Somehow, the animals are always the first to know – at least, that’s what most disaster movies want us to know.
And, depending on who you ask, this was the case today after a colossal 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s remote Far East coast.
The tremor, one of the largest ever recorded, radiated tsunami waves that travelled hundreds of miles per hour towards Japan, Alaska, California, Hawaii and Washington.
Millions living on both sides of the Pacific Ocean were evacuated as officials issued warnings and long, curling waves crashed into coastlines.
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, wrecked by a tsunami in 2011, fled, fearing the up to five-feet-tall waves expected.
But hours before the quake, on Tuesday night, four whales were beached along the shores of Tateyama, a city in Japan’s Chiba prefecture.
And, to some, they were a precursor for the quake about to happen.
The pod of male sperm whales huddled together in the shallow waves off Heisaura Beach, with one measuring eight metres, Japan’s NHK reported.
Footage taken by a surfer today showed the underwater giants flopping their fins near the edge of the water.
Beliefs that the beached whales were warnings for the incoming earthquake went viral on social media, further emboldened by viral clips of beached beluga whales found on the shores of Kamchatka, a peninsula at the quake’s epicentre.
So, Metro spoke with experts, reviewed studies and crunched the numbers -can whale standings predict earthquakes?
Why does beaching happen?
Why beaching, also called cetacean stranding, happens has long been a mystery.
Lone animals may beach themselves if they are sick, but exactly why mass strandings occur is unclear. Some suggest that shoddy echolocation, hunting prey in shallow water or sonar could push them to land.
But for decades, some have wondered whether the whispers of an incoming seismic event could play a role.
In the weeks before the world’s most powerful earthquake in 40 years happened off the Indonesian ocean in 2004, some 170 whales were stranded along the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.
In 2011, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake shook a tsunami that sent walls of water washing over northern Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people.
Only days before, 50 melon-headed whales and 50 dolphin were beached in Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture, about 60 miles from the quake’s epicentre
So, when video footage of the beached whales in Chiba and Kamchatka spread, some users were quick to say that: ‘The animals warned us.’
Except, they probably weren’t, experts told Metro.
‘Yes, it’s possible that some element of marine earthquakes can cause impacts on marine mammals like these sperm whales,’ Rob Deaville, a project manager at the Zoological Society of London’s UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, told Metro.
‘But as some reports suggest the whales potentially stranded before the tsunami hit Japan, I’d probably advise caution on linking the two events.
‘Sperm whales are known to mass strand, we’ve had several in England over the last few years- and it’s possible that the events may be coincidental and unrelated, further investigation by, eg, post-mortem, would be useful to help explore this further. ‘
It might be tricky to do a post-mortem on the beluga whales said to have washed ashore in Kamchatka, given that this actually happened in 2023.
As a Russian news report said at the time, the four adults and a calf were found stuck on a beach near the mouth of the Tigil River.
They were later rescued by local fishermen, who poured buckets of seawater on them until the tide came back in.
In Chiba, at least 41 whales became beached on the prefecture’s shallow shores between 2020 and 2024, according to a marine stranding database, many in areas where no earthquakes occurred.
NHK also found next to no evidence that whale and dolphin standings have ever been signs of an imminent earthquake between 2011 and early 2024.
Stewart Fishwick, professor of geophysics and Head of School at the University of Leicester, was also unconvinced by the connection.
He told Metro that beached whales happening before earthquakes are ‘nothing more than a coincidence’, as studies have previously found.
‘Given the number of whale strandings that occur all the time, there is always going to be one found somewhere in the weeks leading up to a big earthquake,’ he added.
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