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Over 120 whales die on two New Zealand beaches

By Assam News on December 28, 2009 at 12:12 am

More than 120 pilot whales died over 48 hours in mass strandings at two New Zealand beaches. A pod of 105 died after becoming stranded at the eastern tip of remote Farewell Spit, at the top of the South Island, on Saturday. Twenty-one other pilot whales died and 42 were successfully refloated after stranding at Colville Bay, on the North Island’s Coromandel Peninsula, on Sunday.

The pod of adults and calves beached on Farewell Spit were spotted by the pilot of a sightseeing plane on Boxing Day, the Department of Conservation (DOC) Golden Bay biodiversity programme manager Hans Stoffregen told the Southland Times. He said that when DOC staff reached them only 30 were alive. They were in bad shape, as they had been out of the water for a long time. According to the DOC, more than 20 pilot whales will be buried by Coromandel Maori on Monday.

A department spokesman said the survivors, who were kept wet by hundreds of tourists and volunteers until they could be refloated on the afternoon’s high tide, were later reported to be swimming strongly and appeared to be in no danger of beaching again. The Farewell Spit is close to the whales’ migration routes and is famous as one of the world’s great whale traps due to its shallow sloping beach. In Farewell Spit, the tide recedes by as much as 4 and a half miles.



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