Over 400 whales in mass stranding on New Zealand beach

The rescue team has been pouring water over the re-stranded whales to try and keep them cool before floating them out at the next high tide.

The new pod was comprised of about 240 whales, according to the Associated Press.

Whales often get stuck at Golden Bay, a remote but popular holiday area at the top of New Zealand’s south island. And Farewell Spit is known as something of a “trap” for whale strandings where group beachings have happened before.

Around 100 beached whales that survived one of biggest whale strandings on record in New Zealand were refloated following a major volunteer effort involving 300 volunteers.

Volunteers from Project Jonah said that the exact amount of whales were 416 that were left stranded on the beach.

The stranded whales can not be helped at night for safety reasons.

The 20 that restranded would need to be euthanized “to relieve their suffering”, the DOC said in a statement, explaining that “unsuccessful attempts at refloating the whales would likely lead to more injury and stress to them and prolong the whales’ suffering”.

Volunteers are planning to return Sunday to help re-float as many healthy whales as possible.

Reports of whales beaching themselves have been recorded throughout history.

Farewell Spit is the country’s largest sand spit, stretching for 32 kilometers from the northwest tip of the South Island.

Whales are thought to beach themselves if they are old, sick or injured, or make a navigational error.

Daren Grover, general manager of rescue effort Project Jonah, said: “We just can’t leave people out here for the night”.

In fact, bite marks on the body of one of the whales showed that it had been attacked by what was possibly a shark.

Dead pilot whales line the shore at Farewell Spit, Saturday. However, they were unable to save the lives of an estimated 335 whales whose carcasses now lie strewn on the beach. “(But) obviously this is a huge one compared to most years. mostly they’re in ones and twos”, she said.

Pilot whales are one of the largest members of the dolphin family, but they are treated as whales under New Zealand’s Marine Mammals Protection Regulations 1992.

The largest was in 1918, when about 1,000 pilot whales came ashore on the Chatham Islands. At that time, 450 whales had swum onto the shore and the majority had perished.