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WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A group of 145 pilots whales he's stranded on a secluded beach in New Zealand and is dead. Conservation Officers hope to save some of the eight Pygmy Orcs stranded across the country at an unrelated event.
A hiker discovered black pilot whales in two groups about 1.2 km from one another Saturday night on Stewart Island. About 75 people had already died and conservation officers decided to euthanize the others because of their poor condition and remoteness.
About 375 people live on Stewart Island, also called Rakiura. The whales were found at Mason's Bay, about 22 km from the main township of Oban.
"You feel for animals, it's just a really sad event," said Ren Leppens, head of operations at Rakiura for the conservation department. "That's the kind of thing you do not want to see, and you'd like to understand the reason why whales do not get better, to be able to intervene."
A picture provided shows approximately 145 pilot whales dead in a strand on a beach on Stewart Island, located south of the South Island of New Zealand, on November 25, 2018.
Conservation Department of New Zealand / Document distributed via Reuters
Leppens said the whales were half buried in the sand and in poor health, indicating that they had stayed there maybe a day before being found. He added that the staff had shot down the whales and that the carcasses would be left where they were so that nature could take its course.
In the meantime, 10 Pygmy Orcs have been found stranded at Ninety Mile Beach on the North Island. Two of them have since died and the staff plans to bail out the other eight.
Strandings of whales are relatively common in New Zealand in the spring and summer of the southern hemisphere. Stranding is thought to be caused by a number of factors, such as whales that try to escape predators, become ill or sail incorrectly.
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