Last weekend our Medics in the north east of Scotland took part in a Mass Stranding Exercise at beautiful Golspie beach, near Inverness.
Every year BDMLR organises a couple of MSEs at different locations around the UK and invites Medics from the nearby regions to join in. The event is a simulation of a pilot whale mass stranding, with multiple model whales set up across the beach and the participating volunteers given the opportunity to manage the scenario as if it were the real incident. This time was the turn of Medics in the Moray, Inverness and Cromarty, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland regions.
Aside from acting as a refresher session for Medics to practice their first aid and teamwork skills, it also provides a great opportunity for some to step up into key management roles to learn more about incident command and control. Facilitators will test them via a variety of role played characters ranging from concerned members of the public, Coastguards, local councillors, vets, marksmen and more. Alongside this, regular health updates on the animals are provided for the team to react to and consider the options for decision making, while a Whatsapp group is used to emulate real time contact with our hotline’s Rescue Coordinator, Veterinary Consultant and other communications in the background.
In this incident, four adult and three calf pilot whales were involved, with one mother-calf pair sneakily hidden some distance away out of view behind a pier. Some of the animals were found to be in poor health and either passed away or were euthanased, while the remainder were refloated later in the day.
We’d like to thank everyone who came to take part in or helped organise this event, they are large undertakings requiring a lot of resources and time, especially with cleaning everything afterwards!
We look forward to holding our next one this coming weekend!
