Note
A mass stranding of cetaceans is an event in which two or more individuals of the same
species, excluding a single cow-calf pair, beach within a given spatial and temporal reference
(Wilkinson, 1991). A mass stranding event may span 1 or more days and range over miles of
shoreline, bridging multiple counties, or sandbars and outlying keys. A variety of species have
been affected; Odell (1987) listed 19 odontocete species known to mass-strand.