DATE: Saturday, September 27, 1997          TAG: 9709270416

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   64 lines

MOTHER, BABY WHALE SAVED VIRGINIA MARINE SCIENCE MUSEUM'S STRANDING TEAM IS MONITORING THE PYGMY SPERM WHALES.

A live pygmy sperm whale and her baby were found on the beach at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge Friday morning, and after a day of care and feeding, appeared to be doing well.

It was the first live stranding for the species here since 1991, and it marked the first time - so far - the Virginia Marine Science Museum's stranding team has found a mother and baby marine mammal and kept them alive.

A refuge employee surveying the foggy beach just after sunrise found the whales about a mile above the Visitor's Center. They were on the beach, left behind by the early-morning high tide.

A volunteer from the Virginia Marine Science Museum's stranding team kept the animals wetted down until others arrived with trucks to take them to the museum's stranding center.

It took about a dozen volunteers to lift the 9-foot-long, 670-pound mother into one of the trucks.

While outward signs are good for the pair, rescuers are still concerned about the mother.

``Something's wrong with her or she wouldn't have been on the beach,'' said stranding team director Mark Swingle.

But Friday afternoon, the larger whale was floating and breathing normally in an above-ground pool at the center. And the best news was her appetite.

Swingle got into the pool with her, massaged her lower jaw and ran a small squid along the groove next to her mouth. She opened her mouth, with teeth showing, and took it, then almost two dozen more.

That means the rescuers will be able to get vitamins and medicines into her without tubes. And it means the baby, which the mother had nursed in the pool, will be able to continue feeding.

The baby, about 4 feet long and 95 pounds, was probably healthy but followed its mother onto the beach. By day's end, it was energetically swimming around the pool, nuzzling the mother and apparently getting ready to nurse again.

Meanwhile, stranding team volunteers were setting up an around-the-clock schedule to monitor the animals and keep the mother fed.

They'll be at the center off Birdneck Road for several days, perhaps as long as a week, until arrangements can be made to transport them to a center that can handle large marine mammals.

The last live pygmy sperm whale stranded here, a pregnant female in 1991, died after being taken by Navy cargo plane to Sea World in Florida.

Pygmy sperm whales are found in temperate, sub-tropical and tropical waters but are rarely seen because they avoid ships. The whale's toothed jaw is shark-like, but it has a tail resembling a dolphin's.

The stranding team responds to beachings of hundreds of dolphins, sea turtles, seals and whales every year. But it rarely gets a live dolphin or whale, and then the chances of keeping them alive are poor.

Several feedings were planned throughout the night - and this kept hopes up.

Said volunteer Kathy Marchant, ``There's a chance; for once there's a chance.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

Mark Swingle checks a female pygmy sperm whale at the Virginia

Marine Science Museum's stranding center as its baby swims nearby. KEYWORDS: BEACHED WHALE RESCUE

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