AT least 40 whales have died after becoming stranded on a remote beach.
The dead marine mammals are among a school of 80 beached whales in northern New Zealand.It is the second time pilot whales have been stranded on beaches in the region in a month.
Rescuers are battling to save the other mammals.
Mark Simpson of Project Jonah, a whale protection charity, said: "More whales are still coming in.
"Pilot whales have very strong social bonds and they try to help each other so more keep getting stuck."
Officials say they have already had to kill some of the weakest and most distressed animals.
The survivors will be taken to a beach about an hour south to be refloated.
Mark said: "They will be lifted up with big nets on to the back of trucks with straw or hay loaded on them."
Department of Conservation area manager Jonathan Maxwell said at least 25 of the animals were already dead when officials arrived at Spirits Bay.
Another 15 died in the following hours.
Despite hundreds of helpers fighting to save them, just nine were eventually floated off the beach and returned to the sea.
A school of 101 pilot whales stranded on the same beach in 2007.
New Zealand has one of the world's highest rates of whale strandings.
They occur mainly during their migrations to and from Antarctic waters, one of which begins around September.
Since 1840, the Department of Conservation has recorded more than 5,000 strandings of whales and dolphins around the New Zealand coast.
Experts have not been able to find out why it happens.
And still they cant see what is being spelt out ,Whales use a system with their built in sona system and they automatically head for true north after a certain point the whales can detect where their breeding grounds are if their automatic system is temporarily interupted ( pole shift)then will head for the same space where it was last detected.
No comments:
Post a Comment