Whale washes up on Auckland shore

A whale was discovered beached early on Wednesday morning, and is thought to be the same whale that, on Tuesday, was seen struggling more than a kilometre up a narrow inlet on the upper Waitemata Harbour called Rangitopuni Creek.

“It is swimming. We have a DoC boat tracking it and there are two DoC staff aboard that boat, and Doctor Rochelle Constantine, from University of Auckland – who is a whale expert”. “The indications are positive”.

He added that it may be the whale that was seen at Riverhead yesterday.

The whale stranded not far from central Auckland on mudflats near the north-western motorway at Point Chevalier has been refloated. Volunteers worked to keep a beached whale in an Auckland harbour wet. Minke whales mainly swim alone or in pairs, reaching speeds of up to 12 knots and are able to stay under water for as long as 20 minutes at a time.

Project Jonah general manager Daren Grover said the beaching may have caused the whale some injuires as it was resting on its own weight. It is hoped it will now head for deeper waters.

Louisa Hawkes from Project Jonah told: “It’s quite a big whale so there wasn’t much we could do to move it physically, we had to wait until the water was around the whale and then we could nudge it”.

“If it’s alive there’s always a chance [but] there may be problems internally where it’s been lying on the beach for several hours”.

The Antarctic minke is among the smallest of the baleen whales, with only the common minke and the pygmy right whale being smaller.