Trying to get back where they came from?

Mass stranding of pilot whales (often called black fish in the past) on a Cape Cod beach in 1902.

"Whale on the beach, you dinosaur,
what brought you smoothing into this dead harbor?
If you’d stayed inside you could have grown
as big as the Empire State. Still you are not a fish,
perhaps you like the land, you’d had enough of
holding your breath under water. ''

-- From "Whale,'' by Anne Sexton