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Subscribe to RSSVolunteers are trying to keep dozens of beached pilot whales alive as they wait for high tide on a remote beach in New Zealand. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.
A mass-stranding of whales on a New Zealand beach has left 36 of the creatures dead.
John Mason, area manager of the country's Department of Conservation said 99 pilot whales stranded themselves Monday on Farewell Spit on the South Island. By Tuesday, 36 whales had died and another 40 remained stranded and were in danger.
Mason said conservation staff and volunteers had successfully refloated 17 whales, which had swum out to deeper water. Another six whales remained unaccounted for.
Project Jonah via AP
Stranded pilot whales are helped by volunteers at Farewell Spit on New Zealand's South Island.
The 40 beached whales were briefly swimming in shallow water early Tuesday afternoon local time (late Monday ET) but became stranded again by the evening as the tide went out. Mason said volunteers would try to keep the whales cool and wet until dark. He said after that, all they could hope for was that the whales would swim away on the next high tide.
Pilot whales grow to about 20 feet, and large strandings are common during the New Zealand summer. Experts describe Farewell Spit as a whale trap due to the way its shallow waters seem to confuse whales and diminish their ability to navigate.
Department of Conservation Takaka ranger Nigel Mountfort told television station TVNZ the overnight conditions at the site were "pretty inhospitable".
Mountfort said rescuers in wetsuits would try to form a human wall and try to stop refloated whales coming back ashore.
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The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
Leave a Comment:
They are telling you something people.
OK, I'll bite. What are they telling us? The water's too warm? The water's too cold and they wanted the sun? Their sense of direction is effed up and they shouldn't be called pilot whales? They're out of food?
Enlighten us, what they telling us seeing as you seem to think you know.
Maybe they were trying to demonstrate Darwinism.
They are committing suicide before the Japanese get them!
Kill them and feed the hungry!
what a gruesome post. these are highly social (devoted family memebers) highly evolved mammals. they are not dinner. why doesn't new zealand pinpoint the areas where most of the stranding occur and be able to put in place a temporary barrior during whale migrations to prevent these animals from coming into these danger zones.
Irrert: I agree, and not to take away from your post, but given that they are highly social....you have to wonder what they are saying to each other about being lost and stranded. "I TOLD YOU it was a left, you neeever listen."
Okay, highly social.. sure. Highly evolved mammals... fine. But not very smart. This happens every year, you would think that they would finally figure out where not to go.
Blake, what? Yes whales are very smart and us HUMANS don't know the real reason why they beach themselves. We only speculate....
Sergio, I highly doubt N. Zealanders are starving. Although I do agree those that did died could provide a meal for the homeless, I don't find killing all of them just to feed the human population an ethical way of operating, however limiting the human population to sustainable levels would be a much better way of preserving our planet.
As for Blake, have you ever gotten lost while driving? How many times have you circled a few blocks trying to remember where a store/home was located after a year or so had passed? Same concept, just on a grander scale.
I hope they're able to save as many as possible, it's tragic, and preventable if temporary nets or sounds that would deter them from entering the shallow areas of Farewell Spit could be employed.
Very well said SpryLynnx.
And I agree that the best things humans can do for everyone is to limit our own population levels.
Yet humans keep trying to push these animals back into the water year after year regardless of what nature desires.
Arguesforsport, hmmm. I detect your dislike for humans intervening to help the whales. First and foremost it is called compassion, secondly many people are not convinced that humans don't play a role small or large in some of the beaching cases... I could not imagine sitting by while a whale suffered. It would not happen. Impossible.
Yeah, go ahead and eat pilot whales. Have fun with that whole "mercury poisoning" thing you'll be doing later.
What makes you think forcing whales that beached themselves back into the water is helping anything? Whales beach themselves for a reason. Always have, always will. Pushing them back into the water could very well be causing more whales to get sick, or be depleting a low food supply, or allowing an undesirable trait to be passed on to other pods or future generations of whales.
Human arrogance at it's finest...
New Zealander's are so against whaling that they would never even consider using the meat. They will be buried and given a traditional send off as is with the Maori custom.
argueforsport, I don't believe I have ever been called arrogant before in my entire life; however if it makes you feel good.... Some things humans need not intervene, but in my strong opinion, whales beaching is not one of them. We DO NOT know why whales beach themselves. We do know that on many occasions humans helping the whales to get back out to sea is successful. We also know that it is a horrible way for these whales to die. You apparently could care less. Until we have a finite reason not to intervene I hope we do it EVERY TIME!
