New Zealand: Nearly 500 pilot whales dead – many mercilessly killed | News

Hundreds of pilot whales have died on New Zealand’s islands in recent days.

The country’s conservation agency said on Wednesday that 240 animals were missing on Pete Island in the South Pacific Ocean on Monday. Located 800 kilometers offshore, the island is the most remote inhabited island in New Zealand. About 240 pioneer whales died on neighboring Chatham Island on Saturday.

Some of the whales had already died when they were washed ashore. Dave Lundquist, a consultant with the agency, said the rest should have been euthanized to reduce suffering.

Rescuers are rarely able to return stranded whales to deep water due to the abundance of great white sharks in the area. Because of the “risk of shark attacks on humans and the whales themselves,” “euthanasia was the most humane solution.”

According to the whale conservation organization Project Jonah, it was one of the largest strandings in New Zealand with a total of nearly 480 whales in just a few days. “In the Farewell Spit (on the northern tip of the South Island) there are large mass strandings, but on average there are 70 to 80 whales,” she added. Whenever possible, the rescuers tried to save the animals.

In New Zealand and Australia it happens again and again that whales get lost on the beaches. This is not uncommon in the Chatham Islands either. In 1918, more than 1,000 animals were said to have died in a single stranding. In Australia, about 230 whales were stranded on the west coast of Tasmania at the end of September. 44 of them can be returned to the water.

Pilot whales are very social animals. It’s entirely possible that there are collective leads because marine mammals follow other species that have endangered themselves.

(bw/dspa)