Race to save 100 whales as hundreds die after being stranded on New Zealand beach

Tom Powell10 February 2017

Hundreds of whales have died after becoming stranded on a beach in New Zealand overnight.

Shocking photos show more than 400 pilot whales stranded on Farewell Spit, at the top of the South Island, in one of the country’s worst ever beaching cases.

More than 70 per cent had died by sunrise on Friday morning but conservation staff and local volunteers were trying desperately to save the remaining 100.

Peter Wiles, who was one of the first volunteers to reach Farewell Spit, told Fairfax New Zealand: “It is one of the saddest things I have seen, that many sentient creatures just wasted on the beach.”

Stranded: Volunteers attempt to keep the whales cool and calm
AFP/Getty Images

Volunteers were tasked with keeping the whales calm and wet with buckets of water and sheets before they can be refloated at high tide.

Andrew Lamason, a team leader for the DOC Takaka area, said: “We are trying to swim the whales out to sea and guide them but they don’t really take directions, they go where they want to go.

"Unless they get a couple of strong leaders who decide to head out to sea, the remaining whales will try and keep with their pod on the beach.”

Whales: At least 300 died on the beach before dawn broke
AFP/Getty Images

“We are in the farthest corner of the universe here but now volunteers have started turning up en masse and there are hundreds of people here and they have brought food and supplies so they are prepared to be here all day and all night if needed.”

Farewell Spit has seen similar incidents in the past, with around 100 whales becoming stranded and dying there in February 2015.

Whales are thought to beach themselves if they are old, sick or injured, or make a navigational error.

If one becomes beached, other members of its pod often head to its distress signal but are then caught out by the receding tide.

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