Sergio--
Save the whales! Eat the dolphins first.
Read again. I wasn't calling you, arrogant, specifically. I was calling humans, as a race, arrogant in thinking that we know better than nature.
Wrong again. I do care about whales and all nature. The best thing we, as humans, could do for nature is let it take it's course and stop trying to play "god" over the animal kingdom.
How compassionate are you going to feel when you push a sick whale back into the water and it infects the entire pod?
This is a regular occurrence.
Why do they call them "pilot" whales? They don't seem to be very good pilots. Or maybe they're good pilots, but they have bad navigators. :)
Why is it that when something like this happens, there is always those that post stupid remarks. I guess it doesn't take much to amuse them. I wish I was there to help the whales. If nothing else, try and keep them cool. Dieing like that is not an easy way to go for any creature.
Couldn't agree with you more.
Cub T.,
"Why is it that when something like this happens, there is always those that post stupid remarks."
Why is it that some people have no sense of humor?
So an animal is dying and your first thought is "how can I keep it alive longer and watch it suffer rather than letting nature take it's course?"
They beach themselves regularly for a reason. Forcing human morals on nature is unnatural. Leave them to nature. Whales have been doing this long before man decided to stick his nose into their business. Nature knows best.
Nice to read a comment that speaks with common sense. This is nature at its best...or worst. Survival of the fittest is not a comforting statement and stories like this are heart breaking. Cheers to those giving their time and energy to save some of these giant creatures.
Yes but humans are there and we can save some, I would think it would be far more painful to die slowly over many days than have someone save a few. 17 have been saved. Its what humans do, it is with in our nature, well some people's at ht least. SO we should not go against human nature and help when we can.
cub t. ... exactly i agree i would love to be helping them. maybe someone kind of sound system that would warn them of the shallow water and they would avoid the area.
I hear you on that cub. Unfortunately the internet dulls the senses. It all becomes entertainment in some way or another. Plus its the only place left for the fine comedians out there that no one would listen to in person.
I wish we could help the whales too, but these Pilot whales are like the suicidal squirrels that wait by the side of the road and run out under your car. Here in Florida on the East coast they beach themselves regularly. Nobody knows why. It isn't because they don't know the water is too shallow, you can haul them back out into the ocean and they come right back to land.
The article states this is a common occurrence during the New Zealand summer. There are lots of natural animal traps around the world. Lake Nyos and the CO2 sinks of the Virunga National Park in Africa, the La Brea tar pit, Yellowstone valley, etc. Sometimes, nature just works against animals. Don't read doom into every incident. Apparently, it hasn't decimated the whales or such large beachings wouldn't keep happening.
Give the dead whales to the Japanese. This might stop them from hunting whales illegally in the southern oceans...
Give the whales some suntan lotion and let them enjoy the beach like humans do. Problem solved.
Wonder if one of the whales was named Dotcom
Definitely is one mega upload onto the beaches.
Maybe though they were all part of some ritualistic religious sect and decided on mass suicide.
Time to sue Mother nature for creating the geographic area known as Farewell Spit. How dare Mother Nature do something that harms whales.
If the cause was man-made, then that is one circumstance that might support efforts to stem the harm. If it is nature's desire for this number to reduce, then it seems futile to try and save these whales or any particular species of animal save man. Nature is a powerful force to reckon with.
If only so much effort was exerted to save homeless persons. Can you imagine the result?
Do a little digging, and I bet you'll find that the Navy has been testing sonar again.
It really f**ks up the whales navigation and damages their brains.
Shame.
Hmmmm, my thoughts exactly.
Whales have been beaching themselves from the beginning of whales. Put down your conspiracy books for a minute.
...", said the droid, amazed that someone could possibly still experience the type of haywire brainwave activity that causes one to question the collective. "Everyone knows that sonar tests itself, and when it does, it cures cancer. Lose the dangerous disinformation obsession will you?"
how sad. it won't long until the earth throws humans off, lol, what happens when nyc is under water?
maybe it has something to do with toxic water
I wonder if naval training exercises were going on, another regular occurrence.
There should have been a sign posted warning the whales of the tide.
