125 pilot whales die in suicide stranding on NZ beaches
Pastor Dale Morgan
125 pilot whales die in suicide stranding on NZ beaches*
The Associated Press
Monday, December 28, 2009; 5:44 AM
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Some 125 pilot whales died in New Zealand
after a suicide stranding on New Zealand beaches over the weekend - but
vacationers and conservation workers managed to coax 43 others back out
to sea.
Rescuers monitored the survivors as they swam away from Colville Beach
on North Island's Coromandel peninsula, and by Monday morning they were
reported well out to sea.
Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers helped
re-float the 43 whales at high tide. The volunteers covered the stranded
mammals in sheets and kept them wet through the day.
"Some 63 pilot whales stranded ... but it looks pretty good, we've got
43 live ones," Department of Conservation ranger Steve Bolten said as
the pod swam out to sea.
Bolten said one of the whales may have been sick, or their sonar may
have led them into the shallow harbor and they couldn't find their way
out again.
Meanwhile on South Island, 105 long-finned pilot whales that stranded
died Saturday, conservation officials said Monday.
Golden Bay biodiversity program manager Hans Stoffregen said they were
discovered by a tourist plane pilot and only 30 were alive when
conservation workers arrived.
"They were in bad shape. By the time we got there two-thirds of them had
already died. We had to euthanize the rest," he said.
The whales had been out of the water for a long time.
"It has been quite hot and they were very distressed. You could see the
pain and suffering in their eyes," he was quoted telling the Southland
Times newspaper
Because the site is part of a nature reserve, the 105 whale carcasses
were left to decompose where they stranded, Stoffregen said.
Large numbers of whales become stranded on New Zealand's beaches each
summer as they pass by on their way to breeding grounds from Antarctic
waters. Scientists so far have been unable to explain why whales commit
suicide.