MO DA ORIG TIME LAT LONG DEP MAGNITUDE

PDE-Q 2008 11 04 060538.13 53.22 -35.24 10 4.4 mbGS
PDE-Q 2008 11 07 201740.70 71.68 -11.59 10 4.1 mbGS
PDE-Q 2008 11 07 214057.05 71.69 -11.82 10 4.7 mbGS

There is still a slight 1% chance that the two earthquakes on 7 November might produce a pod beaching on Cape Cod before Christmas. But other than this slight chance, there are no dangerous earthquakes in the area leading the Deafwhale Society to predict no pod stranding will occur until after 15 January 2009.

We will update this prediction every week or so to see how long we can go before an submarine earthquake occurs that might produce a pod stranding in the area.

Stay tuned for the updates . . .

Deafwhale Society, Inc.
http://deafwhale.com