This year in Nigeria, Bayelsa residents butcher a whale at Brass Island. It is common for Nigerians to cut, kill, and eat the meats of whales that find their way to the bank of the sea and while the government are against this, it seems clear that poverty is the reason why they keep killing the whales once they wash down the ocean instead of sending them back the ocean.
Whales are of the order of animals Cetaceans that are of subgroup Odontoceti (Toothed Whales) and Mysticeti (Baleen Whales), and these animals that actually live in the ocean are actually mammals. They give birth to their young alive, they are warm blooded, have hair (layer of fur which is very fine known as lanugo), and they nurse their young with milk.
Whales are descendants of ancient fish which crawled out of water and found their way back into the water some around some 370 million years ago. These order can be traced back to about 50 million years ago where Pakicetus began to hunt in water, in other to be able to hunt better in water they began to experience evolution some 48 million years ago with the Ambulocetus which helped them to be able to swim better, then to Maiacetus some 47 million years ago then Kutchicetus around 43 million years ago down to Rodhocetus, Protocetus, and Basilosaurus around about 40 million years ago, then to Dorudon soe 34 million years ago, then to Squalodon (which became toothed whales) some 14 million years ago, and Aetiocetus (which became Baleen whale) some 23 million years ago.
With evolution comes changes and with this changes, the nostrils of cetaceans moved to the back. Cetaceans like Baleen Whales have two nostrils while toothed whales have one nostrils or Blowhole on their back. Toothed Whales including sperm whales and Dolphins hunt and navigate using echolocation to hunt and navigate but Baleen Whales like Humpback Whales do not use echolocation to navigate, rather they use the whale song.
These mammals are carnivores with toothed whales eating fishes, seals, squid and everything edible while Baleen whales use baleen to filter to plankton, fishes, and krill from the large gulp of water they consume. depending on the type of whales, a blue whale can consume up to 4 tons of food daily and just as they eat large, whales also excrete large amount of feces. The feces of ecosystem provide nutrients for shallow ecosystem and they use up abut 200,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere yearly by fertilizing photosynthetic plankton.
At the end of it like all animals, Whales will die and when they do, they go down to the sea as a result of their weight and they become Whale falls which would hold different species that live down the sea for decades as they will continue to consume the animal carcass for the period.
For the whales that find their way to the shores in Nigeria, I am not certain if most are alive or dead, but they always end up in the bellies of hundreds of people because most times the entire village or community will have a share of it. I believe if the whales are still alive and maybe just weak, they should be returned to the ocean so they can either live on or be useful to the ecosystem and deep sea species.
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-mammals/whales
https://www.marinemammalcenter.org/animal-care/learn-about-marine-mammals/cetaceans
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/cetacea
https://iwc.int/about-whales/cetacea
https://coastalstudies.org/connect-learn/stellwagen-bank-national-marine-sanctuary/marine-mammals/cetaceans/toothed-whales/
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-origin-of-tetrapods/
https://killerwhalemuseum.com.au/all-about-whales/