review suggested the strength of response of individual animals may depend on whether they had prior exposure to sonar, and that symptoms of decompression sickness have been found in stranded whales that may be a result of such response to sonar. It noted that no more mass strandings had occurred in the Canary Islands once naval exercises where sonar was used were banned, and recommended that the ban be extended to other areas where mass strandings continue to occur. Disposal If a whale is beached near an inhabited locality, the rotting carcass can pose a nuisance as well as a health risk. Such very large carcasses are difficult to move. The whales are often towed back out to sea away from shipping lanes, allowing them to decompose naturally, or they are towed out to sea and blown up with explosives. Government-sanctioned explosions have occurred in South Africa, Iceland, Australia and United States. If the carcass is older, it is buried. In New Zealand, which is the site of many whale strandings, treaties with the indigenous Māori people allow the tribal gathering and customary (that is, traditional) use of whalebone from any animal which has died as a result of stranding. Whales are regarded as taonga (spiritual treasure), descendants of the ocean god, Tangaroa, and are as such held in very high respect. Sites of whale strandings and any whale carcasses from strandings are treated as tapu sites, that is, they are regarded as sacred ground. Health risks A beached whale carcass should not be consumed. In 2002, fourteen Alaskans ate muktuk (whale blubber) from a beached whale, resulting in eight of them developing botulism, with two of the affected requiring mechanical ventilation. This is a possibility for any meat taken from an unpreserved carcass. Large strandings This is a list of large cetacean strandings (200 or more). Others On June 23, 2015, 337 dead whales were discovered in a remote fjord in Patagonia, southern Chile, the largest stranding of baleen whales to date. Three hundred and five bodies and 32 skeletons were identified by aerial and satellite photography between the Gulf of Penas and Puerto Natales, near the southern tip of South America. They may have been sei whales. This is one of only two or three such baleen mass stranding events in the last hundred years. It is highly unusual for baleens to strand other than singly, and the