Dolphin Strandings

Here it is the first week in February, 2008 and we've already had dolphins, in Cape Cod bay, getting stranded on the beaches at low tide. Two at First Encounter Beach in Easthem on Feb. 1 and two more off of Mayo Beach in Wellfleet a few days after that. The two in Wellfleet were successfully re-directed back into deeper water and saved. The channel in Wellfleet harbor is so narrow at low tide it's easy for boaters to run aground so it's no surprise that confused aquatic mammals get stuck sometimes too.
Many theories abound about why dolphin and whales beach themselves. One plausible explanation is that the animals enter the hook of Cape Cod above Provincetown heading west, and then swim south a bit, possibly chasing fish into Cape Cod Bay. Later, when they want to swim back east and to the open ocean, they hit the Eastham, Wellfleet and Truro beaches because they didn't swim north enough to escape the hooked land mass.
This makes sense to me. This theory is supported by the fact that in the past, when some whales were pushed back into the deeper waters of Cape Cod Bay and re-floated, they then swam in an easterly direction and back onto the beach!
This could be an example of Natural Selection with nature weeding out the aquatic mammals who have faulty internal compasses or who cannot remember to swim back the way they came... up north before heading east.