Dear all, Just want to inform you that last Saturday, 18 March 2006, a total of 93 blackfishes stranded on the beaches of Ponggeran and Rerang villages, District of Ramsol, Donggala Regency, in the province of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. According to Media Indonesia (www.media-indonesia.com) Despite the locals' hard attempt to save the whales, 30 blackfishes still died during the rescue (another source quoted 45 died). By Monday morning (20 March), all the remaining 63 whales already returned back to the sea. It was hard to identify the species, especially when you were not there to witness the event (I reside in Bali, which is about two hours flight to the nearest airport, plus more than 100km of land travel). However, after scrutinizing the video image downloaded from one of our TV station (SCTV), I suspect the blackfish to be short finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), which are known to do mass stranding. The local weather during the mass stranding was not severe, so we didn't understand the cause of this event. To my knowledge, it was the largest stranding event on blackfish (and perhaps on other cetacean species) in Indonesia. In 2003, about 50 pilot whales also stranded in Banyuwangi, East Java, very next to the west tip of Bali. Back then, only one of the 50 whales died in during the rescue. Cheers, Putu Liza Candidate for Masters on Environmental Management School of Tropical Environment Studies and Geography James Cook University putuliza@yahoo.com ; putu.liza@jcu.edu.au