More Than 140 Whales Die After Mass Stranding in New Zealand
- by Carmen Reese
- in Science
- — Nov 30, 2018
Conservation workers and volunteers in New Zealand managed to refloat six surviving stranded whales on Tuesday and were hoping the animals would soon swim away into deeper water.
As many as 145 pilot whales have died after a recent mass stranding at a beach on Stewart Island.
A helicopter will also be deployed to the 1.5 km stretch of beach where the whales are located, said Turner.
The humpback whale is thought to have died well before the rest in a separate incident.
In the far north of New Zealand, eight pygmy killer whales were transported by truck to the east coast from the west where sea conditions were too rough to refloat them.
The conservation department however suspects that the reason for the death of the whales was that the whales had been beached for an entire day without being noticed. Conservation officers found half the whales dead when they reached the spot and made a decision to put down the rest as the chances of returning them to the water were very bleak due to the bad condition they were in.
People have been advised not to swim in the area due to heightened risk of sharks and signs will be placed at entry points along the beach warning visitors and locals of the carcasses.
"They were calling to the other whales in the pod and they were coming back in", he said.
The DOC team is monitoring the last remaining whale.
The most agreed-upon hypothesis is that the whales' echolocation isn't as effective in shallow, near-shore waters as it is in the steep areas at the edge of the continental shelf, according to the DOC.
When conservation workers arrived, they found that 75 of the animals were already dead and they chose to euthanize the others due to their poor condition and remote location. Scientists believe strandings can be caused by a number of factors, such as the whales trying to escape predators, falling ill, or navigating incorrectly.
