The UK Government has funded the UK Cetacean Strandings Scheme since 1990. Prior to 1990 there was no such scheme and strandings were recorded by the Natural History Museum on an ad hoc basis. The following table details recorded strandings, taken from the UK Cetacean Strandings Scheme database. Data on strandings recorded before 1989 have been taken from the Cornish Wildlife Trust Database1.
1 We are currently awaiting data from NHM for cetacean strandings data prior to 1989 and as such the figures provided above may differ from those in the NHM database, but it is unlikely they will differ significantly.
All cetaceans 1979 11 1980 18 1981 12 1982 22 1983 27 1984 15 1985 27 1986 20 1987 46 1988 22 1989 32 1990 26 1991 38 1992 132 1993 52 1994 45 1995 19 1996 54 1997 59 1998 67 1999 64 2000 73 2001 123 2002 184 2003 264 2004 230 2005 102 2006 175 2007 87
The increase in numbers of strandings presented in the table in part reflects the increase in reporting effort with the operation of the Strandings scheme. It would therefore not be meaningful to compare stranding numbers collected before 1990 (which were ad hoc reports) with those collected since the scheme started. A very active cetacean strandings volunteer group also operates in the south-west which has increased effort into reporting of cetacean strandings.