Mass strandings of dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals date back to the time of Aristotle, but some environmental activists have suggested that human impacts of pollution, shipping noise and, in some cases, military sonar have led to a rise in such frequency and severity of such events. And so scientists have been trying to untangle what factors cause these normally adept swimmers and maritime navigators end up in shallow water where they can become beached and die.
What causes whales to beach themselves?
I often use the analogy of a car crash, because a lot of things can go wrong but you get the same result. Statistically, we are only able to determine the cause of a stranding in about 50 percent of all cases worldwide. In some cases it is obvious, like a ship strike leaving an animal in poor condition. In the northeastern United States pneumonia is a common cause of stranding. We see other diseases and trauma, such as shark attack on whales or dolphins or attacks by members of the same species. Poisonous "red tides" will also affect marine mammals. Some strandings have been speculated to be related to anomalies in the magnetic field.
Military sonar has been implicated in the mass stranding of beaked whales. Although there have been environmental groups publishing press releases about all whales being affected by sonar—that's never been demonstrated.
How do you define a mass stranding?
The definition varies from country to country but it is typically two animals or more unrelated animals (not, say, a mother and a calf) stranding in the same location. The largest stranding of false killer whales on record is 835 animals, but sometimes you see mass strandings involving just a few animals.* There are some species like pilot whales that are notorious for mass strandings. We have records going back to Puritan settlements in New England reporting mass strandings in the same places we see them today. Back then, it was a BBQ instead of a disaster.
Are strandings something we should be worried about?
These are species that are unusual, that are beautiful, and important for the ecology of our seas. If there is an activity humans are doing precipitating these strandings we need to know about it—we need to make decisions about pollutants, shipping noise and sonar. Are we in some way contributing to declining health of critical populations, like the northern right whale?
I have to provide the caveat that strandings we know going back to Aristotle, meaning they may be a natural phenomenon. That raises an interesting question: If you have an animal and it is stranded and you insist on returning it to the sea, are you harming the population? If they are sick or diseased, what are we doing to that population pool? I'm not advocating that we don't rehabilitate animals, if we can. We should understand causes of stranding, but we also have to accept the fact that strandings may be in many cases natural phenomenon.
Are mass strandings on the rise?
That's a really good question. We certainly have more reports over time, and that's something a number of people are looking into. In Cape Cod there's been a slight increase in the last two years. But looking around the world, stranding reports seem to follow human populations. As beach areas become more popular—meaning more people going to beach and more people interested in whales and dolphins—you get more reports. You have to normalize data for increased interest and traffic, and it's not clear whether there are more strandings or just more reports.
Why did they have to shoot the whales in Africa?
They were shooting them to euthanize them. You can try to get them back in the water, but imagine struggling to get the animal back in water in winter conditions, like at the Cape. They are very large animals but they are quite delicate. For instance, if you get sand down their blowhole it's like squirting water up your nose. If you do get the animal to water and try to get it to swim off, and if it returns two or three times, the decision will have to be made that it is not going to survive and a veterinarian must euthanize it. Depending on how big the animal is, you cannot always use drugs in which case shooting is the best option.
No one really knows why whales beach themselves....
That's a lot of speculation and theories just for one fact at the bottom of your post.
Arguesforsport you just made me lmao. However, the Lum's cut and paste was very informative!
I done a google search, And found the information there interesting.... Thought that I'd share what I found. I don't think it has a lot to do with global warming. It's been going on since men have been around to see it happen. Copy and paste..... Awesome. :)
Yesterday, whales washing up on the Washington and Oregon shores, now, today, New Zealand. What's going on??
Maybe the electromagnetic fields have become discombobulated.
99 whales beached themselves, 36 died. BAD!! Of the 63 left alive 17 were freed. Good!! 40 whales still stuck on the beach. GOOD & BAD!! "Another 6 whales unaccounted for."(!!??) How in the hell do you lose 6 WHALES ON A BEACH!!!!!!!!!
Maybe Kim Dotcom is lucky he got picked up by the federales before he possibly met a similar fate!
Yes, this is a regular occurrence now, but was this a regular occurrence say 40 - 50 years ago when the oceans weren't as polluted? I'm just curious if something isn't screwing up the whales sonar. Dozens of common dolphins were stranded off Long Island last week as well. Something is certainly making it happen. I don't think they're committing mass suicide.