AP

In this Tuesday photo provided by Project Jonah, stranded pilot whales are helped by volunteers at Farewell Spit on New Zealand's South Island.

Some 33 long-finned pilot whales that were refloated Wednesday off a New Zealand beach with the help of volunteers became stranded again Thursday and will have to be euthanized, officials told TVNZ.

“Unfortunately the stranded whales are now also further along the Spit and on the extreme boundary of our ability to reach them for another rescue attempt,” Kimberly Muncaster, CEO of the marine-mammal rescue group Project Jonah, told the TV station.

"The Department of Conservation has decided they will have to be put down."

John Mason, a Department of Conservation official, said the whales were physically deteriorating and in distress.

The whales were part of a larger pod of 99 whales that beached on Monday at Farewell Spit in Golden Bay on the South Island.

Volunteers have refloated surviving whales twice only to have them restrand. Each time, more whales died.

A total of 82 whales will now have died since the stranding on Monday, according to TVNZ.

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.

Read the full story on TVNZ.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Japan is spending 2.3 billion yen ($29 million) from its supplementary budget for tsunami reconstruction to fund the country's annual whaling hunt in the Antarctic Ocean, a fisheries official confirmed Thursday.

Tatsuya Nakaoku, a Fisheries Agency official in charge of whaling, defended the move, saying the funding helps support Japan's whaling industry as a whole, including some whaling towns along the devastated northeastern coast. One ship on the hunt is based in Ishinomaki, a town hit badly by the March 11 tsunami, he said.

The budget request was made to beef up security and maintain the "stable operation" of Japan's research whaling, he said, which has faced increasingly aggressive interference from boats with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Conservationist group Greepeace blasted the funding move, claiming it was siphoning money away from disaster victims.

The Japanese government has passed supplementary budgets totalling 18 trillion yen ($230 billion) for reconstruction after the March 11 tsunami. Nearly all the items are rebuilding projects, including nearly 500 billion yen for fisheries projects directly in the region, but some, including the whaling expedition, appear less directly related.

Media reports said Japan's annual whaling expedition left Shimonoseki in southern Japan on Tuesday with plans to cull 900 whales, mostly minke whales, which are not endangered.

Japanese officials didn't confirm departure details, citing safety reasons. But Coast Guard spokesman Masahiro Ichijo said this year's fleet is carrying "the biggest protection ever," including an unspecified number of Coast Guard officers, safety equipment and a Fisheries Agency patrol ship.

He said the announcement of the deployment of coast guard officials "would serve as a deterrent" against attacks by the conservationist groups.

"We have no intention to show off our capability to respond to their attacks or declare a fight," Ichijo said.

Each year, protesters try to harass the whaling fleet into stopping the hunt Japan says is a scientific exemption from an international moratorium on commercial whaling.

The protesters say whale research does not require killing the animals, and Japan's scientific program amounts to commercial whaling in disguise because surplus meat is sold. Whale meat, however, is not widely eaten in Japan.

Clashes between the two sides often take place, and last January a Sea Shepherd boat was sunk after its bow was sheared off in a collision with a whaling ship. The hunting season runs from about December through February.

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