Pilot whale found on Cape Breton harbour shore

Susan Beaton didn’t know it was pilot whale on the shore in the Chéticamp area when she saw it on Oct. 21.

It was mid-morning and on a beach on the south side of Chéticamp harbour. At first, Beaton didn’t recognize it as a whale.

“I thought it was a rock,” said Beaton, a fisher from Antigonish who owns a cottage in the area. “A very odd-looking rock.”

When they got closer, Beaton realized it was a small pilot whale and it wasn’t alive. Beaton’s first impressions were that although the whale didn’t look very beat up, it must have died off shore and washed up on the Chéticamp harbour shore.

“It was kind of sad to see,” Beaton said. “Whales don’t usually come into the harbour and with the way the wind was blowing, it could have floated in…I have seen whales washed up on other coastlines, but not in a harbour.”

Beaton took photos and posted them on Facebook. Multiple people said they saw the post and were going to report the whale to marine and natural resources.

The day after, Marine Animal Response Society (MARS) staff came to Cape Breton from Halifax to get the animal from local Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources staff, who collected it from Chéticamp.

Tonya Wimmer, director of conservation for MARS, was waiting for the arrival of the young pilot whale on Oct. 22 when she answered the Cape Breton Post’s questions through email.

The pilot whale was 10 feet long and Wimmer said it appeared to be a young one. The necropsy was expected to be done on Oct. 23 to see what might have caused its death.

Yearly, there are incidents of pilot whales washed ashore in Nova Scotia, both dead and alive.

“This is unfortunately common for the species which occur here quite regularly,” said Wimmer.

So far in 2026, there have been five incidents where pilot whales have washed ashore in Nova Scotia.

“This has included two mass strandings on Sable Island, two animals in western Cape Breton (including this animal) and one other one on the southern shore of Nova Scotia,” Wimmer said.

“The animals on Sable and the south shore were not able to be necropsied.”

According to a post on the MARS Facebook page, 16 pilot whales were beached on Sable Island on June 1O. Some of the animals had died before Park Canada responded to the island and, due to the remote location of the island, the others couldn’t be saved.

As reported in the Post, earlier this month a pilot whale was found on a beach in Margaree.

It was a young long-finned pilot whale, a dependent calf, and it was reported seen washed ashore in Margaree Harbour on Oct. 3. MARS biologist examined the animal to figure out what caused its death.

“It was determined to be an unweaned animal,” said Wimmer. “We’re waiting further tests to determine if there were any underlying reasons why it was separated from its mother and died.”

Speculation about the species circulated online about the pilot whale, questioning if it could be a porpoise, a toothed marine mammal that looks like a dolphin; which wasn’t the case.

Male long-finned pilot whales can grow up to 25 feet in length and weigh up to 9,900 pounds. The long-finned pilot whale is the second-largest member of the dolphin family, behind the orca, which is considered both dolphin and whale.

– With files from Jeremy Fraser.